Outlined heart with leaf sprigs on upper arm

Ruth Hadley was a gardener's girl at the rectory, and the rector's wife had a rule that nobody touched the walled garden without a bucket of lime and a sermon first. Ruth broke it on the first warm morning of March, climbing the wall with a pair of shears and a sprig of bay in her teeth. She clipped the privet over the gate into a small heart, then trimmed two curving sprigs and wove them down beneath it, so the heart sat in its own green wreath like a letter in a frame. Her young man, Tom, a carter who could not draw a straight line with a ruler, stood in the lane and told her it was daft. She told him the heart was for the gate, and the wreath was for whoever came after.

The rector's wife came out with her bucket, saw the shape, and went very quiet. Then she took the shears from Ruth's hands and pressed three seeds from the lime tree pods into the empty middle of the heart. They would never grow there, and she said so. A heart with nothing growing inside it is still a heart, she said, and a gate with room in it is still a gate. Tom laughed until he had to sit down in the cabbages.

So that is the story, and your grandfather told it wrong because he thought Ruth went off to sea. She stayed. Now fetch me the secateurs, love, and mind where you tread. We keep that hedge just so for anyone who needs a place to stand.