Bed of Roses

The Hobbiton and Bywater Nursery House has been around since the two towns were founded in the year 392 SR. It was the chief resource for seeds for flowers, bushes, trees and crops, and it also provided all the tools needed for planting an eye-stunning garden. For many hundreds of years, the folk of Hobbiton and Bywater happily trotted down to the nursery to ask the owners and workers there for advice on ailing plants or where best to plant a trailing vine so it doesn’t strangle the rose bushes, or even, for those hobbits whose thumbs were not as green as others, how to set up the garden so that everything was given equal opportunity to flourish and impress.

Every now and then, a customer would return with a plant that, despite their noblest of efforts, didn’t survive the planting process or didn’t take root in the prime location where it had been laid. These were easy complaints to deal with and the problem was always quickly resolved: a new plant would be suggested, a better arrangement of flowers and vegetables would be implemented, and everyone would be happy again.

Even more rare than that, an aggrieved customer would show up greatly upset by the antics of some overabundant children who had trampled their prized begonias. The owners of the nursery only shrugged their shoulders. There was very little they could do to control children at play. How about building a nice little fence around your garden instead? they would suggest, and then they would lead the customer to the area containing fencing materials. The customers were reluctant to buy a fence and block in their beautiful gardens. After all, what was the point of having a garden if others could not enjoy it? But as they had little choice in the matter if they wished to keep their begonias from being trampled, they bought the materials anyway and gradually, fences began popping up here and there all over Hobbiton and Bywater. Many hobbits, however, resisted this move, choosing instead to keep a closer eye on the children playing in their gardens. And besides, it was only a handful of children who acted so rashly and those instances were too few and far between for such drastic measures.

Many more happy and carefree years passed. Oh, there was still the occasional complaint about reckless children with very little manners, and every year a handful more fences could be seen where there had been none before, but on the whole everyone was happy. Until the year of 1407 SR, when Lobelia Sackville-Baggins got it in her head to enlist in the Best Garden of the Shire Competition.

Lobelia was a dynamic matron, but not in any way that was considered good. She often took things to extremes, making mountains out of molehills as the adage went, and she was never happy with anyone unless they were giving her everything she wanted and then some. And she knew how to get everything she wanted. If she wanted fresh milk brought to her doorstep at 6:00 on the dot every morning, she got fresh milk delivered to her every morning at 6:00, along with a goodly supply of eggs, cheese and cream. If she wanted a cask of the finest ale from the finest malt house for her son’s birthday party, she got it, even if it had to be driven 100 miles through rain and snow to reach her house on time. If she wanted a new dress for the Winter Formal, she sent her request by Quick Post and within that very hour the sempstress would be bustling about her in her parlor, taking measurements and showing her all the various patterns and materials from which she could choose. It was very safe to say that Lobelia had never been told ‘no’ by anyone in her entire life.

So when she requested to join the Best Garden of the Shire Competition, and was naturally granted the honor to participate, she then marched herself down to the Hobbiton and Bywater Nursery House and demanded that someone come every day to look after her flowers and shrubs and vegetables. She wanted everything to be as pristine and perfect for the competition as they could be. Of course, the owners automatically agreed, sending their very best gardener every afternoon to tend her garden personally. She was quite delighted at this and told it about the town with much zest. The other hobbits smiled broadly and forcefully, counting the days to the end of the competition when everything would go back to normal.

It was a week before the competition when it happened. Lobelia left early in the morning to ride up to Overhill to visit a cousin. When she returned that afternoon, she found not the nursery house gardener in her garden, but a group of children who had chased a cat there. The cat, they claimed, was injured, but wouldn’t let them near enough to help it, and in their pursuit of the injured kitty, most of Lobelia’s thriving rose bushes had been trampled. The children were no less the worse for wear, scratched from thorns and dirtied from crawling around in the dirt. Lobelia cared little for this. The only thing she could see were her beautiful, full bloom roses hanging limply on bent and broken stems, the petals covering the garden floor like so much mulch.

Her reaction was instantaneous: she grew very red in the face and yelled at the top of her lungs for the children to depart and take that dratted cat with them. Then she marched down to the nursery house to lodge her complaint about the wayward miscreants who had just ruined her chances for placing first in the competition. When the nursery owners attempted to give her their usual response – they’re not accountable for the actions of wayward children – and tried to steer her towards the fencing material, she just about blew her top. She didn’t want a fence, she didn’t want excuses, she didn’t want anything except her beautiful garden, her flourishing rose bushes, and that lovely blue ribbon on the day of the competition - and if she didn't get it, she would make sure they lived to regret it. She threw such a mighty fit that the nursery owners quailed at the sight (and sound) of her and they threw their hands up, promising to make amends in any way that they could.

The next morning, Lobelia walked outside to find her garden once again blooming and glorious. Also that same morning, several of the hobbits in Hobbiton and Bywater walked outside to find that their rose bushes had been dug up and stolen from their gardens in the middle of the night! And the hobbits with young children, which were just about all of them, found that their entire gardens had been leveled and demolished without so much as a warning. Their fences, however, still stood intact, the only reminder they had of their years of hard toil and one-time pride.

No one knew what was going on. Oh, they could see well enough on their own that Lobelia was now the proud owner of their shrubs and flowers and that she was enjoying a hearty salad made up of the vegetables dug from their gardens, but they did not understand how this had come to be. Who would do such a thing? And why? When one or two brave souls went down to the nursery house to try to get answers, their knocks and calls were ignored. The owners were pretending not to be there!

It soon became apparent that Lobelia herself was the cause of all this mayhem. She gloated it about town that she had told the nursery owners that she wanted her garden back and that she would not put up a fence to keep out children who should know better. The other hobbits were greatly offended at this, and they were even more offended when, that afternoon, notices were suddenly posted at all the inns and post offices announcing that from here on out, any children found to be trespassing on private property would immediately be sent home on house arrest and would not be able to leave their homes without adult supervision indefinitely. The notices were signed by the nursery owners, and how they had managed to post all those notices without anyone seeing them was a mystery indeed.

The hobbits of Hobbiton and Bywater were in an uproar. Many of them now marched down to the nursery house, but their poundings on the door and their yells went unanswered. Lobelia, however, strutted down to the inn that night and the next bragging about her wonderful garden and showing off a special notice giving her the right to kick any and all trespassers off her property. She could even, she claimed, fine them five silver pennies for each step they dared to tread across her lawn. No one else had such a notice, and as her house lay directly between two major roads, the hobbits now found themselves deprived of a once often-used shortcut.

When Lobelia showed off her special notice on the second night after the de-gardening, Gaffer Gamgee only shook his head. Without saying a word to anyone, he donned his cap, slipped out the door and trotted up the Hill to Bag End. Two gentle taps on the door was all that was required for the Master of the Hill to answer his call. By the time he finished explaining everything that was happening, Mr. Frodo Baggins’s face was so pinched with fury that one would have thought he’d just eaten something incredibly sour. He promised the Gaffer he would have everything sorted out first thing in the morning.

He was true to his word. The next morning, Frodo sat to his first breakfast early and was out the door before the sun even peaked her head over the horizon. He was horror-struck at the mutilated gardens – which were now nothing more than barren slabs of upturned earth with rotting roots sticking out at odd angles – and he could not believe that Lobelia had been able to effect such a drastic change. He himself had lost many a flowerbed to rampaging children over the years, and while he could understand her disappointment and knew perfectly well that her rage could be unfathomable, this was not a justifiable solution by any means.

At first, his knocks were also ignored by the nursery owners. Finally, he walked around to the back and simply allowed himself into the house. He found the family huddled in their kitchen, cringing and pale. They looked as though they had just run a gauntlet and Frodo found he felt no sympathy for them. Indeed, he found that the only thing he could do for several moments was to just stare at them, so utterly confounded that he could not even find the words to express himself.

In the end, he demanded that all the plants be restored to their rightful owners, and should any plants be unable to be restored, the nursery owners would be responsible for replacing them at their own expense. They would also be responsible for reimbursing any fines that had to be paid by any hobbits caught with a tiptoe on Lobelia’s lawn. Frodo then made it perfectly clear that under no circumstances were any children to be deprived of their right to be children. It will be, as it has always been, the parents’ responsibility to monitor their children’s behavior. Any and all complaints should be, as they have always been, taken to the family heads to be dealt with internally.

The hobbits of Hobbiton and Bywater were much relieved – though still very disgruntled – when the nursery owners finally made a public appearance that afternoon recalling their ill-conceived edicts and announcing that all gardens would be restored to their original conditions, or as near to the original conditions as they could be. Lobelia was livid, but when she began to rave at the nursery owners, Frodo stepped forward from the crowd, regarded her with his cold Baggins glare, and that was the end of that.

It took many long months for the nursery owners to correct their error, even longer for the hobbits of Hobbiton and Bywater to forgive them (and some of them never did), and no one was at all disappointed when Lobelia placed last in the Best Garden of the Shire Competition. Well, no one except Lobelia of course, and she did everyone the favor, though she always considered it the ultimate of slights, of never entering the contest again.

The end.
 

 GF 5/31/07