The Enid Blyton Society
The Enid Blyton Nature Readers (No. 25)
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Book Details...

First edition: 1946
Publisher: Macmillan
Illustrator: Eileen A. Soper
Category: The Enid Blyton Nature Readers
Genre: Nature
Type: Readers

On This Page...

List of Contents
Artwork
Review by Terry Gustafson

  1. Diggy's Little Garden
    Story: Specially Written
  2. Hoppetty-Skip and Crawl-About
    Story: Specially Written
Nature plates, illustrated by Eileen A. Soper



Diggy's Little Garden

Diggy is a goblin with an idea. When he bought his cottage the garden was full of weeds so after spending a long time pulling them out, he decided to build a wall round his property to prevent any more weeds from entering again.

The wall is built and then Diggy plants flowers and lettuces and onions to replace the unsightly weeds. They sprout very well indeed but then a problem presents itself - and we all know what that might be. Certainly the desired plants and vegetables are prominent in Diggy's garden, but so are a pile more weeds.

Diggy's surprised and also quite enraged. He asks a dandelion how it came to be in his property and is told by the talking plant that it arrived as a little seed flying on the wind with a parachute of hairs. Diggy pulls it up and after chucking the unwanted plant over his wall he views some thistles. How did they get in? When he's told they soared into his garden as thistle-down the goblin grumbles and digs them up as well - vowing to himself that next year he'll tolerate just the plants he sows in his garden and nothing else.

The following year however more invaders are discovered in Diggy's garden and once again he's very angry. He enquires of a small gorse bush as to its origin and is informed that it came from one of the seeds shot out like bullets from a large clump of gorse over the wall. Diggy doesn't want this at all ... and he doesn't need an ash-tree in his garden either because it'll prevent the sunshine getting through. How did this trespasser arrive?

"I was an ash-key, a little spinner that whirled away on the breeze ever so high."

Diggy's determined to make his wall even taller to keep out gorse and ash seeds, and he's also discovered a maple tree. It's just not good enough, so after another spell of work the weeds are all gone and the wall has now been made much higher.

As we know, seeds use many different means of transport to different locations and Diggy learns this as well because a year later he discovers a small hawthorn tree in his garden and a tiny rose stem has also made its presence by simply climbing the wall. Yes, vines have their own way of getting over things.

The theme of course deals with those various methods plants use to distribute their seeds, and when Diggy learns that even birds spread them about he has a word with a few of his feathered neighbours and manages to extract a promise they won't wipe their seed-encrusted beaks in his garden anymore. Contrary to what we might imagine, the high wall actually keeps dandelion seeds and thistle-down from re-entering, and the birds also keep their promise - so is everything now settled?

Unfortunately 'No!'

When another year passes, Diggy's again frustrated upon noticing a mass of wild willow-herb in his garden. No doubt about it - various undesired members of the plant family want admittance. They won't settle for anything less and, to their advantage, there are many other ways of transporting seeds.

Horror of Horrors - Diggy eventually learns that he himself has become an unwitting carrier; so I think it's time he simply accepted this all-embracing aspect of our environment.

Hoppitty-Skip and Crawl-About

One of course is a frog, and the other a toad.

They meet up and Hoppitty-Skip lets on that he's off to find himself a little wife so that she will eventually lay some eggs for him in the pond. He joins Crawl-About in his watery environment and in a short time after completing his courtship, the resulting jelly-encased eggs are floating about near the pond surface. Crawl-About has also experienced a whirlwind romance and now his family eggs are in a double-string placed amongst the water-weeds.

The rest is history - frog and toad tadpoles are soon wriggling about and having a lovely time. Hoppitty-Skip and Crawl-About eventually leave the pond and find themselves a nice damp ditch in which to reside and exchange information about themselves. Note is taken of the different ways they react to danger such as that posed by a threatening rat who's startled when the frog gives a sudden leap ... and a passing mouse learns why they both possess such long tongues. The rat appears yet again, but when it threatens the toad a successful defence is called into play.

Cold weather eventually arrives and this means that Hoppitty-Skip with his friend Crawl-About practically vanish from the scene.

#1:

Way back in the days when Enid Blyton's gnomes and pixies flourished there was probably no access to weed-killers.

#2:

When frogs hibernate in ponds, they spend months at a time in the mud and only surface occasionally to breathe. How do amphibians achieve this? An answer exists and it's something to do with the amphibian's ability to absorb oxygen through its skin when immersed.
Another typical example of Enid Blyton imparting knowledge via her short stories. The booklets actually have a teachers' note inside their covers.