The Occasional Garden

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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"Don't talk to me about town gardens," said Elinor Rapsley; "which means,of course, that I want you to listen to me for an hour or so while I talkabout nothing else. 'What a nice-sized garden you've got,' people saidto us when we first moved here. What I suppose they meant to say waswhat a nice-sized site for a garden we'd got. As a matter of fact, thesize is all against it; it's too large to be ignored altogether andtreated as a yard, and it's too small to keep giraffes in. You see, ifwe could keep giraffes or reindeer or some other species of browsinganimal there we could explain the general absence of vegetation by areference to the fauna of the garden: 'You can't have wapiti _and_ Darwintulips, you know, so we didn't put down any bulbs last year.' As it is,we haven't got the wapiti, and the Darwin tulips haven't survived thefact that most of the cats of the neighbourhood hold a parliament in thecentre of the tulip bed; that rather forlorn looking strip that weintended to be a border of alternating geranium and spiraea has beenutilised by the cat-parliament as a division lobby. Snap divisions seemto have been rather frequent of late, far more frequent than the geraniumblooms are likely to be. I shouldn't object so much to ordinary cats,but I do complain of having a congress of vegetarian cats in my garden;they must be vegetarians, my dear, because, whatever ravages they maycommit among the sweet pea seedlings, they never seem to touch thesparrows; there are always just as many adult sparrows in the garden onSaturday as there were on Monday, not to mention newly-fledged additions.There seems to have been an irreconcilable difference of opinion betweensparrows and Providence since the beginning of time as to whether acrocus looks best standing upright with its roots in the earth or in arecumbent posture with its stem neatly severed; the sparrows always havethe last word in the matter, at least in our garden they do. I fancythat Providence must have originally intended to bring in an amendingAct, or whatever it's called, providing either for a less destructivesparrow or a more indestructible crocus. The one consoling point aboutour garden is that it's not visible from the drawing-room or the smoking-room, so unless people are dinning or lunching with us they can't spy outthe nakedness of the land. That is why I am so furious with GwendaPottingdon, who has practically forced herself on me for lunch onWednesday next; she heard me offer the Paulcote girl lunch if she was upshopping on that day, and, of course, she asked if she might come too.She is only coming to gloat over my bedraggled and flowerless borders andto sing the praises of her own detestably over-cultivated garden. I'msick of being told that it's the envy of the neighbourhood; it's likeeverything else that belongs to her--her car, her dinner-parties, evenher headaches, they are all superlative; no one else ever had anythinglike them. When her eldest child was confirmed it was such a sensationalevent, according to her account of it, that one almost expected questionsto be asked about it in the House of Commons, and now she's coming onpurpose to stare at my few miserable pansies and the gaps in my sweet-peaborder, and to give me a glowing, full-length description of the rare andsumptuous blooms in her rose-garden." "My dear Elinor," said the Baroness, "you would save yourself all thisheart-burning and a lot of gardener's bills, not to mention sparrowanxieties, simply by paying an annual subscription to the O.O.S.A." "Never heard of it," said Elinor; "what is it?" "The Occasional-Oasis Supply Association," said the Baroness; "it existsto meet cases exactly like yours, cases of backyards that are of nopractical use for gardening purposes, but are required to blossom intodecorative scenic backgrounds at stated intervals, when a luncheon ordinner-party is contemplated. Supposing, for instance, you have peoplecoming to lunch at one-thirty; you just ring up the Association at aboutten o'clock the same morning, and say 'lunch garden'. That is all thetrouble you have to take. By twelve forty-five your yard is carpetedwith a strip of velvety turf, with a hedge of lilac or red may, orwhatever happens to be in season, as a background, one or two cherrytrees in blossom, and clumps of heavily-flowered rhododendrons filling inthe odd corners; in the foreground you have a blaze of carnations orShirley poppies, or tiger lilies in full bloom. As soon as the lunch isover and your guests have departed the garden departs also, and all thecats in Christendom can sit in council in your yard without causing you amoment's anxiety. If you have a bishop or an antiquary or something ofthat sort coming to lunch you just mention the fact when you are orderingthe garden, and you get an old-world pleasaunce, with clipped yew hedgesand a sun-dial and hollyhocks, and perhaps a mulberry tree, and bordersof sweet-williams and Canterbury bells, and an old-fashioned beehive ortwo tucked away in a corner. Those are the ordinary lines of supply thatthe Oasis Association undertakes, but by paying a few guineas a yearextra you are entitled to its emergency E.O.N. service." "What on earth is an E.O.N. service?" "It's just a conventional signal to indicate special cases like theincursion of Gwenda Pottingdon. It means you've got some one coming tolunch or dinner whose garden is alleged to be 'the envy of theneighbourhood.'" "Yes," exclaimed Elinor, with some excitement, "and what happens then?" "Something that sounds like a miracle out of the Arabian Nights. Yourbackyard becomes voluptuous with pomegranate and almond trees, lemongroves, and hedges of flowering cactus, dazzling banks of azaleas, marble-basined fountains, in which chestnut-and-white pond-herons step daintilyamid exotic water-lilies, while golden pheasants strut about on alabasterterraces. The whole effect rather suggests the idea that Providence andNorman Wilkinson have dropped mutual jealousies and collaborated toproduce a background for an open-air Russian Ballet; in point of fact, itis merely the background to your luncheon party. If there is any kickleft in Gwenda Pottingdon, or whoever your E.O.N. guest of the moment maybe, just mention carelessly that your climbing putella is the only one inEngland, since the one at Chatsworth died last winter. There isn't sucha thing as a climbing putella, but Gwenda Pottingdon and her kind don'tusually know one flower from another without prompting." "Quick," said Elinor, "the address of the Association." Gwenda Pottingdon did not enjoy her lunch. It was a simple yet elegantmeal, excellently cooked and daintily served, but the piquant sauce ofher own conversation was notably lacking. She had prepared a longsuccession of eulogistic comments on the wonders of her town garden, withits unrivalled effects of horticultural magnificence, and, behold, hertheme was shut in on every side by the luxuriant hedge of Siberianberberis that formed a glowing background to Elinor's bewilderingfragment of fairyland. The pomegranate and lemon trees, the terracedfountain, where golden carp slithered and wriggled amid the roots ofgorgeous-hued irises, the banked masses of exotic blooms, the pagoda-likeenclosure, where Japanese sand-badgers disported themselves, all thesecontributed to take away Gwenda's appetite and moderate her desire totalk about gardening matters. "I can't say I admire the climbing putella," she observed shortly, "andanyway it's not the only one of its kind in England; I happen to know ofone in Hampshire. How gardening is going out of fashion; I supposepeople haven't the time for it nowadays." Altogether it was quite one of Elinor's most successful luncheon parties. It was distinctly an unforeseen catastrophe that Gwenda should have burstin on the household four days later at lunch-time and made her wayunbidden into the dining-room. "I thought I must tell you that my Elaine has had a water-colour sketchaccepted by the Latent Talent Art Guild; it's to be exhibited at theirsummer exhibition at the Hackney Gallery. It will be the sensation ofthe moment in the art world--Hullo, what on earth has happened to yourgarden? It's not there!" "Suffragettes," said Elinor promptly; "didn't you hear about it? Theybroke in and made hay of the whole thing in about ten minutes. I was soheart-broken at the havoc that I had the whole place cleared out; I shallhave it laid out again on rather more elaborate lines." "That," she said to the Baroness afterwards "is what I call having anemergency brain."

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