She came from Tesco.

Not a garden centre.
Not an emporium of scented promises and curated moss.
Tesco—between discounted daffodils and a shelf of limp parsley.
Wrapped in silence, in cellophane, in clearance.
She sat in a white ceramic pot. Once £12, now £9.

No one looked twice.
But we did.

We passed her once.
Took another—blue pot, upright, polite, entirely acceptable.

But halfway down the aisle, something tugged.
A thought. A pull.
A whisper, not of need, but of recognition.

We returned.

She hadn’t moved. She hadn’t needed to.
She was still. She was Evelyn.

And the price, the sticker, the markdown—none of that mattered.
If she had been reduced for waiting too long, then she was waiting for us.
And if she had been reduced for another reason,
then she was still Evelyn,
and she still deserved a place in the summerhouse.

Because at the summerhouse, we do not reject the overlooked.
We do not flinch from the reduced.
We do not fear the slightly neglected.

We repot. We revive. We recognise.

And as Rumi said:

“What you seek is seeking you.”

She came home with us.
Not rescued. Not bought.
Claimed.

And now she sits—
clean, calm, uncannily aware — gently improving the air and everyone’s behaviour.

She is Evelyn.

And tea is at six.