Beautification Program

From the Dunnville Garden Club’s website, goldentrowel.com:

Here at the DGC, our mission is to share our gardening skills, expertise, guidance, and enthusiasm for the benefit of the entire community. Since its founding in 1912 by the Keister-Flammia Ladies Auxiliary, the Club has fostered the establishment and preservation of gardens throughout Dunnville, working hand-in-hand with the Memorial Library, the Athenaeum, the BonTempo Hospital, the Wetmore Town Pool, and the Horace Humpty Transfer Station, to name a few.

Our newest initiative will involve the beautification of the long-overlooked exterior grounds at the Dunnville-Esterhazy Medium Security Correctional Institution. This facility, locally known as the Dunnville prison, or the D-E, or “the can,” is located on the more rural northern side of town beyond Meatloaf Hill and the Puddle Pikes, and is therefore somewhat invisible to a majority of residents. Still, it is the largest employer in town, and receives many out-of-town visitors over the course of each month.

In terms of its appearance, the D-E deserves better. Its sheer walls, 25 feet tall and rather grim and severe, rise sharply from the surrounding lawns that, at most, receive the biweekly attentions of a groundskeeper bearing a weedwacker. Yet, along Asylum Road leading up to the site are striking, evenly-spaced plantings of linden trees that date to the early 20th century probably, so at least at some point some thought was given to making the property as attractive as possible, its serious purpose notwithstanding. We would now like to revive that zeal, that sense of mission, with the conviction that all public places deserve thoughtfully-designed gardens to enhance the overall environment and uplift the human spirit.

With the approval of the authorities, we will begin with site studies followed by soil preparation and the planting of classic, low-maintenance perennials such as daffodils, iris, gladiolus, hollyhocks, and daylilies. In time, beds of annuals will be developed, featuring marigolds, zinnias, sunflowers, snapdragons, and herbs, along with vegetables such as pumpkins, squash, and potatoes.

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Email from Jackie Dezireaux to Myra Coin and Phyllis Pertl:

Jesus I don’t know about this thing that Betty’s come up with. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for making the grounds up there a little nicer, but really, the prison? Remember that nasty business from last year? What, was the sewage-treatment plant already taken? (Oh yeah, I guess it was. The Junior League ladies.)
     Did you ever drive by the prison? The walls are really high, solid gray concrete. And us with some little snapdragons down in front? Wouldn’t that be like, I don’t know, building sandcastles with a hurricane coming on? Do you know what the warden thinks about it? You know, the management, the superintendent, whatever.

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Memo from Superintendent Blackwell Overshiner to Deputy Superintendent Evan Grilledcheese:

Evan, I’d like you to take this on. Seems harmless, good PR, make a nice photo in the paper. It might help people forget the incidents of the prior year. Do I need to elaborate, Evan? Get in touch with them ASAP. See what you can do without getting yourself in trouble. Bring out one or two of the puppets, have them be digging, weeding, moving mulch, fussing with the plants, what have you. Try not to mess this one up. Choose your puppets with care, or it’ll be both of our heads.

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Statement from Carl Bugtussle to a reporter:

Sure, it’s nice to be on the outside. The people from the garden club, they seemed very nice. It was a nice day. There were armed men all around us, just out of reach of the cameras. I know what you want, and I’m going to give it to you. See, I like plants, flowers, squashes, tomatoes. I used to help my grandpa when I was a kid, he had a farm. We saved the seeds from everything, used them the next season. I got good at it. Is that the cornball story you want? Grandpa showed me how to transplant new tomatoes. You take off the two lowest branches and bury the plant up to where the branches used to be, rootball too. It makes for very strong roots.

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Statement from Willie d’Zingo to a reporter:

I like it. From dust to dust, you know? I like getting my fingers in the dirt. I like the way it smells. I like forgetting that there’s a man over there and his finger’s on the trigger.

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News item:

DUNNVILLE – Local gardening enthusiasts are rolling out an ambitious program to spruce up the outside of the Dunnville-Esterhazy Prison. The ladies of the Dunnville Garden Club (and the one male member, Darius Ovenbird) will be focussing on formerly featureless areas of coarse grass at the base of the outer wall, to either side of the visitors’ entrance. “We totally support this beautification program and what it promises to do for the appearance of the facility,” Superintendent Blackwell Overshiner told the Dunnville Dispatch. “It’s a great collaborative effort and a splash of color here and there and a reminder that the world is a place of green growing things, many of them not weeds. And we appreciate the garden club thinking of us when they could have been planting petunias in the downtown traffic islands instead, and those funny-looking cocomat hangers around the fire station and the old five-and-dime, which is what they’d usually be doing.”
     Two convicts from the prison, Carl and Willie, have been selected to help the garden clubbers with their work. Both men have been using their time behind bars to read, study, and earn credits towards degrees from Schmelzer-Baudette Community College. Willie in particular reveals a broad knowledge of trends in contemporary literature from countries all over the world. “I don’t think so much about nations, you know? Nations come and nations go. I think about cultures instead, living cultures. You know, it’s a lot bigger world than you might think. It’s a lot bigger world than you might have any idea of.”

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Email from Myra Coin to her sister Delia:

I want to help these guys, I really do. So maybe it’s getting a little out of hand. We’re building such great gardens up there, we just keep turning over more and more of the grass and pushing out and away from the prison walls and starting new beds and the plants are just taking off like wildfire: cantaloupes, broccoli, cabbages, you name it. I think Mr. Grilledcheese is getting a little nervous but the PR has been so good. I heard the cable news station wants to send a crew up next week. It’s so involving!
     So. I went home last night and sat Jim down and talked with him about it and had a good sharing and told him just exactly how I’ve been feeling. NOT!!! Are you kidding me?? I can’t even tell him when the car’s on the fritz, he goes ballistic! So I’m keeping it all inside.

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Phone call from Darius Ovenbird to his brother Dale:

Whose idea was it to have a couple of prisoners joining us out there? I mean, OK, they’re good at lifting the big bags of compost, but we didn’t really need any help . . . (inaudible) . . . What I’m saying is, we were supposed to be doing our gardening thing and now we’re doing, what? Rehab for these guys? Are they supposed to be taking over the work now? I’m not trained in that stuff. Seriously, Dale, no one tells me anything.
     No, I don’t know what they’re in for. Carl and Willie. Whoever. I don’t want to know. I didn’t sign up for that. I could be spending my time better if I went back to planting the traffic islands and the cocomat hangers, you know, which we’re really behind on by now. It takes us 25 minutes to get up there from town, 25 minutes to get back. That’s a hassle. That’s time.
     What? What beehives? No, I didn’t. What about the beehives?

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News item:

DUNNVILLE – Authorities are still searching for two convicts who escaped yesterday from the Dunnville-Esterhazy prison complex while on a work detail at the new gardens outside the visitors’ entrance. There are unconfirmed reports that the men fled in the company of three female members of the Dunnville Garden Club, using a vehicle belonging to one of the women. A spokesperson for the prison administration declined to say how the two men effected their escape, stating only that the incident is under investigation. Reports that investigators found a quart of fresh honey in the locker of T. Bone Hartzell, the prison guard in charge of the work detail that day, are unconfirmed at this time.

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News item:

DUNNVILLE – Three members of the Dunnville Garden Club who assisted two convicts in their escape from a local prison last month have been apprehended by Minnesota state police. Acting on a tip from a clerk at a convenience store, troopers also detained the two prisoners after a brief car chase. It is believed that the five were on their way to Canada.

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Excerpt from an informal address to garden club members by Dora Dalrymple, acting president:

I hope we can put this strange episode behind us now, don’t you? I’m reminded of the words of Dunnville’s famous first settler, Considerate Dunn, which are inscribed on a bronze plate attached to the Dunnville Stone at the town hall: “It’ll all be water over the dam just as soon as we get it built.” Going forward, I’d like us to keep that wise saying in mind.  

Carl and Willie were model prisoners, if I may say so, as well as talented and enthusiastic gardeners, as it turned out. I wish I could say the same for more people. I mean … well … you know. Being out in the fresh air and sunshine and digging in the dirt, watching the plants that you started from tiny seeds germinate and mature, every gardener knows the satisfaction that comes from that. And then, the bond that evidently formed between the prisoners and our garden clubbers. It wasn’t what people think, I know it wasn’t. It was the gardening that brought them together. Who knows what was going on in their minds. Who knows what they could have accomplished? But for now, they are going to have to mop up the wreckage back at home.

Myra and Jackie and Phyllis, each so different from the others, Phyllis a grandmother twice over. My oh my. These were my friends. Well, I guess they still are. Gardening can bring people together, we all know that. They just took it a step too far.

From what I understand, Willie and Carl are headed to a federal penitentiary, and they will be there a good long while. I feel bad for them. They should have known that you can’t … they should have known not to … well … anyway. I hope that they have pleasant memories of their gardening days at Dunnville-Esterhazy, memories that will help to sustain them in their … time to come.

In a way, we misled them. In a way, they misled us. It happens, even when your intentions are the best. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying. That’s what gardeners do. We get up early and put our boots on and grab a shovel and a hoe. We bring things to life and we bring things to fruition, and we get a little dirty along the way, sometimes a lot dirty.  

I understand that Phyllis, Jackie, and Myra will be getting relatively easy sentences, to be served at the Golightly correctional facility. I applaud that. We’d like them to be able to return to us as soon as possible, here at the sign of the Golden Trowel! In the meantime, it’s my understanding that they will be offered beneficial work experiences, both at the prison and in work-release programs, in the areas of commercial food preparation, dry cleaning, and horticulture.