Garden Fairies: A Fairy Thread of Common Sense

Garden fairies here.

We are garden fairies, and let us now quote some G.K. Chesterton, which proves without a doubt that we garden fairies invented common sense.

“Common sense is a fairy thread, thin and faint, and as easily lost as gossamer.” – G. K. Chesterton in Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (1911)

How did we find this out? Well, Carol did some checking around for some information about another quote from G.K., and discovered something called “a fairy thread of common sense.”

Well, we garden fairies heard this, and even though Fall is our busy season, along with Spring, Summer, and Winter, we decided we needed to stop for a minute and acknowledge that, yes, common sense is a fairy thread.

Carol wrote about it in that newsletter that goes out for that podcast that she records with that friend, Dee. Have you read it? Go now and read it and come right back!

Okay, to reiterate and get you caught up to speed, because we don’t think you went and looked at that newsletter.

Here is the original quote that led to the brilliant discovery of a fairy thread of common sense.

“We are learning to do a great many clever things…The next great task will be to learn not to do them.”  – G.K. Chesterton. He wrote that about 120 years ago, which Ol’ Rainbow Tanglefly says was before he was born but we aren’t quite sure about that.

Anyway…

We are garden fairies, and let us tell you that Carol and so many others should follow that advice; that’s for garden fairy sure.

Anyway, as Carol noted in the newsletter, the next sentence is where she made the great and brilliant discovery of a “fairy thread of common sense.”

And we quote G. K. again…

“If that time comes, assuredly we cannot do better than turn once more to the memory of the great Queen who for seventy years followed through every possible tangle distraction the fairy thread of common sense.”

We are garden fairies, and we know that equating common sense to fairy threads doesn’t mean that only garden fairies have common sense but it doesn’t mean we don’t have common sense. That’s just common sense.

And a fairy thread. Like a gossamer? We are garden fairies, and we don’t think people use words like gossamer much anymore, at least we haven’t heard Carol use that word lately. Though she sometimes “signs” the word “gossamer” when she runs into some and starts wiping at the air around her and wiping her face to make sure she doesn’t have any on her. (And no, we aren’t referring to that Looney Tunes character named Gossamer).

Anyway, as noted, we are garden fairies, we are busy, we have common sense, common sense is like a fairy thread, and the picture above of some autumn crocuses early in the morning is just to prove that we garden fairies have been working hard to make more autumn crocuses each year from the piddling amount Carol originally planted and that each night we close them up and then we don’t open them again until the sun is really shining good, which it is going to do today so Carol better get out here and mow this lawn.

We are garden fairies!

Submitted by:

Violet GreenPea MayDreams, chief scribe and committee chair for the committee to increase autumn crocues.

P.S. And when Carol mows, we expect her to trim too.