Behold! A grandfatherly gnome is shooing a bluebird off his pointy cap while he tumbles backwards onto his plump rump. Nearby, a bushy haired lady-gnome is whistling a traditional hinterland shanty and sweeping beneath a crooked Gnome Sweet Gnome sign hanging beside an arched wooden door. Their names are Herbert and Matilda Bucklestein. They’ve been married 435 years and share the mushroom bungalow on the end of Mead Dew Lane. They rub noses when no one is watching.
My fairy garden is whimsical “AF”, as my grandkids like to say.
Of course, the Bucklestein’s fungal roof is too dry and a sizable crack has split the licorice chimney. Big black ants are crawling in. The Bucklestein residence, and all of Everbliss Village for that matter, is currently under a water usage restriction as decreed by Mayor Grumpy McFlutedoodle. The Enchanted Reservoir is down 55%.
If this keeps up, the Bucklesteins will be prohibited under penalty of law from watering their turnip patch. A desperate Herbert might risk the business end of one of Mayor McFlutedoodle’s goons’ orc-bone batons. “Sweet ruffled whoozlegoofs, it’s so dry!…THWACK!” Matilda’s eyeballs will flake off in the 102 degree Mr. Sunshine. She’ll peel fleck by fleck until her cheery face is scattered about her clogs. Herbert will die a widower in an ant-infested shriveled mushroom bungalow of horrors. Sure, he might survive six days tops by drinking his own nectarine-flavored purple urine and bearing the pain of a broken jaw to feast on his own hairy foot if the turnip yield remains null.
But that’s a problem for another day.
My fairy garden is whimsical AF.
That’s not to say I’m not the tiniest bit concerned that a scatterbrained teenage goblin might flick a ciggy too near Pixie Forest. Sir Edgar Sappybottom of the Redwood Folk will go up like the proverbial tinderbox. His thrashing lush mossy limbs will spit flames too near the meditating Elder Circle of Oak Sages. The next thing you know all of Pixie Forest will be ablaze.
Scores of pixies trapped in their briar patch hideouts will smolder before the pissing cherub controls the blaze. Meanwhile, the boot-scootin’ trolls partying in Nancy Stanley’s garden three doors downwind will sniff faint notes of faraway smoke and charred mass death with their huge warty schnozes. A troll hoedown, or “trolldown” as silly ol’ Nancy Pants calls the scene, has no place near a creeping apocalypse.
The surviving pixies will have no choice but to flee north to Fairyville…and you know dang well that fairies and pixies always come to blows with their age-old pixie cut vs. fairy locks rivalry. Gwendolyn the Fairy Princess will order Hugo, the oversized googly-eyed toad prince, to Fairyville’s southern border. He’ll lash his poisonous tongue at the doomed pixies who dare the two-inch flight over the rainbow-painted river rock border. The pixie refugee situation will quickly deteriorate.
Bulgarf the All-Powerful and Unseen, having grown quite sluggish after nine straight days more humid than an ogre’s, ah…ogre-bits, remains unseen as three inches of sky-tinkle dump per hour for thirteen straight hours. The vagabonding caravan of grizzled pixies, defenseless in tents that were hastily sewn from the sequin green mini-dresses of heat wave victims, will be caught unawares. Their tiny, tiny corpses will wash past The Jolly Centaur Inn and pile up about the bandshell at the 43rd Annual Leprechaun County Fair. Pot-bellied concert-goers will vomit their clover funnel cakes. The 50/50 raffle will be an allegory for survival. Foghat will be canceled.
Like my bingo hat reads: “Carpe diem.”
My fairy garden is whimsical AF.
Fairyville will not escape unscathed. Nowhere will. Fantastical creatures of all breeds will bear the calamity. The sleepy giant in Sleepy Giant Ravine will drown in his soggy burlap britches. The cadre of wizards atop Winding Beard Peak will be blown catawampus by 100-fortnight gusts into a nearby patch of crabgrass. Pixie cut? Fairy locks? Everbliss Village’s enchanted all-devouring feedback loop doesn’t give a flyin’ fudge.
Yikes! Hold up.
I’ve spent my best days supplementing my fairy garden’s whimsy however I could dream up. The more whimsy, the better. Pile it the heck on. That was my mantra. Sprinkle in a few patty-caking elves here. Toss three gargoyles in a potato sack race there. Spread nymphs like flippin’ Kentucky bluegrass seed. Who cares?! But gosh darn it, maintaining the whimsy has become a straight-up…excuse the language, bitch.
Luckily, I’m in the twilight of my gardening life and I’ve accomplished all a fairy gardener can. The degree of my fairy garden’s whimsy matters less and less. At this point, I think I’ll spend my remaining days crocheting Gnome Is Where Where The Heart Was lace doilies while listening to my audio cassette of William Shatner Reads ‘The Two Towers’ Footnotes in my paid-off air-conditioned suburban human bungalow.
Whatever remains of my once whimsical fairy garden will be my grandkids’ problem AF.
Gunmeddle 