EM: The first day you came to Green Animals, what was it like? Tell me about that first today.
GM: Oh, OK. Well way back after the, after the 1938 hurricane, there
were trees down all over the place. And um, well, we had heavy equipment
that we could use to, you know, clean up the place, to cut trees down and
pick up the stuff because they didn't, they didn't own a truck or own
anything. And, and of course, I was doing tree work in Newport anyway,
you know, working with my father.
And then, and then I - the
following year I went there the front lawn was all full of shrubs, wild,
wild rose bushes and bayberry, all sorts of things. So we had a heavy
machine that would cut that. So I went there with a big tractor and a
machine and cut that. And that was a hot day.
But um, I've had a very
interesting life, I've met people from all over the world and --
EM: Can you just say who Alice was--
GM: Alice was Mr. and Mrs. Brayton's daughter. Yeah, she's the one that
started restoring everything and then of course, when he passed away, Mr.
Brayton passed away, Miss Brayton moved there and made it a permanent
home.
EM: And she never married.
GM: She never married, no, no. Well, I don't know whether the family
would want me to say this, but it was, it was one of those things that the
boyfriend before, uh, before the father, before her father died. But it
seems that, uh, uh, they made a deal there, and uh, so, uh, this is the
way it went, so uh, there's other men after her, but so she, uh, she says,
no, it was the one man that I wanted and it didn't work out that way. So
I, I just won't get married.
EM: How many times has it been destroyed by hurricanes.
GM: Well, it's been five times. The worst, the worst one, the '54
hurricane was the worst one. That really, it almost, well, you could say
that, if you didn't have the love for it that I had, you'd say, well, we
might just as well cut the whole thing down and forget it. But uh, I made
up my mind that we were going to get that back. And because I love what
I'm doing this is why I'm still doing it, and uh, and I said I'm getting,
I'll get this back, it's going to take time, but I'm going to get it back
in shape again. And I did.
EM: Tell me what happens with ice. Details.
GM: Well, yeah, when the ice, the ice will stay on them unless you get
a warm day, a good, sunny day, for it to start to melt. But it takes
three or four days to melt the ice. The ice, see, it forms on and into
the animal. And, uh, then, uh, even its own shade helps to prevent the
sun from melting it. As the top melts, then it begins to -- the sun
begins to shine through and begins to get more of the -- of the ice that's
inside. But you can't shake it off, because you only break branches. So
you just have to stand by and wait. What I did with some of them, uh, I
would prop the -- I'd prop the taller ones, I'd prop them up with, with --
I'd get a -- a stake or something, and I'd prop them up and I'd tie them.
But other than that, there was -- there wasn't too much you could do about
it, just to sit back and wait and hope that it doesn't stay on too -- too
long. Because if the bend- -- the branch bends down and stays too long,
then it's awful hard to get it straight again. But it takes that shape
and it's a -- it's the same thing like you're in building the animal. If
you want a -- if you want to form something, you take a branch and bend
it, and you tie it down. And after a year or so, it doesn't need to be
tied anymore; it hardened off in that shape and it stays there. And this
is how we build those things, too.
EM: It sounds like you train them.
GM: Oh, you train them. Yeah. As they grow. Now, people come there
and they want -- they want -- they, oh, I have a big yew, or I have a big
... . And how do I start carving that out? I says, "Well, forget it, you
don't carve anything out. As they grow you train them as they grow." You
get the branches to do what you want them to do while they're young, while
they're soft, and you tie, uh, tie them, or if you want to, uh, one that
is too low, you can prop it up, and -- but they all have to be tied until
the wood hardens off. And then it will stay there. And then the main
thing, too, is that, in the trimming, you've got to hold your original
line all the time. They say, "Well, you can't do that; the book says you
leave a half-an-inch everytime you trim." Well, no, you don't do that,
because you'd lose all the proportion. You could do that with a hedge, or
if you have a -- any flat surface, or even an archway, it will get bigger
and bigger, you can do that. But with the animals, if you want to hold
the detail and you want to hold the size, the proportions, it's got to go
right back to the same cut all the time.
EM: What kind of damage do the insects do? Talk about insects.
GM: All right. Well, the true insects, of course, chew the foliage. But
the worst, the worst of all the insects is, uh, the spider mite that feeds
on the -- the sap from the leaves. And if they -- they multiply by the
thousands during the hot dry weather, they multiply by the thousands from
day-to-day. And, uh, if you don't spray them, you can lose all the
leaves. They weaken the leaves so much that they fall off. So they have
to be sprayed. We use -- we use mostly -- well, there's several things
you can use, but mostly I use Malathion, because it gases out and it goes
right through the whole plant, see. If you use a contact spray, then a
lot of them will survive because they wouldn't get hit. But with
Malathion, the gas, it gases out, and it goes right through the whole
plant and it works out fine.
EM: Were you ever in that house while there was a hurricane raging around
and destroying the garden? Tell me about that.
GM: Yeah, well, Mary and I just sat it out in the house, waiting --
waiting for it to, uh, to calm down. And the house rattles a bit, and you
hear a snap here, a snap there, branches breaking off a tree here and
there. And you -- you stay away from the windows because all of a sudden
some branch might come through the window. But, um, we've been quite
fortunate, as far as the house goes. We lost a lot of shingles off the
house, off the roof. But, um, other than that, uh, not too bad. You get
some water damage, uh, after it rips the shingles off, then you get leeks
here and there. And, uh, sometimes through the windows, or under the
doors, they will always get water forced through.
EM: But could you, during the hurricane, could you hear the garden being
destroyed around you?
GM: Well, it was -- yeah, you care about the garden being destroyed
around you, but you care about yourself, too. If you get out there, and
get hit, huh, with some of these branches there, you're all done. It's
not -- it's not something that you want to walk around. A lot of people
have gotten killed, uh, by going out and wanting to watch the -- the
branches fly around and things like that. But, no, we don't do that. We
just stay away from the windows and -- and just hope that it -- the noise
you're hearing isn't creating as much damage as you think it is.
EM: It's really loud?
GM: Oh, it's loud. The wind. Yeah, that wind is loud, and then, of
course, on top of that, you hear something snap here and you -- I wonder
what that was. But we were, after the -- after the '54 hurricane, we were
18 days without power, no electric. Uh, lamp posts, the telephone posts
came down, electric posts, and all sorts of things.
EM: Also, what kind of damage could be done by the sun? Could the sun
also destroy things?
GM: Well, uh -- really anything that's out, that's been in the outdoors,
and it's been out, uh, exposed to, to the sun before, or the elements,
will stand the sun. We've never had sun hot enough, uh. I don't want to
say anything like that, because if it burns the plants, it's going to burn
people also. But, uh, if you take something out of the shade, or out of
the greenhouse, or your houseplants, and put them out, expose them to the
sun, in about 15 minutes, they've all burnt. They, they just burn right
up, because they can't take it. Well, it's like taking your shirt off and
going out then, you'll have a sunburn that, uh, it will really peel your
skin right off.
EM: Didn't you ever worry that this is private property, and something
might happen to Alice and the whole thing could be lost?
GM: Well, I -- really, I never did. Uh, that was one of the last things
that I ever thought of, was that Miss Brayton was going to die. I -- I
never gave it a thought. Because I loved what I was doing, and she was so
nice to me, that I figured, well, we'd just continue on and on and on, and
that's it. I never -- didn't worry about getting old, or she getting old.
She was -- she was a lot older than I was, but that was something I never
worried about, I never seemed to -- it didn't seem to enter my mind,
anything like that.
EM: But it happened.
GM: It happens. Yeah, yeah, well, it's like they say, nothing is
forever. (chuckles) Yeah. But, uh, well, I still say that I've had a
wonderful life there. She was very good to me. The people from the
Preservation Society are also very good to me, and uh, they, uh, they'll
do anything for me, and, uh, what more could you want?
EM: Well, we've gone through the various things that could destroy the
garden. We've gone through caterpillars, Japanese beetles, spider mites,
hurricanes, what else can you tell me? What else could jeopardize these
animals?
GM: Oh, well, that. If that's --that's the one thing that worries me
about the topiary, is not just anybody can go and start trimming. They --
it may -- the first year or so it may look like it's not too bad, but the
minute you start adding growth, little by little, a little this time, next
time you trim, you add a little more, after about a year's time, you see
it start losing its shape. And that's -- that's the thing. And this is
one of the things that I keep drilling into -- like, Mary Ann, that I
think is doing a good job. And I keep drilling into -- this into her,
that you've got to hold the line, because any little bit that you leave
here, next time you -- you leave a little bit more, because the new
growth, the new growth is soft, and you'll cut the new growth, and the
growth from the year before will stay. And then you've got to watch that
they don't start to build a hump here, a hump there, and all that.
EM: With all that you know, has anyone ever tried to tell you what to do?
GM: Oh, a lot of them, a lot of them would do that. As I said, I'd just
tell them, I said, "Look, I've done this all my life. I know what -- I
know what to do, and that's it." But there's always somebody with, uh,
sometimes good advice, and most of the time is just something that
everybody knows anyway, or poor advice. (laughs). But I never waited to
get advice from anybody to do anything that -- that I knew, I was born
with it. So I didn't, I didn't need that.
Afternote:The bulk of Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is made up of
long
interviews
Morris shot in 1993 and 1994 with Brooks, Hoover, Mendez and Mendonca,
which then served as raw material for the mosaic of the final film.
We've reproduced these chunks of the transcript of those interviews,
both to flesh out the briefer portraits contained in the film, and to
suggest the many ways Morris has manipulated his interviews in the process
of
editing his films. As an experiment, you might compare Morris's version
to that
of Tony Hoang's and to the original text.
Then we had, uh, and there was
another one -- there was the one in '60 that did quite a lot of damage,
but not nearly as bad as the '54. And then we had -- we, we had one I
think was in the '70s, again, it affected mostly the tall things, the
camel, uh, the gira- -- well, the camel and the giraffe, it knocked the
heads off. But there was enough material that wasn't broken that I could
bring back and, uh, restore that in less time.
But the only other thing that
we dread there is icing. If we have rain that's freezing, there's nothing
you can do about it. And it will weigh them down because it breaks a lot
of branches. We get a lot of snow. Then I'd go out, and brush the snow
off, even while it was snowing, becau- -- to take the weight off. But
with icing, you can't, you can't do that.
I've got -- I've got three
that are dug out there now that I'm going to condition them to go to the
flower show in Providence in February.
And it's simple enough. The
wood is hard there. And what -- like I tell them, I'm trying to teach
different ones to do that, and I tell them, just bounce the sheers off the
plant all the time, and it will cut right down to the -- to the original
line all the time.
But anything that's -- that
has been exposed to the weather, the sun won't bother it. In fact, most
things love the sun anyway. This is what I -- this topiary that I've got,
they were planted on the foundation planting of the house. And they only
got sun half a day. So I've dug them out, and I got them out where
they'll get the sun the full day so that they will -- I want them to
thicken a little bit more, get more growth, and condition them. And when
the weather gets cold, I'm going to move them into the greenhouse so that
they'll continue to grow. The flower show is in February. And the only
way you can have anything worthwhile, that type, that deep into the winter
there, is by protecting it and hoping that they get it up there, if it's
not a real cold, cold day when you get it out of the greenhouse, and they
expose -- well, it will take about three-quarters of an hour from there to
the -- to where they're going to be shown, is enough to cause damage.
They'll have to be going in a closed van, or uh, it'd be the only way, to
be in a closed van. You could wrap them up, but I don't think that would
help too much.
Back