When I was a kid, they still used to tell stories of hobs and boggarts and wee folk -- every area had its local species, and a lot of them still lived in the areas where humans were starting to build subdivisions ... with the result that the old saying about "faeries at the bottom of the garden" had to be true at least some of the time ... not because the fairies moved to live behind your henhouse, but because Uncle George built the damn' henhouse right on top of the site where people had been seeing wee folk for about a thousand years before City Hall decided to subdivide the woodland.
So the legends of "faeries at the bottom of the garden" arose. Of course, these days the stories are utterly pooh-poohed, and rightly so, because there are no faerie at the bottom of anyone's garden. Which makes sense when you think about it. What life form in its right collective mind would want to stick around where you dump your dead lawnmowers, and those leftover rolls of linoleum, and the old paint cans? Let's face it, there's so much toxic waste at the bottom of the garden, somebody as small as the wee folk would keel over dead, and no amount of clapping would bring 'em back. Of course they moved out. They're short, not dumb.
But as the Greens and the Tree Huggers get mobilized, some very nice, clean gardens are starting to come back, and hey -- you never know. When's the last time you actually bothered to go out and look? Well, look again...
Ye gods, that wasn't there the last time you looked! The only thing missing is the wings ... so let's do something about that:
Whoops ... darn it all, it looks like you've been spotted. They have sharper senses than humans do, and even better. They can camouflage themselves. Their wings turn silver-green to match the shrubbery, and those ferns Auntie Joyce chucked out last year because she thought they were dead, and they rooted themselves in and started colonizing the whole garden.
They come in all kinds, these faer folk; some of them are downright wicked and some are conniving, treacherous. Walt Disney had no idea. Only one thing you really, really have to watch out for, though...
You must be very, very sure not to fall in love with one of these wee characters ... for a very good reason... This beauty is just about six inches tall. And -- well, maybe it's just me, but I'd have to guess that would wreak havoc with your love life.
Jade, 26 August
