If there's one last thing I could encourage you to do apart from the activities outlined above, it would be to share some of your largesse with your neighbours and friends. Now that the word is out about the nutty milk from my “fairy dairy,” as the villagers call it, I get no end of requests for the stuff. Be generous, and you shall see your generosity returned. The life of the Second-Sight smallholder isn't all rhubarb and roses, but on those cold mornings when the milk won't come, or in the black of night when your fairy calves are suffering from scours, forcing you to fuss about with microscopic rehydration treatments by lamplight whilst covered in infectious muck, it's worth reminding yourself that we're all in this together.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT FLOWER-FAIRIES
The Flower-Fairy a Deceiver • Its Usefulness • Children • Stalking Flower-Fairies • A Golden Afternoon • Absinthe and Second Sight • Three Cautions • Successful Integration • Village Fairs
ONCE, THE REALM OF FAERIE was interwoven with every aspect of life for all people, young and old alike. Today, however, the Fairy Kingdom is associated mainly with the world of childhood. This shift has been the result of calculated efforts by the flower-fairies, known to everyone by their benign depictions in children's storybooks, each one of them paired with a particular blooming flower or fruit tree.
Whilst seldom seen, the scheming flower-fairies are regular whisperers into the ears of poets and painters. Their mutterings are invariably meant to engender benevolent sympathy from mankind, and in this regard the flower-fairies have acted as unsurpassed public-relations agents for the Fairy Kingdom. Over the past few centuries their infiltration of the storytelling medium—in picture books, popular imagery, and film—has resulted in the all-pervasive conception of the overwhelming majority of Fairyland's inhabitants as sweet, endearing, and useful only when it comes to teaching this or that moral in a child's bedtime fable.
Precious few concepts could be further from the truth. One realises, upon reflection, that the flower-fairies' keen focus upon this image campaign is self-serving not only to the fey as an entire race but to the flower-fairies in particular, as they have proven to be a devilishly useful participant in the works of the modern fruit and vegetable gardener.
Schoolchildren and their nannies may protest, but the fact remains that the flower-fairies' numbers thrive under managed conservation and their presence and industry lend undreamt-of fertility; fuller, better-tasting fruit; and heightened health and productivity levels to the gardens, orchards, and greenhouses into which they are integrated. Anyone who desires these qualities and outcomes in their own horticultural endeavours has but to obtain a handful of flower-fairies of their own and, with a few easy-to-master practices, incorporate the twittering sprites into the works.
When we are young, we can see flower-fairies easily, but as we age, there is something which occludes these frisky sprites from our view. Scientific explanations vary, but it is my own opinion that in the act of growing to adulthood we tire of the mindless frolics of the pear-blossom chatterer and its kin. This fading away of the flower-fairies would be without drawback were these gossamer-winged gossipers not so damned useful to the practical botanist. For in spite of their caperings or perhaps as a strange side effect of them, each and every blossom in the garden plot perks up in the presence of flower-fairies.
For children, the prospect is an easy one. The flower-fairies are there, plain as day, flitting from blossom to blossom and emitting high-pitched squeaks. And if they can be seen, they can be caught. Among these young people, the work is all of a quick pass of the hand and a depositing into a glass jar. But let us address the botanist who has grown past childhood, the one for whom flower-fairies are not so much storybook characters come to life as they are key elements to growing prize-winning aubergines. To this eager gardener, one who wishes to see the fairies but is unable, my message is a short, sure one: Despair not! In fact, rejoice! Rejoice in the freedom of not having your every step compromised by the scuttlings of spriggans, the air you breathe alive with imps, the potting shed sinks clogged with nixies. All these gardening bugbears are still present, mind you, but prove less of a nuisance whilst invisible. Unfortunately, before one may reap the benefits of a fully stocked flower-fairy garden, one must be able to see the creatures. The Second Sight is not a blessing, though. In my storied history, I've found it to be more of a curse. But as much as it pains me to instruct readers in the ways and means of bringing on the Second Sight, even if it be temporary, the fruits, as it were, of such labours are a fair prize for any momentary suffering.
The first step in embarking on a flower-fairy gathering expedition is to determine where best to find a prolific swarm. One could, of course, follow the local children on their afternoon scampers, having the youngsters point out which clumps of daisies would yield the most flower-fairies if pounced upon with, say, a butterfly net one happened to be carrying for such an occasion. But children can be a fickle lot, prone to trickery if they believe they have the chance to witness a respectable grown man make a fool of himself. One need look no further than the case of devoted fairy hunter Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and assorted members of the Theosophy Society in the 1920 Cottingley Beck incident for an example of such a duping. No, if one truly desires to gather a decent assortment of flower-fairies, one is best served by going it alone, especially if one hopes to come out not only with a garden bursting with unsurpassed fruit but also with one's dignity intact.
Look for lush patches of flowers or fruit blossoms you wish to cultivate successfully in your own garden, and set up your operation there. If this happens to put you in one of the wild places of the countryside, then so much the better, for your work will, under the best of circumstances, require several hours of uninterrupted concentration. For the purposes of this example we will talk about strawberries, but these techniques can be adapted easily for any flowering plant, even fruit trees.
If your most fecund plot of longed-for vegetation exists within the boundaries of a fellow gardener's estate, do your best to curry favour with him, perhaps offering exchange of goods from your own smallholding in return for a chance at taking home some of his flower-fairies. I've found that most gardeners, following an initial period of apprehension, see a reasonable trade when it is presented to them. In fact, a transaction such as this—my fruits for their fairies—has been described to me by more than one of my neighbours as more than reasonable. Try not to let on that you're getting the far better end of the bargain.
The needed articles of equipment for a proper flower-fairy hunt are few. To the aforementioned butterfly net and appropriate bed of flowers, one need but make two additions. A dozen canning jars with tight lids is the first. The second is a bottle of top-quality absinthe, along with a field kit of absinthe glass, sugar lumps, a pitcher of ice water, and the absinthe drinker's trademark silver spoon. Prepare each jar by pouring into it a quarter-inch of absinthe and dropping in a freshly plucked strawberry blossom, replacing the lids so as to avoid spilling the contents.
A Golden Afternoon
That period of hazy, idle time between luncheon and afternoon tea is best for fairy-snatching, I've found. Locate a comfortable bit of earth on which to sit, a lush patch of strawberries in full bloom before you, their blossoms within easy reach. All your accoutrements—net, jars, absinthe bottle, and trappings—must be arranged behind you.
Like gardening itself, the process takes time, concentration, and patience. Unlike gardening, however, in the work of flower-fairy stalking one is not cultivating flowers but rather a simple veneer of trust. What you hope to achieve during the course of the next few hours is an affinity betwixt yourself and Nature, a bond of confidence between your personality and those of the flitting, buzzing sprites floating as-yet-invisible above the blooms. And this trust, this rapport, is established between man and fairy in much the same manner as it is fixed between friends and strangers alike—with potent alcohol.
The Second-Sight applications of absinthe drinking are as va
st and time-honoured as the literature on this elixir. “The first stage is like ordinary drinking, the second when you begin to see monstrous and cruel things,” said the diligent absinthe devotee Oscar Wilde. “But if you can persevere, you will enter in upon the third stage where you see things that you want to see.” And the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whilst decadent in several areas of his life and work, was spot on in his study of the Second Sight, bringing on regular, voluntary visions of la fée verte through dedicated application of absinthe.
We must follow in the footsteps of these pioneering seers.
Reach back for the absinthe bottle, pop out the cork, and slosh a quick drop of it here and there amidst the strawberries. Flower-fairies are powerless to resist the scent of this French spirit. While you're at it, prepare and consume a quick dash of the stuff yourself.
As with many interactions with the Fairy Kingdom, subtlety in this endeavour is overrated. Drink as much absinthe as you need and be sure to keep freshening up your sprinklings of it round the strawberry patch. The fourth glass usually does the trick for me, but unseasoned “goodpeople gardeners”—or those mercifully untouched by a natural inclination towards the Second Sight—may require further quaffs.
If the initial wormwood-tinged afternoon spent sitting in the strawberry patch—absinthe bottle artfully hidden behind your back and butterfly net close at hand—is not enough to ensnare seven or eight flower-fairies, you may not be trying hard enough. Calm your agitated mind. Stare at the blossoms. Have another drink. Repeat your mantra: “They will come…they will come…they will come…” Say it quietly but confidently. Assure yourself of it. And as the elixir begins to take full effect, do your best to keep from listing. This will only unnerve the fairies and also carries the risk of satisfying any busybody neighbours watching you, intent on cracking the code to your gardening prowess.
Success may be had after one such afternoon or several. Try not to wait more than a few days between sessions, as the blooming season is nearly as ephemeral as the sought-after blossom-haunters themselves.
Eventually, if you have followed these instructions diligently, victory will be yours. As the outline of every other thing around you begins to blur, the air as murky as the fluid in your seventh glass of absinthe, new forms begin to clarify before you. The first of your flower-fairies is now within your reach. You could be forgiven for mistaking the fairy for an insect or a flash of sunlight, but the careful observer will notice how, as the creature nears each blossom, it takes on a corporeal form to the extent that one may make out a face or even a bit of glamour meant to resemble clothing.
When this moment occurs, three points must be kept firmly in mind if the goodpeople gardener is to emerge triumphant:
1. Do not listen to the fairy's speech. The flower-fairy may employ its instinctual defence and attempt to reason with you. If you engage in such a conversation, you will be opening yourself to the creature's terrible powers of moral persuasion. This ability is the basis for any number of children's stories, and whilst the advice squeaked by a flower-fairy may seem trite and overly simple between the covers of an edition of the collected works of Hans Christian Andersen, when one is sitting in the hot afternoon sun reeling from the effects of seven or eight glasses of strong drink, one is incredibly susceptible to the fairy's preaching. The flower-fairies are accomplished orators, employing smarm and their own twisted brand of maudlin “logic” to convince listeners of the most outlandish things, all of which are in service to regaining their freedom. Watch for it. Nip it, if you'll pardon the expression, squarely in the bud. If the fairy begins to speak, simply begin humming a tuneless song as you tighten your fingers round the handle of your butterfly net. Success is all but within your literal grasp. This is no time to falter.
2. Avoid lunging. The fairy will likely flit about the blossom for a moment, no longer than three or four seconds. It may then descend closer to the ground in order to inspect the soil wet with absinthe. This will give you additional time, however fleeting, in which to position the net over the fairy. It will sense your doing so but as it attempts to fly upwards will find its trajectory blocked by the net, now brought down upon it, and will be well and truly caught.
3. Remain sensible. Once the flower-fairy is in your net, transfer it gingerly to one of the canning jars and twist the lid on tightly. Do not fall a sentimental victim to the fairy's melodramatic flailings or by any of its apings of the international gesture for choking. If you do, you run the risk of repeating the mistake, passed down erroneously through generations of would-be goodpeople gardeners, of ventilating the lid of the jar with “air holes.” The fairy is fine. It needs no air to survive. Nor does it feed on the thoughts and actions of well-behaved children, despite what your governess may have told you. The flower-fairy is a creature of sunlight and reverie and, as such, the ideal environment for it, at least for the time being, is securely within a sealed jar containing a single plucked blossom and a modicum of absinthe.
Once you've popped a fairy into each of your jars, you may declare the day an unqualified success. Rise to your feet slowly, transfer your vessels to a sunlit window, and have a nap to sleep off the lingering effects of the absinthe or any of the flower-fairies' last-ditch entreaties for a peaceful release. They will be fine in the jars for up to a week, but I daresay you won't be able to wait that long before you get on with integrating them into your veg patch.
The novice goodpeople gardener will be pleased to discover that the grafting of flower-fairies is not that different from the standard traditional practice. After a day or two on the shelf, the half-pickled fairies will be thoroughly calmed and will come along easily. Unscrew the lid to the jar, and with a gentle hand pluck out each docile sprite as you need it, laying the fairy on a clean handkerchief. Refer to past issues of The Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society for grafting guidance, finding stems (in the case of herbaceous bushes) and twigs (when grafting to fruit trees) of about the same girth as the fairy's leg. Remember to make the cut only to the plant, not to the fairy. The plant itself has enough strength to recover from such an incision; your flower-fairy has not. A close wrapping of nurserymen's tape is all that's needed to secure the two together.
The true beauty of the fully realised goodpeople garden is that, beyond these simple provisions, there is no need to arrange any further measures against the fairy's attempts to escape, for it will make none. In its flitterings before, the flower-fairy has wanted nothing but union with its counterpart in the vegetable kingdom, and now you have provided it. To the extent that these calculating creatures can experience emotion, one could say that the newly integrated fairy, its leg soundly fixed to its beloved plant, is happy. It will live out the rest of its life in a state of idyllic conjunction, and in doing so will provide unprecedented bounty to its plant and the others nearby. As these vitalising effects last but one season, at harvest time the strawberry-blossom fairies can be turned over with the compost and the apple-tree sprites snapped off and given to the neighbourhood children to arrange with their dolls and toys.
A final consideration the goodpeople gardener is bound to make is whether to enter these devilishly good fruits into the village fairs and other competitions. Personally, I'm all for it. It is only a matter of time before the work of integrating fairies into one's garden and orchard becomes standard practice, and it is difficult to conceive of a better rallying banner for the movement than a garland of blue ribbons earned thusly hanging in the window of one's potting shed.
THE ABUSES OF ENCHANTMENT
The Country of Love • Angling in Cornwall • A Pleasantly Unsettling Meeting • Harmony • Trouble and Strife • The Levee Breaks • A Peculiar Visitor • Bewilderment and Angling
WHILST NOT FALLING SQUARELY within the boundaries of the Fairy Kingdom, the borders of the mist-enshrouded country of Love do overlap it here and there, so I think this as good a place as any to warn young persons as to its similar dangers. I was in love once, and the effect w
as as disorienting and full of contradiction as many a Faerie encounter.
I happened, one afternoon in the spring, to be angling alone off the coast of Zennor, in Cornwall. The inlets around the rocky cliffs attract a particularly abundant crowd of mackerel and conger there at that time of year, and I had never failed in bringing home a creel brimming with succulent denizens of the deep. But fate and the tide must have conspired against me that day, for the only thing I caught that afternoon was verse after verse of a lonesome-sounding sea-song drifting in on the breeze from just to the south of where I stood. Not usually one for ditties, unless they be of the merrymaking sort sung down at the pub, I ignored the tune for what must have been hours.
I take it back. There was one other object I'd caught. My basket was no more full than it had been when I'd arrived save for a singularly strange object, a pearl-and barnacle-encrusted comb which had become tangled in my line early on in the session. No use trying to eat that, I thought, but it was pretty, in a way, so I saved it on the off chance it and my hard-luck story might be traded for a drink that night at the Tinners Arms.
Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop Page 4
