Gardens -the Englishman's toe

The renowned psychiatrist pottered in her garden; semi retired now, she seemed to spend more and more of her time in this bountiful place marvelling at its organic accretions. Her garden was full of nature’s intimations; how nature germinates and materializes. Now she thought of that English asset, irony, as she recalled visiting Darwin’s home, Down House in Kent recently and coming away reflecting on his vast gardens with its palisades, trenches, cordons and covered ways as quite warlike, even Darwin, when it came to gardens was not free of that English warlike blinkeredness of an island race;  she thought it no wonder that when the Pilgrims aided by a prosperous wind arrived at Cape Cod in the winter of 1620, after suffering  agonizing delays; shortages of food, terrifying waves and broken masts, their fondness for gardens for those that survived that first harsh winter was observed and named by the indigenous Indians as something that stuck out, so they named the Pilgrims' penchant for gardens as the ‘Englishman’s toe’.


The above is an extract from a short story by Peter P. Cheevers see his fiction published by:
Ether  Books