Enchanted Garden

I love this story, love the stories in this first section of the book, esp. the stories about children. I love the "Ping!" of the telephone line snapping (and it catches the general disrepair that Italy suffering immediately after the war), the sense that amazing things happen and that if you don't pay attention you'll miss them. I think Calvino captures the innocence of childhood, esp. the way children sense injustice, that there are places in the world that they "don't belong" based just on the accidents of their birth. The garden seems to be "enchanted" to them, but the irony of the story--what we see that the children don't--is that this garden is typical and banal, a rich person's place wasted on the people who live there.