“Once upon a time there lived a rose and a toad. The rose bush on which the rose blossomed grew in a small semicircular flower garden in front of a village house. The flower garden was very neglected; weeds grew thickly over old flowerbeds that had grown into the ground and along paths that no one had cleaned or sprinkled with sand for a long time. The wooden lattice with pegs trimmed in the form of tetrahedral peaks, once painted with green oil paint, is now completely peeling, dried out and fell apart; the pikes were taken away by the village boys to play soldiers and by the men approaching the house to fight off the angry watchdog with a company of other dogs...”