FAIRIES, FORGIVE ME

Now, Y'all know my fondness for Fairies and all their world. They're scattered all over the house, on shelves and sitting on bookstacks, guarding and flirting with all the sleeping-baby pictures on the Fairy Shelf, and around the garden in little nooks, on posts, peeping from trees and from beneath the hostas. This is the original one in the garden, named for the wonderful artist in England who illustrated some of my writing years ago:


Do overlook the dreadful state of my flowerbeds; I plead busy, I plead Long Hot Summer for the neglected state of the garden. But DO have a look at her sweet Fairy Feet, in their cunning little shoes:

I'm very careful of those little feet and shoes, for I have twice committed heinous ruin on our own Fairies. A sylph of a nymph lived in this same garden, tall and porcelain white, and one day I noticed a great clump of mud which had adhered to the base she stood on. I picked her up, and not thinking of her fragile materials, gave her a little thwack on the wooden surround.

And I knocked her feet off. They were in several pieces, and I was just appalled at my hasty, careless action. Since they couldn't be re-attached, she lived on for years, supported by two long sparkler-wires, which fit neatly up into her hollow legs. She valiantly thrived, keeping guard over the violet glen, whilst lesser-anchored folk were occasionally blown off their sound feet.

THEN, when time had passed and I grew placid in the haze of Summer, I again picked up a small Fairy girl in an impudent hat, and thinking I'd just knock the dirt from her stone base gently upon the other surround, I gave her a teensy whack, with devastating results:

There was no fixing these, and since she was already so comfortably seated, we forbore the Bang-Dades and let her be, with many apologies.

Later-acquired Fairy Friends have fared much better, witness the china Lady and her pet butterfly, sitting on a stone cast out from the Alabama hills during blasting for Highway I-65.

And the beautiful, shining Venus-type Fairy brought home by Chris just the other day:

But, just in case, the one brought back from Florida from Caro's beach vacation is prepared for anything. She sits on a flowerpot, casually conversing with the small bird perched on her foot, unheeding of the danger of falls and careless humans. And perhaps the rusty spots are the result of all that salty sea air of her former home, but she's ready to live in our garden.

Yep. CAST IRON.