I can’t understand what all the fuss is about with the proposed tropical conservatory in the Botanic Garden when I have offered our fern house as a gift to the State.
I understand that the offer has already reached certain quarters and Drs Morley and Hopgood have gone into hiding.
Our tropical conservatory occupies an impenetrable position between the septic tank and the swampy environs of the back door. It has all the requirements of exotic plants, dense undergrowth, footrot and is as steamy as an M-rated cassette.
Not for nothing have I named it Dante’s Infernery.
Presiding over this horticultural holocaust, this maelstrom of moisture, this frenzy of fronds and over-grown ponds is that Boadicea of bougainvillea, my wife, the administrator of our miniature Matto Grosso.
I must admit she swings a pretty machete and heaven knows one needs one in the rampaging foliage a blow-pipe shot from our kitchen.
Inside the fern house you can meet mould and decay, humidity and humus and, if you’re named Stanley, you would well stumble upon Livingstone.
My arch priestess of plant and pergola has already brought botanists to our conservatory, and as far as I know half of them are still trying to find their way out.
Certainly, the conservatory scares me. Inside is the world of dimness and voluptuous vegetation, of strange muffled cries, of stealthy movement.
Suddenly the fronds part and one sees in the quagmire a saurian snout, the protruding jaw, the bared, yellowing teeth. Well, I always look like that before meals
Once I was lost in this limbo of leaf and came out trailing maidenhair and eating roots.
Mind you we have no trouble in maintaining the tropical temperature. We just stand there and have a heated argument.
Some neighbours have entered the fern house, staring fearfully at the great overgrown basket inside the door and then exclaiming
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s only your husband.”
So the madness goes on, the shrieks of “Tubs for shrubs” and “Pots for sots” and all the fearful things you find on the borders of civilisation.
The whole place has the debilitating atmosphere of the jungle even to the buzz of some huge airborne object that could easily be piloted by a tropical Premier.
Such indeed are the wild fantasies of the fern house.
Sometimes I hide in our thicket of Queensland cane. My wife is always standing in front of it and shouting. “Come out of there, you slimy toad.”
There is no doubt about the variety of vegetation. Exotic creepers festoon the walls while a pair of local social climbers are also doing well.
I’ve already written to the CIA:
“You provide the agent and we’ll provide the cover.”
I’ve heard nothing yet but I’m sure they’ll plant someone.
Still, we’ve learnt to live with it all.
As my wife says, emerging into the light of day and brushing the rainforest from her eyes:
One good fern deserves another.
Max Fatchen