Fairies in the Garden
G. J. Irrera
Copyright G. J. Irrera 2005
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Are you ready for another little mystery? This one happened while I was still in junior high school; there was no big crime committed but it is an interesting little story.
My friends and I put our heads together and came up with the answer to the question of who wreaked Mrs. Dexter’s flower garden.
This is how it all began; as part of a class assignment, we were to watch a movie called “Fairy Tale: A True Story” on Saturday morning at nine o’clock. Then we were to write a short composition about our thoughts on the movie, the people involved in the story and if we believed in fairies. When we got back to class on Monday, we would discuss the movie and give our reason for believing or not believing in fairies.
Patty and Mary came over to my house to watch the movie since we just got a new big screen TV; well it was thirty inches, which was big at that time. After the movie we talked about what it would be like to actually see fairies.
“Well there might be fairies and there might not”, Patty said, “but those pictures were pretty bad”.
“You have got to remember the pictures were taken with very old technology film cameras”, Mary said, “so the pictures would not be as good as what you can get today with a digital camera.”
“I agree with Patty”, I said, “The pictures aren’t very good, even for old film cameras.”
“I wonder if a fairy’s image could be captured with a digital camera”, Mary asked.
The movie lasted almost two hours, counting commercials, so we decided to take a break, go for a walk and maybe get some ice cream.
We quickly decided against ice cream when we stepped out of my house and into the wind. It was early autumn but it had already started getting cold.
We only got about half way down the street when we changed our plans; hot chocolate seemed a much better idea and we headed back.
We were a short distance from my house when we heard Mrs. Dexter screaming."That's terrible," Patty said,” Who would have done such a rotten thing to Mrs. Dexter; she was one of the nicest teachers at our school.”
The three of us ran across the street and onto Mrs. Dexter’s lawn.
“What a mess”, Mary said.
“Can we help you”, I asked.
“Well I guess the best thing to do would be to gather up all of the bulbs and sort them by the type of flowers”, Mr. Dexter said.
It was easy to tell the difference between the daffodil, crocus and the tulip bulbs because there are all different sizes, but there was no way of telling what color flowers would grow from the bulbs.
Mrs. Dexter said that there were two different color crocuses, three different types of daffodils and six different color tulips.
With the five of us working it didn’t take very long to get all the bulbs back into their beds. Patty patted down the last of the crocus bulbs, brushed the dirt from her hands and tried to get the dirt from under her fingernails. “Mrs. Dexter why is the dirt in your garden so soft and black”, Patty asked.
“Mr. Dexter mixed in a lot of natural fertilizer and compost into the dirt because the soil in the garden has a lot of clay and rocks like most of the lawns around here. The compost will help the soil drain better and give the bulbs a good start in the spring.”, Mrs. Dexter told her.
When we finished Mrs. Dexter thanked us and said that she would just have to live with a mixed up flower garden. She invited us in to wash up and for some hot chocolate and homemade chocolate chip cookies. I might pass on the hot chocolate but not the chocolate chip cookies, they are my favorite.
We took turns at the kitchen sink washing our hands.
“You always have such a beautiful garden”, Mary said, “What do you use for fertilizer, Mr. Dexter?”
“I only use good natural fertilizer”, Mr. Dexter said, I get it from my cousin’s farm.”
“What is that”, Patty asked.
“Good old fashion cow manure”, Mr. Dexter said, “It’s just about the best all-around fertilizer you can get.”
All three of us looked at our hands and then at each other. We went back to the kitchen sink and washed our hands again just to make sure we got all of that nice black naturally fertilized dirt out from under our fingernails.
Since Mrs. Dexter is, the teacher that gave us the assignment to watch the fairy movie it seemed natural that the conversation soon got around to that very subject.
She told us that most of the people living in Cottingley thought the girls faked all the photos and that the whole thing was a hoax. As word got out more and more people began visiting the area hoping to see the fairies for themselves.
The whole town got into the fairy business; it didn’t matter if they really believed or not; the fairies were good for business.
We all agreed that it could have been a hoax, but so many people believed the photos were real.
Mary remembered that the older girl, Elsie started out taking pictures with her father’s camera, but then later in the movie each of the girls were given cameras of a totally different type.
“Just how could two young girls, with very little education manage to create photographs that even fooled photographic experts”, Mary asked, “Don’t forget Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that article about the incident and he believed that the girls really did take photos of fairies”.
“My Dad said that the best way to fake a photograph using an old film camera would be during the printing process”, I said. “He said that you could easily superimpose the fairies on the pictures taken by the girls.”
“The girls certainly didn’t know enough about the photo development process to superimpose the fairy images on the finished photos and besides later in the movie all the film was sent to some guy to be developed”, Patty said.
“That’s right”, I said, “The undeveloped film was packed up and sent to Mr. Edward Gardner to be developed. So, the girls never saw the pictures until after they were developed.”
“Maybe I missed it”, Patty said, “but the place where they were taking the pictures was called the ‘Cottingley Beck’, what the heck is a beck”.
Mary looked up from her hot chocolate and wiped her whipped cream mustach from her lips, “A beck is a term used in Yorkshire, England for a small stream or creek. Cottingley, the town where the girls lived, is in West Yorkshire. So, where the girls took the pictures of the fairies was Cottingley Beck or Cottingley stream”.
Mrs. Dexter looked at me, “How does she do that”, she asked.
“She has a photographic memory”, I said, “and no one could ever superimpose anything on those pictures”.
Patty changed the subject back to the garden and who might want to do such a thing, “What time do you think the destruction of your garden could have happened”, she asked.
”I used a rotor-tiller right after dinner last evening to break up the dirt and then around eight-thirty this morning I added the fertilizer and compost to the flower beds”, Mr. Dexter said.
“I guess I started planting the bulbs around 9:00 and finished at about 10:30; we went inside to get cleaned up and had some coffee.” Mrs. Dexter said. So it could have been any time after 10:30.”
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bsp; “You mean you were out playing in the garden and didn’t watch the movie”, Patty asked.
“Well as a matter of fact Mr. Dexter and I recorded the movie and were going to watch it later this evening; we wanted to get the bulbs planted, it is supposed to rain later today so the bulbs will get a good soaking.”
“Did you make anyone angry enough to want to do such a thing”, Mary asked Mrs. Dexter. “I mean angry enough to wreck your garden”.
Mrs. Dexter thought for a long while, ”Well the only thing that happened last week was two girls and a boy didn’t turn in their homework assignments this past Friday and I told them that they would not be permitted to participate in the football game that afternoon. The boy, Peter Dodson, is a player on the team and the two girls, Peggy Lewis and June Morgan, are cheerleaders.”
“I think you should call the police and have them arrest all three of those clown”, Patty said, “and let them sit in jail until they’re willing to confess.”
Mrs. Dexter smiled, “I don’t think digging up flower bulbs is punishable under the Philadelphia Penal Code, but it wasn’t a very nice thing to do either.”
We thanked Mrs. Dexter for the hot chocolate and the cookies and said good-bye.
“I think we should try and figure out who did this to Mrs. Dexter”, I