Mrs. Weatherbatten's Wisteria

Mrs. Weatherbatten was somewhere over eighty, an active member of the East Side History Club, and an avid gardener "from the day I bought my house to my dying day," as she would tell any passerby who expressed interest.

She had one of those gardens typical of the older Isthmus homes. On the Isthmus of Madison, the homes grew closely together, window to window. The front yards were small and steeply sloped, the side yards barely thriving in the canyons formed from the houses. If anyone gardened beyond a collection of rocks or bulb based flora, it was in the back yard.

Mrs. Weatherbatten's house was on a corner so her backyard extended along a side street. She had a low iron fence around the perimeter to keep people out. The fence certainly did little to contain her garden. People never walked on the half of the sidwalk nearest the fenceline unless they wanted a good shin-beating from the heavy flower heads and tangly vines that flopped beyond the fence seeking sunshine. Inside she had wound a stone path throughout beds in a tight, maze-like weave. She could often be seen walking this path meditatively, leaning over to pull the odd weed that daring push past her exuberant plants.

Except for the low fence, it was a secret garden type of place. The sort of garden you could fantasize about slipping into and curling up in the overgrowth, like some kind of magical cat. In the far back corner overlooking her neighbor's flat lawn grew a great purple wisteria.

"And in the branches of that wisteria," an earnest Ruth Ann told Holl, "there's a big, round striker marble. It's blue with silver sparkles in it and a bubble that looks like a winking eye. It's mine and she's had it for ages."

"A marble," Holl said. "You want me to steal a marble from an old lady's tree."

"Well, yeah." Said Ruth Ann. She nodded to the book still clutched in Holl's hands. "Any pirate worth her salt would get it for me in an instant just to get her hands on the rest of the booty..." She trailed off, waggling her eyebrows as if to say, imagine the treasure you could get!

"I'm not gonna steal from an old lady."