More to the point, I have been locked into a garden.
Well, that was a new one.
I suppose I should not be surprised that this happened in company of Greer Gilman, who attracts the folkloric as lodestones do iron: or, since her Cloud is a world of tangles and fallen leaves, the way thorns do unwary scarves and hair. We had already visited one garden in Radcliffe, a beautiful stone-stepped terrace with irises, a little fountain and reflecting pool, and very good trees for sprawling underneath—and thick grass for sprawling on—so why should the Dudley Garden behind Harvard's Lamont Library have been any different? Well, it had an iron gate and a sign, "Open during daylight hours." It was light outside. We went in. There was a sundial. The letters cut into the stone, however, said, Daylight Savings Time. I had really been hoping for something like It Is Later Than You Think.
In retrospect, perhaps I should not have expressed this sentiment aloud. Because by the time we got up to leave—when it was still light out, mind you—it was not only later than we'd thought, it was clearly later than the garden was open. The gate had been locked; and the garden was walled all round, with either iron or brick; and so we were doing the last Unicorn Tapestry thing, without benefit of being either actually unicorns or at least fed pomegranates. Exploration commenced. If you went around to the left and shoved through the dense and whippy undergrowth, which left us both leaf-stuck enough to fit nicely at home in Cloud, there was a brick wall with a sort of shelf to climb up on; atop the wall, a large cement urn decorated with ivy around the top and lion's heads to either side ornate enough to grab hold of; and from there you could swing down onto a stone fencepost, with grass or sidewalk underfoot as you pleased. About four feet more of a drop, of course, on the street side than the garden side. This worked for me and our backpacks. (I like climbing things.) It did not work so well for Greer's bad knee. Whereupon I felt extremely guilty. Did I mention that ivy is no good for handholds?
So she sat on the wall, with dignity worthy of a figurehead, and I stood on the fencepost with a hand on the urn for balance, and we flagged down passersby—including one very startled German tourist, whom I may have traumatized—until we got someone who called security for us. We had tried calling the main number for Harvard. We were told to visit their website. Under the circumstances, this was only very slightly impractical . . . So we got a cop, and a pair of cops on bicycles, and some other kind of security in an orange reflective vest, and it was then that we discovered we had also gotten a recalcitrant lock. Having climbed back down off the wall and fought our way through the shrubbery again, with me panicking about poison ivy the whole way (yes, I'm sure no one grows poison ivy in ornamental gardens: sue me, I'm systemically allergic; and neurotic), this was a less than heartening development. I looked into going through the first-floor windows of an adjoining dormitory.* I mean, if they're going to be careless enough to leave the bathroom window unlocked— At which point we discovered another, smaller gate farther down the wall, with a lock that actually worked, and they let us out before I had a chance to go through and rifle all the summer-abandoned rooms for small and easily salable items. Er. That is. Anyway . . .
It was incredibly fun.
*As Greer remembers it: "Then Sonya, who has the instincts of a cat burglar, shinnied up to the bathroom window of an overlooking dorm ('Fireplaces!' she cried, 'Why can't we have fireplaces?'), and suggested to the constabulary they let us out through the front door. But no, they didn't much like that. Bad precedent." I am flattered by the cat burglary. But I must confess that I never would have stolen a fireplace: they're entirely too cumbersome to fence.
Well, that was a new one.
I suppose I should not be surprised that this happened in company of Greer Gilman, who attracts the folkloric as lodestones do iron: or, since her Cloud is a world of tangles and fallen leaves, the way thorns do unwary scarves and hair. We had already visited one garden in Radcliffe, a beautiful stone-stepped terrace with irises, a little fountain and reflecting pool, and very good trees for sprawling underneath—and thick grass for sprawling on—so why should the Dudley Garden behind Harvard's Lamont Library have been any different? Well, it had an iron gate and a sign, "Open during daylight hours." It was light outside. We went in. There was a sundial. The letters cut into the stone, however, said, Daylight Savings Time. I had really been hoping for something like It Is Later Than You Think.
In retrospect, perhaps I should not have expressed this sentiment aloud. Because by the time we got up to leave—when it was still light out, mind you—it was not only later than we'd thought, it was clearly later than the garden was open. The gate had been locked; and the garden was walled all round, with either iron or brick; and so we were doing the last Unicorn Tapestry thing, without benefit of being either actually unicorns or at least fed pomegranates. Exploration commenced. If you went around to the left and shoved through the dense and whippy undergrowth, which left us both leaf-stuck enough to fit nicely at home in Cloud, there was a brick wall with a sort of shelf to climb up on; atop the wall, a large cement urn decorated with ivy around the top and lion's heads to either side ornate enough to grab hold of; and from there you could swing down onto a stone fencepost, with grass or sidewalk underfoot as you pleased. About four feet more of a drop, of course, on the street side than the garden side. This worked for me and our backpacks. (I like climbing things.) It did not work so well for Greer's bad knee. Whereupon I felt extremely guilty. Did I mention that ivy is no good for handholds?
So she sat on the wall, with dignity worthy of a figurehead, and I stood on the fencepost with a hand on the urn for balance, and we flagged down passersby—including one very startled German tourist, whom I may have traumatized—until we got someone who called security for us. We had tried calling the main number for Harvard. We were told to visit their website. Under the circumstances, this was only very slightly impractical . . . So we got a cop, and a pair of cops on bicycles, and some other kind of security in an orange reflective vest, and it was then that we discovered we had also gotten a recalcitrant lock. Having climbed back down off the wall and fought our way through the shrubbery again, with me panicking about poison ivy the whole way (yes, I'm sure no one grows poison ivy in ornamental gardens: sue me, I'm systemically allergic; and neurotic), this was a less than heartening development. I looked into going through the first-floor windows of an adjoining dormitory.* I mean, if they're going to be careless enough to leave the bathroom window unlocked— At which point we discovered another, smaller gate farther down the wall, with a lock that actually worked, and they let us out before I had a chance to go through and rifle all the summer-abandoned rooms for small and easily salable items. Er. That is. Anyway . . .
It was incredibly fun.
*As Greer remembers it: "Then Sonya, who has the instincts of a cat burglar, shinnied up to the bathroom window of an overlooking dorm ('Fireplaces!' she cried, 'Why can't we have fireplaces?'), and suggested to the constabulary they let us out through the front door. But no, they didn't much like that. Bad precedent." I am flattered by the cat burglary. But I must confess that I never would have stolen a fireplace: they're entirely too cumbersome to fence.
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