Lucy's monsterpiece

"This darn rain," Lucy's dad complained as he stared out of the patio windows at his wilting garden. "It's ruining my flowers. Look at them. They're all going brown, the petals are falling off, it looks a mess."
Lucy lifted her head from the Plasticine palace she was carefully and painstakingly constructing. Every minute detail was given her close attention-the markings on the bricks, the position of the windows, the height of the turrets. She'd even added drainpipes and gutters, a draw bridge and a moat to her design.
"There is absolutely no chance of winning the Cressington Local Gardens competition now," said her dad.
"I don't think anyone will, dad," Lucy stated.
"I just wish I could create a garden that wouldn't spoil. That I could look at and admire all year round, that would always be in bloom."
Lucy felt a spark of ingenuity zip across her mind. Her eyes widened and she leapt up from the floor.
"I know exactly what you can do, dad."
Lucy's dad looked at her with raised eyebrows. He clearly didn't believe she could have a suggestion that would fulfil his dream.
"Plasticine!" she suggested, as though it was the most obvious idea in the world.
Her dad laughed. "Nice try, Luce," he said. "But I would need tons of plasticine to do that garden. All the art shops in the country couldn't provide that much of the stuff."
"But think about it dad," said Lucy. She grabbed a rough ball of unused green plasticine and held it up to him. "You can mould it into anything you want. You can create whatever plants you want, even exotic ones that don't grow here. And you can make them as tall or as small as you want. You could even spray them with perfume and make them smell."
From the way her dad was rubbing his chin and frowning Lucy was sure her idea was germinating in her dad's mind. She decided to give it a gentle nudge-he always needed it when he was unsure about something-so she crafted a rose with a stem using her deep red and vivid green plasticine and gave it to him.
"It looks so lifelike," he said, admiring the detail Lucy had put into it. "With my ideas and your artistic abilities, we could mould the best darn garden in the world."
Lucy jumped up and down and clapped her hands. "Yes, yes. Let's do it," she beamed.

That week Lucy and her dad set about planning their masterpiece. They spent every evening after dinner, and every weekend, designing every last detail-what plants and flowers her dad wanted, what they looked like, how high they should be, where they should go. They even built in a pond and waterfall into their plan. All that remained was to find plasticine in large quantities and in the colours they needed-green, red, purple, brown, yellow, orange, pink and white.
Her dad made numerous phone calls to suppliers around the country and eventually found one that would supply them with all that they needed as long as the company got some publicity for it in the local papers and if they were allowed to put a sign in Lucy's garden to say where the plasticine had come from. Her dad agreed, without question.

Over the two months that led up to the competition Lucy's dad cleared the garden of withered plants whilst Lucy started creating all the flowers. She built the stems first at the required heights and laid them out across the dining table, then made the leaves in the correct shapes for each flower and the petals-lilies had long tongue-like white petals whilst the roses had more rounded red and pink petals. When the garden was cleared Lucy built each flower and handed it to her dad to plant. Little by little the garden began to take shape until it was a riot of brilliant colour that glowed in the summer sunshine. It truly was a master piece.
Lucy and her dad stepped back and admired their creation.
"Well, I have to hand it to you, Luce. That was the best darn idea I've ever heard. Look at this. We'll be able to sit and admire this garden for ever. And the best thing is I never need to do any more gardening ever again. No weeding, no pruning, no watering. It is entirely self-sufficient."
Lucy smile stretched so far across her face she was sure it would split her head in two.
"And we made it in time for the competition."
"Golly, the competition. Heavens, I was so caught up with creating it I clean forgot about the competition."
"It's tomorrow, dad."
"Yes, I know. We'll have to get tidied up," he said, picking up stray bits of plasticine.

The next day Lucy woke up with a start, eager to see if her plasticine creation was okay. She ran downstairs and pulled open the patio curtains. To her relief it was still intact. Not that she really had any doubt that it wouldn't be but given the work she and her dad had put into it she would have been devastated if someone had sabotaged it. But on closer inspection something was a little different. She was sure the pansies were higher than they were the day before. They were now halfway up the stems of the Lilies when they were only a quarter of the way up when they were planted.
"Does anything look odd to you, dad, about the garden?" she said as she munched through her cereal.
"Not that I've noticed. Why?"
"I'm sure some of flowers look taller."
"Impossible," her dad chuckled. "They can't grow, Lucy. Anyway we've no time to inspect it now. People will start trickling in in an hour. You'd best get upstairs and get dressed. You're the star of this show."
Given the sun was shining and the sky was blue Lucy decided to put on her best pale blue shirt with the cherry buttons and her dark blue shorts. She dressed down. She didn't want to go over the top and distract people's attention from her and her dad's colourful creation.
It certainly had an impact. There were a lot of surprised and confused faces meandering along the gravel path way inspecting the flowers, and some quiet mutterings too. Lucy overheard one person say that the garden was a cheat. So when a competition official approached her dad she was afraid he was going to say they were disqualified.
"It's an unconventional entry, Mr Burgess," the gruff, portly official said. "But I'll allow it, despite the grumblings I'm receiving from other entrants. I can disqualify plastic but not plasticine-at least not this time."
Lucy was relieved. All she was waiting for now was the verdict.
As the entrants all gathered in the local town hall the head official took to the stage to announce the winners. Lucy felt her insides twist with anticipation.
"In third place, Mrs Hitchings, with her Japanese garden," he said to a round of applause and the handing of a small trophy to a pint-sized old lady. "Second place goes to Mr and Mrs Maitland, for their cottage garden."
Lucy was starting to feel a mixture of nausea and disappointment. She had a horrible feeling they had lost.
"And in first place, and grand prize winner of the Cressington Local Gardens Trophy, is Ms Lucy Burgess and Mr Roger Burgess."
Lucy leapt so far off her seat she ought to have had a parachute strapped to her back. She ran up onto the stage and grabbed the trophy from the officials hands and gave her dad such a big hug she almost garrotted him.

That afternoon, however, when Lucy and her dad returned home, there was definitely something wrong with the garden, and her dad noticed it too. Every one of the flowers had grown a foot in height and were leaning to one side; the climbing Ivy had obliterated the kitchen window; the pink Clematis had spread over the fence into next door's garden; the Sweet Peas were strangling the Roses and the Cotoneaster was climbing the decking.
"What on earth?" her dad exclaimed, open mouthed.
Lucy couldn't even say anything. She dropped the trophy to her side and stared out at the jungle her garden had become.
"How?...why?...what?" her dad seemed to be so lost for words he couldn't finish his sentences.
Over the course of the minute that Lucy and her dad spent standing on the decking in astonishment the Cotoneaster had crept up to their feet.
Lucy jumped back.
"Get inside, Lucy," her dad said before shutting the patio doors.
They stood and watched the garden all afternoon as it gradually took over itself.
"What do we do, dad?" Lucy asked, with a tear in her eye at the idea they were going to have to destroy what took an age to create. "We have to stop it. It'll be in the house soon."
"There's only one thing we can do," her dad said as he walked into the hall, opened the cupboard and took out an axe. "Cut it down."
Lucy started to weep. She watched her dad, tears pouring down her face, as he hacked and hacked at the plasticine flowers, plants, trees and shrubs. But it didn't seem to work. Where one flower was cut down two grew up in its place. The more her dad hacked the more the garden seemed to multiply. He gave up in the end and came back in and ferreted around in the cupboard. He pulled out a container of liquid with a tube attached.
"What's that, dad?"
"Weed killer," her dad replied.
But the weed killer didn't work either.
When Lucy woke the next morning and peered outside her bedroom window at the garden below she could see that it had spread over the fence on either side and completely obliterated the neighbours' garden.
Lucy leapt out of the bed to find vines poking out of the sink and toilet in the bathroom, vines creeping up the stairs and banister rail, vines snaking across the hall floor, up the lounge walls, across the kitchen work surfaces and round the dining room table. The entire ground floor of her house was a jungle.
Her dad was on the phone trying, by the sound of it, to calm someone down.
"Yes, I know Mrs Pritchard. I'm in the same position. Trust me though, I'm dealing with it. I'll rescue your cat from the sunflower in a moment," he said. He slammed the phone down and let out a big, hopeless sounding sigh.
"So the weed killer didn't work either," Lucy stated.
"Neither does fire. I tried burning it before you got up."
Her dad shook his head and slumped down on the hall chair. "I don't know what to do."
"We have to call the police, or the fire brigade. They need to know."
Whilst her dad made the necessary calls Lucy wrestled the bread bin and toaster from the clutches of a determined ivy, and made some breakfast. She was feeling less sad about her creation now and more mad.
"They're on their way," said her dad."Although it took a bit to convince them it wasn't a hoax call."
"I imagine they're not regularly called about mutant gardens," Lucy said, trying to see the funny side to the chaos.
Her dad gave a slight smile too.

Try as they did, the police and fire brigade and even the local horticultural society couldn't contain the voraciously growing flora and fauna. By the end of the day the entire street had to be evacuated to the local town hall. Lucy's garden had consumed each and every house; they looked like they had been draped in a green carpet.
Lucy and her dad sat down on camp beds at the end of the hall, but it wasn't far enough away from the rest of people that lived on street. They were all staring at Lucy and her dad; their eyes filled with anger and frustration.
Lucy didn't want to look at them. She hated the idea that people disliked her, especially when she didn't mean to annoy them.
The following day the situation worsened. Half the town was evacuated because the voraciously spreading bendy vines, flowers and branches had pulled down electricity lines and choked water pipes and sewers. They were growing so quickly they caught up with a bus loaded with elderly people from Cressington Care home on its way to a bridge tournament, lifted it up and carried it two miles into Cressington Wood. The stubborn plants even invaded the school, winding down corridors, round pipes and wall bars in the gym, round desks and chairs in classrooms and through the teacher's common room. Lucy heard that Mr Swiffen, the english teacher, who'd only dozed off for 15 minutes, awoke to find his legs and arms pinned to the chair by sweet peas vines.

The town was desperate and so was Lucy. As the mayor fended off a barrage of abuse from furious townsfolk Lucy puzzled over how she could fix the problem she created. She knew she had to think of something radical, something unconventional, something creative. And that's when the answer came to her, like a light bulb exploding in her head.
"I know how to fix it," she bellowed to the crowd.
Everyone turned to face her.
One man yelled back. "Why should we trust you with an answer when you created this catastrophe?"
"I know you all blame me for what happened. I wish I could change it. I didn't know this would happen."
"I believe her," said a woman at the back. "I'm a plant and soil biologist. My team and I have been doing tests on this phenomena and there's no way this poor girl could have known that the chemical composition of the earth could react to the chemicals in the plasticine in this way."
"What's your idea, child?" said the major.
Lucy cleared her throat. She felt her entire body trembling.
"W...Well, you see I created the garden out of plasticine."
"This we already know."
"I know but you see I created it. So I suppose the only way to uncreate it is to make it into something else."
There was a collective "ahhh" from the crowd as Lucy's idea began to make sense to them.
"What do you propose we make it into?"
Lucy thought for a moment as she scanned the room of faces. Their angry expressions had melted into hope: hope that their lives would return to normal.
"I know the plants have been so strong that they've caused a lot of damage to houses, which can't be repaired. So we can make them into bricks and rebuild everyone's homes."
A veil of silence fell on the room as the townsfolk looked at each other. One by one they began to clap and clap and clap.
Lucy was delighted.
"Brilliant idea," beamed the Mayor. "We'll set to work immediately."
Over the weeks the whole town helped mould the plasticine plants into bricks of all sizes and colours and set about designing their town again. Soon it was rebuilt and looked decidedly more cheery than before. Lucy had saved her town, and what's more her and her dad still had their grand prize trophy.