The outdoor plant area is watered by an irrigation system on zones, on a timer, and the timer logs every zone it runs and the litres. Every night it logs a zone that does not exist. The water comes on over one patch of the turf display, the rolls of lawn we sell laid out as a lawn, and the patch is about two metres by one, and the grass on it is greener than the rest, and grows faster, and under it, when I lifted the turf, was earth that had been dug, a long time ago, and put back.
I am the outdoor plants manager at a garden centre and the irrigation is my system and it waters one thing I did not plumb.
The irrigation.
Zones, on a timer, each zone a set of sprinklers over a bed or a display, and the timer logs each run with the litres from the meter. The turf display is a patch of lawn made of the rolls we sell, laid out so people can see what it looks like down, and it is on zone eight, with the rest of that side.
Every night the timer logs a zone it calls zero.
Zone zero.
There is no zone zero. The timer's zones start at one. It logs zero, at about one in the morning, ten minutes, forty litres, and the water comes on over the turf display, and not all of it. A patch. About two metres by one, in the middle of the display, from a sprinkler that is not there, in a fine rain, straight down, on that patch and nothing else, and the litres are on the meter.
The grass on the patch is a different green. Darker. It grows faster than the rest of the display and I mow it more, and the rolls that come off it, when we lift the display to renew it, are the best turf we have and I have never sold them, because I lifted them once and I saw what was under them.
What was under.
Earth. That is all. Earth that had been dug, at some point long enough ago that the sides of the digging had softened but not so long that they were gone, a rectangle, the size of the patch, and in it, at about the depth you would expect, nothing, because I did not dig, and I put the turf back, and I have not lifted it since.
What has been checked.
The timer, replaced. It logs zone zero.
The display, at one, by me, at the edge of the patch. The water came on. Out of the air, a foot above the grass, a fine rain, in a rectangle, the edges of it sharp, and I put my hand into it and it was water, cold, and I put my hand outside the rectangle and it was dry, and the rain fell on the patch for ten minutes, and there was, under the sound of it on the grass, another sound, which was somebody breathing, slowly, evenly, the way a person breathes who is asleep, and it came from under the grass.
Who.
The site was a nursery before it was a garden centre and before it was a nursery it was a field, and the centre's own plans have the field, and the field's owner, in the deeds, and the deeds say nothing about anybody being in it. The council has nothing. The church has nothing.
But the nursery's old foreman, who is very old, and whom I found, said that the nurseryman who had the site before the war had had a dog, a big one, that had gone everywhere with him, and that when the dog died the nurseryman had buried it in the field, in the corner, where the turf display is, and had planted the best grass he had over it, and had watered it himself every night, because he said the dog had liked the rain, and that the nurseryman had died in the war, and the grass had gone back to field.
Somebody is watering the dog. Every night. Forty litres, ten minutes, on the best grass on the site, and the breathing under the turf is a dog asleep, which is the most peaceful sound I have heard in my life.
What is done about it.
Zone zero is on the timer log every night and the water is on the meter and the area manager has asked why my irrigation uses forty litres a night on a zone that is not on the plan, and I have said, the turf display, and he has said, the turf display is zone eight, and I have said, part of it is not.
What I do.
I manage the outdoor plants.
The nurseryman watered the grass himself. That was the thing. Not a timer, not a sprinkler, a man with a hose at the end of the day standing over a patch of grass in a field because the dog had liked the rain.
So I have taken zone zero off the timer, in the sense that I have gone to the display at one with a hose, and when the rain starts out of the air I turn my hose on too, and I water the patch, the same ten minutes, from my side of it, and the rain from the air and the water from my hose fall on the same grass, and the breathing under it does not change, because a dog asleep in the rain does not care where the rain comes from.
Zone zero still logs. The litres are eighty now, because there are two of us. And I have put a stone at the head of the patch, a small one, from the rockery stock, with nothing on it, because I do not know the dog's name, and the foreman did not either, and the next morning there was something on the stone, which was a stick, an ordinary one, from the beech by the fence, laid across it, and I have left it there, and nobody has thrown it.