‘Choose a Gnomes life…’
Bravely double branching two gardening forks at once while weeding a veg patch full of Gnome-eating bobcats.
Choose spending sleepless frosty nights trying to talk a bramble thicket with nothing to loose out of murdering a garden patio.
Be the germinator of the few shrubs or flowering borders who don’t want weed out all civilized life in cosmic consciousness.
Choose to be the only pointy hatted hero who can keep this city from turning back to C*ntryside.
Choose to be a gardening Gnome!’
For the last two hours, Root Daddier, chieftain of the Glenaraaah garden-Gnome-tribe had been dividing his time between untangling the knotted, waist length strands of his great moustache and desperately trying to realise his latest piece of boulder propaganda.
Taking a heron headed hoe, beak tip roasted by Dragon mouse, Root Daddier could melt whole road networks of words into stone like the most Gnomely of scholar’s.
Around him, a pile of small rocks gave this amphitheatre of under-brambles the atmosphere of some lost quarry, rocks strewn about all over the place. Many of these de-mossed stones were carved with half finished sentences that often ended in angry scars of frustration before their musings could make much sense. Pausing for a healthy slurp of tea every half minute, his mug of herbal brew was only thing keeping him sane during this most difficult process.
The words had only just started to flow onto his latest rock when the sound of two other Gnomes calling his name shattered his thought process and brought him back to reality like boulder had just landed on his head.
‘ROOT DADDIER! ARE YOU ANYWHERE, BOSS?’
‘Damn it!!’ Root Daddier’s eye’s deepened as the frown, beneath his wide-rimmed pointy-hat, crushed down on the rest of his hairy face.
The fact was, the dank mossy place he had gone to get away from all distractions was so good, that no one else could find him, so naturally, they had resorted to shouting for him instead.
‘R. D, R, WHERE YOU AT?’ came the plea again now much closer.
Root Daddier knew he had only one way of putting a stop to this shouting and it involved picking up his Heron-headed hoe and taking care of it personally. And, as he straightened up his stocky legs with much cursing and groaning, he could only wish he had chosen a stone underneath the Fairyland park fountain to write on where the endlessly cleansing gurgle of water would have drowned out any chance of a distraction.
‘I’m coming!’ he howled in his permanently wired tone, ‘you two Brussel-sprout breakers, you!’
Moments later he had come rasping out from under his bramble-thicket like a breathless old bull to find two younger, fitter (but no less hairy) Gnomes eyeing him with much suspicion.
‘What were you doing under there Chief? ’ Tonge Lic Bark just had to ask with his smart-ass whine, ‘thought you were supposed weeding the gooseberry patches at the Cannon Mongers place?’
‘Aay, Aay?! You accusing me of not doing my weeding?’ Root Daddier pointed his glowing hoe, ‘I’ll burn you with this point of view baby! I was up to more important things!
‘Like what?’ Tong called his bluff.
‘Us lovely Gnomes have got to change our tactics; the way things are with the Wildman tribe!’ Root Daddier was now all philosophical.
‘The Wildman tribe are the bane of every MOUTH with a blackberry patch and a taste for jammed scones with cream,’ Tong sighed with a face filled with years of bad experiences, ‘they are an unstoppable force of pure constipated evil! There ain’t much changing tactics unless you mean surrendering!’
‘What!!!’ Root Daddier fired words like cannon balls, ‘I will surrender when weeds go extinct! I should boot you into a black hole for having such scrubby outlook!’
‘What did you have in mind then?’ Tong was trying not to cower.
‘I am currently writing some boulder-propaganda for the untamed Wildman everywhere. One that teaches them to be more like us good and right in the head Gnomes and less like a stupid fruit foraging prick!’
‘What’s the point of that? I thought the man-eating Venus fly traps were doing a good job of getting down the numbers down anyway.’
‘Doesn’t matter how many of them feed our plants, still more keep coming. We’ve got to get to the root of the problem. ‘Stead of persecuting them, we got to appeal to the Wildman heart.’
‘I suppose you’re gonna say all a Wildman needs is love?’
‘Nope,’ Root Daddier’s bushy eyebrows were visibly cocked, ‘all a Wildman needs is propagation! Slip a carefully-cultivated seed into a Wildman mind and you wake up a long dead bud of possibility. You let it flower then cut all the other buds off until you have, not a Wildman, but Man-Gnome!’
At this point Root Daddier looked to the other Gnomes for some encouragement.
Oldasoak may have been a Gnome of few words, but any words he did say were usually confident and reassuring.
‘R.D!’ Oldasoak slapped him on the back, ‘ARE YOU A GNOME WITH A PLAN OR WHAT?’
‘Me tries!’ Root Daddier made a wry smile, his whole moustache curling into a furry grin.
‘So,’ Tong Lic Bark just had to poke more holes in the grand scheme, ‘you think if they read a bit of boulder-propaganda then suddenly they’ll be one of us? How would that work? How on earth would a Wildman understand our words to begin with? I’ve only heard two variations in the sound a Wildman makes; whistling while their stealing fruit an’ veg and grunting like a hog while I’m chasing one down in a Paw-by-Paw. Beside’s even if you get one to understand you, doesn’t mean they actually want to listen to you. I’ve seen MOUTH-children with a perfect grasp of the language turn into beasts just because they don’t want to do what they’re told!’
‘Close that ill-wind hole you call a voice!’ Root Daddier moustache had turned into a frown so quickly, ‘I’m working on the language barrier thing! ANY BRANCH, Gnomes! Let’s get to the point of conversation here. Why did you both dare to disturb me just now?’
Oldasoak pushed in front of Tong eager to cut off his co-worker from getting them into anymore hot water.
‘Here in reality, Chief, away from the wonders of your writings hemmed upon rock there’s a new threat roaming our gardens!’
Root Daddier made the most unpleasant face at the other two before releasing all his anger in one deflated sigh that made his face look like a soggy teabag.
‘Arrr! How many Wildman are we taking about this time? Don’t tell me they’ve formed a alliance with the elephant-headed cranes again?’
‘Oh no chief, this is no Wildman this time. Tis way worse then that!’ Oldasoak didnt want to sugar coat it.
‘How could their be anything worse then Wildman foraging our fruit and veg?’
‘How about a great-pair-of-legs trampling a garden with every footstep!?’ Tong shrieked out loud.
Root Daddier followed the point of Tong’s garden trowel.
He was pointing it beyond the flowery meadow that they stood in, beyond the very tops of the highest trees in Fairyland park, and out into the leafy streets beyond. Here, far taller than any terra-cotta-tiled roof-top or leaning chimney pot, a vast pair of legs were slowly stepping across the craggy, hazy, ridge-tops of Glenaraaah.
These were legs, so epic in scale, that they made the streets look like part of a model village. Whatever body owned them had its head literally lost in the billowing storm clouds which appeared to be coming with the pair. These legs were something that wore boots not made for walking down these city streets.
‘So, what you think of these legs mossy?’ Twig asked his chief causally after such a long moment of silence, ‘quite a pair, eh?’
For the longest moment there was a defining silence as Root Daddier’s face appeared to petrify into a stony, pain-filled expression. Until….
‘GNOME ALERT!!!’ He suddenly hollered in the most intense roar, ‘Yip YIP! Open your ill-wind holes!’’