On the first Monday in May, a phalanx of green-garbed gardeners appears in the Luxembourg Gardens., some driving smoky fork-lift trucks delivering enormous palms through the open doors of the Orangerie to their summer positions around the park; others tilling the beds and, with mathematical exactitude, making lines in the soil for planting summer flowers.
To their mathematics, add mischief. Once, standing in another Paris park, enumerating the glories of Gallic garden design to my students, a sprinkler behind me suddenly sizzled to life, sousing me in an instant. Off in the distance, one gardener was turning a valve with a long wrench and another was rolling over with laughter. My students were no less amused.
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