“Then let me give you a hand with it,” volunteered Edgardo.   Poor Wilf was left with no choice but to help to uproot his beloved “flower”, then saw it into four pieces, so it would fit easily into the garbage bin.

“There, there love,” said Winnie, seeing how crestfallen her husband was as he entered their bedroom that night.

“I don’t want to talk about it!” insisted Wilf, sulkily, turning his back on her.

Despite Farquhar’s ambition to raise a prize-winning flower, the one time he did win honours, it wasn’t for a flower at all, but rather a hedge.

After fifteen years in Australia, Winifred Farquhar began to feel homesick for England.   Realising her husband would never agree to return to his native soil, she suggested he try his dubious gardening skills at growing a large English hedge.   “To remind us both of home, love.”

Wilf didn’t share his wife’s homesickness (since the pleasant Australian climate allowed him to grow an infinitely greater range of flowers than had ever been possible in the frigid English climes).   However, he readily agreed to her suggestion.

Unlike his other gardening efforts, which rapidly produced noticeable results, the English hedge took more than a full decade of careful nurturing to grow to complete size.   However, it was time well spent: After ten years the hedge had reached near record proportions: two-and-a-half metres tall, spanning the length of the front yard, as well as extending all the way down one side of the house.

At last Farquhar started to win his first horticultural awards.   For two years (and two years only!) the magnificent hedge pulled in plaques and trophies by the dozen from local gardening societies.

But the Farquhars and their hedge were not the only English residents of Eleanor Street Footscray.   A short time after the Farquhars started to win their first awards for the hedge, the house next-door was sold, and their new neighbours included a huge orange and black English tabby tomcat, named Timbo.

At first the Farquhars were both delighted to discover Timbo.   However, they soon discovered that the tomcat had (at least) one major failing: he wasn’t aware that he was a tabby cat; he thought that he was a tiger.

Like all tigers, Timbo needed a jungle to stalk through.   After trying out the neighbours’ flower beds on the other side of the house, Timbo soon discovered the Farquhars’ English hedge.   Although it was a tight squeeze, the large tabby managed to manoeuvre his way between the boughs of the hedge to stalk his way through the “forestland” beneath.

Of course it was hard going at first, but soon Timbo’s large body broke away limbs right, left, and centre, until he had burrowed out a series of tunnels beneath the prize-winning hedge.

Although this was ideal for Timbo, allowing him to stalk his way beneath the hedge to his heart’s content, it was far from ideal for the plant itself.   Although of hardy English stock, it was not hardy enough to stand up to Timbo’s tunnelling.   Within two years of Timbo’s arrival next-door, the Farquhar’s beloved hedge had withered and died Away.   Much to the disappointment of Timbo, who then had to find himself another jungle to stalk through.

Equally disappointing was the attitude of the Farquhars.   At first they had been affectionate to their new neighbour, petting him and feeding him scraps of fish or meat from their own meals.   But after the death of their hedge, they both did a Jekyll-and-Hyde-like transformation, and took to shooing Timbo out of their yard (in the case of Winnie), or throwing brick batts and empty potting baskets at him (in the case of Wilf).

Although Farquhar was normally a fairly easy going man, he never forgave Timbo for murdering his beloved hedge.   And in fact, half a dozen years later, when there was a hedge vandal stalking the Footscray area, slashing up and destroying local hedges, Farquhar’s comment (after seeing film of the latest victim on the TV news) was, “It’s probably that black and orange gopher next-door burrowing his way through the roots systems, killing them!”

“Black and orange gopher indeed!” Timbo would have said if he had been in the room at the time, if only he could speak.

THE END