My neighbor Mr Fango surprised me the other day by sticking his head over the fence to ask if I had any spare tomato stakes.

It was unusual as Mr Fango usually sticks to himself and rarely bothers us with any request.

I said we did as dad had not planted any this year and I knew we always had extra. So, I handed over two, and he was grateful.

I’ve spied Mr Fango’s garden through our fence, and he has quite a green thumb.

In among his numerous plants, he has what dad calls his relaxing weed, and I never knew what dad meant until one day I watched him harvest some of the plants with heads on them and then observed him crushing them and placing them in a rack behind his tool shed. Once he’d finished, he called to Mrs Fango, and they sat on the veranda sharing a home-made smoke which I thought was odd as why did Mrs Fango have to share his?

It wasn’t long before my neighbours were heads back, giggling like a couple of kids.

I asked dad if we could grow some relaxing weed like our neighbours, but dad just said: “One day son when you’re older.”

Written for: https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/20/fowc-with-fandango-neighbor/