Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host.

Every week, I will read you an old story to help you relax, put the stressful day behind you,

and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be continuing the story of the secret garden.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

Chapter 9. The Strangest House Anyone Ever Lived in.

It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could imagine.

The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses, which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew there were roses

because she'd seen a great many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry brown, and out of it grew clumps of bushes,

which were surely rose bushes if they were alive.

There were numbers of standard roses, which had so spread their branches that they were like little

trees.

There were other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains

and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree to another, and made lovely

bridges of themselves. There were neither leaves nor roses on them now, and Mary did not know

whether they were dead or alive, but their thin grey or brown branches and sprees looked like

a sort of hazy mantle spreading over everything, walls and trees,

and even brown grass, where they had fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground.

...