Two Monologues of Mrs. O'Reilly
Mrs. O’Reilly, Garden Club President, Holds a Class for Children
This is one place where it’s ok to get dirty. Really dirty. Of course, some of the moms aren’t happy with that, but they should realize that dirt is integral to a successful garden, and dress you in castoffs, appropriately. This is not an arts and crafts lesson. No smocks are needed. In fact, anyone in a smock, especially the plastic kind, will look rather foolish. Now, footwear is important. Also integral to a successful garden. If you wear flip-flops, you run the risk of mud or snails squelching between your toes. Your mothers will not be glad about that. I doubt your fathers will mind much, but, then, they don’t do the bulk of the cleanup, despite all the hooey about role reversals in these radically changed times. Sneakers also will not work. Your feet will steam and, presuming you wear socks, said socks will be damp with filth in the time it takes to plant your first petunia. Garden clogs are the thing. Special footwear for the gardening set: colorful, durable, rubbery, easy to clean and your toes aren’t exposed. You can leave them in the mud room when you’re done with your gardening. I’d be very surprised to hear that you haven’t got a mud room since the mothers – and it’s still usually mothers, despite what all the hyperbolic and hypocritical progressives say – the mothers who sign you up for this class are most definitely from homes with mud rooms. And they probably have a girl to help with the cleanup. So don’t worry too much about tracking in the dirt from your garden clogs. Remember, dirt is our friend in a garden.
Sun is also our friend, so I’d be remiss in not saying that you must protect your young skin, especially if you plan on actually doing any work in the open air. The open air means that sunlight will stream down with strong unremitting intensity. Sunlight doesn’t care if it burns you or causes you to wither before your time. You are children and so can’t comprehend that a future is comprised of many thoughtless nows. If you do not protect yourself – and in this case protection will be in the form of a wide-brimmed hat and a high sun protection factor lotion – you will possibly shorten your days on this earth – and gardening is all about the earth. Believe me, you do not want to shorten your days on this earth by being careless with your sunscreen. You do not want your garden to harbor regrets. Though, truth to tell, gardens are in many ways about regrets. You will regret that you planted too many hostas and not enough dahlias. You will regret that you rotted your cyclamen by too-zealous watering. You will regret that Mrs. Kemp’s Crimson Queens and Betty Drivers are once again free of aphids, thrips, and black spot. You will regret that your drainage is poor, your soil too alkaline, your back too stiff, your joints too arthritic – and you will pine for your plaster angel statue which was cracked at the base by Mrs. Kemp’s ugly devil of a tomcat. Which brings us to gnomes.
You must remember that while garden gnomes sound cheerful and appealing, they are cheap and ubiquitous – found in any drug or dollar store; they are not in any way appropriate for the truly sophisticated garden. Do not be misled. You are children, so you may well be guileless and impressionable. You may even believe that there are real fairies in the world. There is a lot of claptrap written about amusing children with magical jaunts to see the fairies. Some garden club members have even gone so far as to suggest that we lure children into our ranks by offering them fairy tours. I do not want to burst anyone’s bubble, but you must bear the truth: fairies are a marketing concept, designed to sell cheesy goods to the credulous. Such people are desperately lazy and haven’t got a magical bone in their bodies so they buy simpering plastic gnomes in overalls and pastel chalk fairies so their blasé children can pretend to be thrilled as they peer beneath the azaleas and hydrangeas. This is what you call a racket. And you want to keep in mind that though you can become passionately attached to, say, a statue of an angel, or one of a pigtailed girl reading serenely on a bench, or even one of a boy with a stone straw hat and fishing pole, your garden is not for growing ornaments – unless those ornaments are alive: viz., daffodils and tomatoes, beans, lettuces, pansies, nasturtiums, geraniums – Geranium coccineum, not the vulgar Geranium roseum – and, we might include asphodel, just to one-up the inevitable sprouting of earthly regret.
