DESERT GARDENS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1940, Page 8

DESERT GARDENS

DOMESTIC TOUCH TO CAMP LIFE. NEW ZEALANDERS IN EGYPT. (N Z E.F. Official News Service.) May 21. The same pride which residents of a garden suburb take in their well-kept homes has been shown by many members of the Second New Zealand. Expeditionary Force in the way they have added a domestic touch to their desert camp. There is hardly a cluster of tents which has not by some means been improved in appearance. Whitewashed stones, for example, mark out parade grounds, pathways and tent entrances everywhere. This is a form of decoiation developed to a high degree by some units, which have laid out intricate designs in front of their headciuarters. Landscape gardening in stones, however, is comparatively simple. Real flowers bloom in the officers’ lines in one section of the Divisional Headquarters area. Potted plants flourish at the doorway of almost every tent. In the transformation of the entrance .to the officers’ mess in the same area there is proof of a remarkable triumph over gardening obstacles. Two neatlytrimmed ornamental trees flank the pathway, pot-plants form a veritable flower border, and creepers are being encouraged to climb wire supports. Even a patch of turf, transported from the irrigated land beside the Nile, is struggling to survive the dry heat reflected by the desert sand.

The pride and joy of one of the men’s tents in another part of the camp is an aspidistra which is tended as carefully as it would be in any suburban drawing room. Each of its leaves has been dedicated to individual members of the tent’s personnel. Its origin is kept a dark secret, and the reply to questions is that it was merely “acquired.” This home-away-from-home movement is probably prompted by the same spirit that moves the staff at one cookhouse to chalk up menus offering delicacies with such names as “braised steak a la Hitler’s hide” and “Goebells Hash.” A mess-room sign, “Moaners' Rest,” may also spring from the same source. Such trends as these seem to point to the lesson that man, even in uniform, is a domestic creature.