I still believed I was unkillable,
though I suspect everyone thinks that
when they receive the death penalty. I
continued on my raids. I know that
snatching flowers is a cruel thing to do,
but I also knew what I was doing, so
the pruning was very artful.
Also, in a further plea for leniency, I
generally stuck to the public boule-
vards. While the city has some bril-
liant arborists, it clearly doesn’t have
enough staff to properly prune every-
thing, so I tidied up the trees as I
snatched the blossoms. You may call
this vigilante pruning or, more artistic-
ally, guerrilla ikebana.
This is not something the average
idiot with a hacksaw should practise.
Pruning is a complex business. For
instance, I sterilized my shears in
between trees so I didn’t pass any dis-
ease from one tree to another.
As I carried out my forays, I thought
of a quote attributed to Buddha: “Atten-
tion leads to immortality. Carelessness
leads to death. Those who pay atten-
tion will not die, while the careless are
as good as dead already.”
I thought, too, of what the good Dr.
Johnson said: “When a man knows he
is to be hanged in a fortnight, it con-
centrates his mind wonderfully.”
That’s why I became enamoured of
the two splendid camellias that grow
in my yard. Many centuries back, an
intrepid Japanese gardener noticed
that certain camellias faded, even as
they bloomed. Rather than breed themto correct that flaw, he bred to enhance
it so that his fellow citizens would
understand the transience of life and
death’s presence, even in these ele-
gant, near-perfect blossoms.IT NEVER OCCURRED to me that so
many flowers would soon clutter the
house. Since there were already orchids
at my bedside, the room had grown
crowded very quickly. (I kept the
orchids so that if I should die in my
sleep, they will be the last things I see
when I extinguish the lights.) This
beautiful dilemma was worsened by
my kitten, who discovered that vases
full of quince, cherry, plum, camellia,
roses and peonies made for excellent
batting practice.
And yet, I went out for more. If a par-
ticularly spectacular flower was in a
yard, I would ask someone at the door
for a cutting. Even those who don’t
speak English figured me out quickly,
with my pruning shears and my panto-
mimes pointing at a branch. They
invariably nodded yes.
Only one person turned me down. I
trudged up to a door and knocked, and
could see through the curtains a large
man and a woman snuggled up on the
sofa, watching TV. They never moved.
So I knocked again. She rose and walked
to the window by the door, pulled the
curtain aside, stared at me and then
returned to the sofa.
This so inflamed me that I chopped
off a dangling branch of her beautifulreader’s digest
64 may 2020