Dot the Little Ladybug and the Sleepy Garden
In a bright and busy garden, full of flowers and leaves and long green stems, there lived a tiny ladybug named Dot — round and red, with six small spots as black as night.
All day long, Dot flew. She flew from the roses to the daisies, from the daisies to the tall green grass. She climbed to the very tip of a leaf just to feel the sun, then opened her little red wings and flew again, all around the bright and busy garden.
But as the evening came, and the sun sank low and golden, the garden began to grow sleepy. And Dot felt sleepy too.
One by one, all around her, the garden was tucking itself in for the night. The daisies gently closed their white petals, folding up tight like little beds. The bees flew home to their warm and humming hive. The birds tucked their heads beneath their wings. Even the big red poppies were nodding, slow and drowsy, in the last of the evening light.
Dot flew down and settled on a broad, cool leaf — her favourite leaf, near the top of the garden, where she could see the first stars beginning to wink awake. And there, at last, she folded her little red wings closed, tucking them neatly away beneath their shiny shell.
"Time to count my spots," she whispered, the way she did every night — for that was how a ladybug drifts off to sleep. "One spot… for the roses. Two spots… for the sun. Three spots… for the warm green leaf."
Slower and softer she counted, as the garden grew dark and quiet all around her. "Four spots… for the stars. Five spots…"
The leaf rocked ever so gently in the soft night breeze, like a tiny cradle. The whole garden was fast asleep.
And before she could count her sixth and final spot, little Dot — snug on her favourite leaf beneath the wide and starry sky — had already drifted softly, happily, off to sleep.