We're standing at the edge of an overgrown clearing. It has come along quite suddenly after a half hour's walk in the blinding light. A wild banana tree and some old mango trees list towards the sun. The University of Nigeria Secondary School has recently added Agriculture to the curriculum, and Form Ic's first assignment begins today.

We file sweatily and alphabetically into an uncertain line and start clearing the field, east to west. This means hacking at stubborn weeds with hoes and machetes, pulling up rough patches of grass by hand. I am using our family gardener's brand new hoe, its dull grey blade curved and unchipped. The handle is a smooth, light coloured wood, but I can feel my hands getting sore each time I shift my grip.

We're growing corn this season for "Ah-Greek!" as we call it. In the pocket of my grey pinafore, I have dry yellow corn kernels wrapped carefully in a knot of cellophane. I want to touch the plastic, feel the hard rounded nubs, as I have been all day, but my hands are now dirty and damp. My school uniform only gets washed once a week, so I have to keep it as clean as I can until the weekend.

Three hacks into my long and narrow row, I discover a tree stump of an unknown species pushing aside the weeds.

"Nneka!" I call. She is two rows away, progressing with far more ease. I tell myself it's because she's taller. She's got a longer swing with her machete. "Look at dis!"

She leans over briefly to look, and laughs.

"Wot fo dis..." I am talking mostly to myself as I set down my hoe and look around for Mr. Kalu. Our teacher seems to have disappeared after his initial instructions.

"Onyocha, lisoon..." Patrick says.

I look up, surprised. His calling me "onyocha," the standard gibe at foreigners is ironic and unexpected.

He pushes back his brown gold curls and continues, "Eez less fo you to cleya. You de be complaining?"

The pigeon dialect we sometimes use belies our "Queen's English" command of the language, and it lets us feel like we're blending. When we heard earlier that we would be allowed off the school compound, our class was overjoyed. But this is turning out to be hard work. The real hoeing: turning the soil and breaking it up into loose clumps, won't begin until we've uncovered the ground itself. Patrick is right, and I turn back to my plot.

My mother comes out of the house and calls to me. She walks down the steps leading out of the veranda, holding a fragile looking graft.

"Where did you go that you're so dirty?" she asks me as she bends down to plant the graft.

"Nowheyah, Amma. It de be Agric class," I protest, forgetting to speak properly in front of her. My parents cannot stand our pidgeon English. They don't understand that it's just another one of our attempts to blend in with the Nigerians. "Wot is dat?" I gesture to the scrawny plant.

"It's from Zaria. Your Ullah Nanu sent it."

The Ullahs, close family friends, live in Zaria, in the North of Nigeria, several hundred miles away, near nomad tribe country. I watch as she carefully steadies the stem and pushes the earth in around its base.

She turns smiling, "This is an orange rose. No one in Nsukka has anything like it."

I squat down beside her to look at the graft. "Why ah you planting eet now? Eet's almost dahk."

"I just got it. I could not wait." She straightens one of the leaves. The thorns on the stem are sparse but long and sharp, curved and tapered like claws. I press my finger on the tip of one. It gives, just a little.

"Come in," she says, "It's time for dinner."

I push open the netted door of the veranda and follow her inside.

My own gardening adventure is starting to absorb me. It has taken me two weeks to painstakingly mould my plot into a loosely tilled hump. Now I'm ready to plant. I scoop out rich little holes twelve inches apart and carefully place my kernels in them.

The hard work is done, but I'm hooked. Everyday, I bring as large a jug of water as I can carry with me, and eagerly examine the warm damp earth for a sign. I am never alone in the field. All my classmates are equally intrigued by their efforts. My plot is among the last to sprout, but it does, finally. And within a week, the straggling shoots are sturdy and a vibrant green. The leaves are so fresh, they look wet to touch, and I cannot keep my hands from tracing the veins as I look for dry earth to water.

The orange rose is not faring as well as my corn stalks. It's growing, but its spindly length is overwhelmed by the white rose climber beside it with its hundreds of tiny white blossoms. And in the corner, in defiance, the peach frangipani tree floats an intoxicating scent across our garden, the ground below its knotted branches matted with crushed petals. Every time the rose plant sprouts a bud, insects attack. My mother, and soon our whole family, are on a watchful vigil.

"The rose!" shouts my mother into the veranda where I am playing oga with my sister. I snatch a broomstick from the broom and leap down the stairs. There is a fuzzy green striped caterpillar sitting heavily on the rose plant, inches from the precious bud. I know why my mother called me instead of taking care of it like she usually does. She has an absurd fear of caterpillars, though no other insect gives her pause. This one is probably poisonous, as pretty as it is. I flick it off with the broomstick, careful not to injure the rose stem. The caterpillar lands on the ground and curls up. I poke it gently with the stick until it half wraps around the tip, and I carry it back into the bush.

Still, the next morning, we find a sleek black and yellow grasshopper halfway through the bud. Muri and I take turns crushing grasshoppers and flicking off beetles. A spray bottle of medicine sits by the front door, and we watch, and we water, and we wait.

Our attendance finally pays off. A month of small tragedies later, a blossom unfolds. As promised, it is a deep wild orange, radiant amidst the white roses and the pale yellow alamanda flowers. The bloom grows huge, and almost droops with its weight. The orange is swirled with fiery red in the centre and fades to lemon on the edges of its velvet petals. Its scent is faint but we bury our faces in its rich insides and breathe deep.

One cool evening, the Chaudhrys come to visit. The sand is still warm from the afternoon sun, and I am constructing hot little ant-hills, while my mother walks through the garden with Mrs. Chaudhry. Her friend notices our pride of an orange rose, and before anyone can stop her, she reaches out and snaps off the blossom. She turns; I am standing, ankle deep in sand, open mouthed. Oblivious to my mother's suddenly still face, she calls to her husband, "Look at this! It matches my sari perfectly. Take a photograph!"

My corn plants are higher than my head now. For a moment, I am glad for the abundance, sorry for the frailty and only-ness of my mother's rose. I stand in the middle of our corn field, and the forest around me disappears. I am canopied by the leaves and the sunlight and the sky.

Abeer Hoque is the winner of the Tanenbaum award for nonfiction in 2005 (San Francisco).