[Feedback] A story I wrote for my English class: The Old Man in the Greenhouse.

I wrote this story a few days ago for my English class and I'd like to hear any feedback that you guys have. I'm 16 and a bit of an amateur writer. Here it is:<br><br><br>**The Old Man in the Greenhouse**<br><br><br>Oh, the greenhouse was a special place. Hidden away in the corner of our back garden, surrounded by rings of roaring sunflowers that reached for the sky and a patchwork quilt of coloured flowers that danced in the wind, was our greenhouse. I loved spending time in there as a kid, surrounded by the scent of damp earth and the soft sound of water dripping from the leaky hose that hung from the roof like a tiny stalactite. After a long day at school spent staring at my teachers drone on about things I’d never have any use for in the future, me and my grandfather would head through the garden, the crunch of the gravel beneath our feet warning the birds that lived in the bushes of our approach. They’d scurry and flutter away before we got there, filling the air with their songs as the sky turned pink and orange and the clouds turned white. Birds always make the most beautiful music before the sun goes down. <br><br>He’d always say the same thing before we reached the Greenhouse. “Today, we’re going to grow our own suns.” And I always laughed. I knew I couldn’t grow a sun. But the flowers that came out of the Greenhouse were always the prettiest in the garden. We’d go in and water everything, and he’d point out the ones he thought were special and I’d watch him plant new seeds in the earth and tell me everything he knew. Grandpa was always teaching me things like that. I think he wanted me to be a gardener like him when I grew up. He even let me name some of the plants that I helped him grow. It was a big responsibility, but I felt like I was a part of the Greenhouse. That the plants and the sunflowers and the birds were all my children, and that I had to look after them.<br><br>I was 6 years old when my father took me aside one night and told me something I never thought I’d hear. “Your grandpa died last night.” I’d never lost anyone before. I’d never even heard of death. But it made me feel very empty and hollow. Grandpa was the only person I’d ever met who believed in magic. I believed in it too, and he always used to tell me that that was the most important thing about magic. To believe. I always liked that. But the day that grandpa died, I stopped believing. The night he died, the birds stopped singing too. I went outside and looked for them, but I couldn’t find any. I cried for the rest of the night. Grandpa was the most important person in my life. He was always there, and even though the rest of my family knew I loved him, they never understood me the way he did. I think they always thought that I was his favourite. But he always made me feel special.<br><br>I never went back into the Greenhouse after that. I used to look at it from my window and I could almost hear the sound of the water and the birds and feel the warm sun on my face through the clouds. It was nice to think about it all again, even if it did hurt a little. I always felt empty, like there was a little piece of me missing. I never got used to it. Sometimes it hurt too much to even think about grandpa. I just wanted him back. I wanted to run through the garden and crunch the gravel and scurry through to the Greenhouse and find him covered in dirt and surrounded by all the flowers we’d grown together. I wanted to run and hug him again, but every time I thought about that the tears came and I couldn’t do anything but sit and cry.<br><br>As I got older, things started to change. I stopped thinking about the Greenhouse at night and I stopped crying. I made new friends and we did new things and I started to enjoy myself. I began to want to go into the garden again, to sit among the sunflowers and the flowers and listen to the birds sing before the sun went down. But every time I did, I felt that same empty feeling that I felt when I heard that grandpa died. Grandpa was the only person I’d ever met who believed in magic, and he’d been gone for years. One day though, I decided that I wanted to go back into the Greenhouse. I’d never been in there alone before, and I didn’t know what it would be like without him there to show me everything. But even with that strange, empty feeling inside, I still wanted to go in. I stood outside for a while, looking for the birds again, but they still hadn’t come back. I think they missed Grandpa too. <br><br>I took a deep breath as I tried the door handle. I was surprised that it opened. I stepped inside, and it smelled exactly the same as it did when I was little. The same smell of damp earth and the soft sound of water dripping from the leaky hose that hung from the roof. It was like the clock had stopped working the day grandpa died, and that no time had passed at all. I smiled as I remembered all the good times we’d had, and I walked further into the Greenhouse, to all the little patches of colour that we used to call our own suns. I noticed something I’d never noticed before though. In the corner, where the hose was thinnest and the leak was smallest, a little flower had grown. It was small, not much bigger than my thumb, but it was the prettiest colour I’d ever seen. The petals were like nothing I’d ever seen before. They looked like they were made of glass, and they shone like jewels in the sunlight. I laughed. I remembered what my grandpa used to say to me every day that I came to the greenhouse: “Today, we’re going to grow our own suns.” I knelt down to look at it properly, and I saw something written in the dirt next to it. It was written in familiar handwriting, handwriting that I’d never seen before but that still seemed to me to be the most familiar thing in the world. Written in the dirt was: “Today, we’re going to grow our own suns.” <br><br>I smiled, even though the tears came again. I scooped up some water from the leaky hose in both hands and poured it over the flower. I didn’t want it to die. I wanted it to live forever. I stood up and looked around at all the other plants and flowers, the sunflowers and the birds and the sky turning pink and orange as the clouds turned white. I looked for the birds again, and this time I found them. I watched them sing, and the beauty of it all made my heart stop. I hadn’t felt that way since I was little. I felt like the time had started working again, like the clock had finally started moving and time was passing once more. I felt the empty feeling inside me fill up. I felt full again, like I used to feel when I was a kid and my grandpa was still alive. I believed in magic again.