"I won't be selfish, Mary," Christopher said. "You invented the game,
and you told me about them. You shall have them in water on your
dressing-table; they might get lost in the nursery. Bessy is always
throwing things out. To-morrow I shall go and look for galligaskins."
I was too glad to keep them from Bessy's observation, as well as her
unparalleled powers of destruction, which I knew well. I put them into
a slim glass on my table, and looked stupidly at them, and then out of
the window at Mary's Meadow.
So they had lived--and grown--and settled there--and were now in
bloom. _My_ plants.
Next morning I was sitting, drawing, in the school-room window, when I
saw the Old Squire coming up the drive. There is no mistaking him when
you can see him at all. He is a big, handsome old man, with white
whiskers, and a white hat, and white gaiters, and he generally wears a
light coat, and a flower in his button-hole. The flower he wore this
morning looked like--, but I was angry with myself for thinking of it,
and went on drawing again, as well as I could, for I could not help
wondering why he was coming to our house. Then it struck me he might
have seen Chris trespassing, and he might be coming at last to lay a
formal complaint.
Twenty minutes later James came to tell me that Father wished to see
me in the library, and when I got there, Father was just settling his
eye-glass in his eye, and the Old Squire was standing on the
hearth-rug, with a big piece of paper in his hand. And then I saw that
I was right, and that the flowers in his button-hole were
hose-in-hose.
As I came in he laid down the paper, took the hose-in-hose out of his
button-hole in his left hand, and held out his right hand to me,
saying: "I'm more accustomed to public speaking than to private
speaking, Miss Mary. But--will you be friends with me?"
In Mary's Meadow my head had got all confused, because I was
frightened. I was not frightened to-day, and I saw the whole matter in
a moment. He had found the double cowslips, and he knew now that I was
neither a liar nor a thief. I was glad, but I could not feel very
friendly to him. I said, "You can speak when you are angry."
Though he was behind me, I could feel Father coming nearer, and I
knew somehow that he had taken out his glass again to rub it and put
it back, as he does when he is rather surprised or amused. I was
afraid he meant to laugh at me afterwards, and he can tease terribly,
but I could not have helped saying what came into my head that morning
if I had tried. When you have suffered a great deal about anything,
you cannot sham, not even politeness.
The Old Squire got rather red. Then he said, "I am afraid I am very
hasty, my dear, and say very unjustifiable things. But I am very
sorry, and I beg your pardon. Will you forgive me?"
I said, "Of course, if you're sorry, I forgive you, but you have been
a very long time in repenting."
Which was true. If I had been cross with one, of the others, and had
borne malice for five months, I should have thought myself very
wicked. But when I had said it, I felt sorry, for the old gentleman
made no answer. Father did not speak either, and I began to feel very
miserable. I touched the flowers, and the Old Squire gave them to me
in silence. I thanked him very much, and then I said--
"I am very glad you know about it now.... I'm very glad they lived ...
I hope you like them?... I hope, if you do like them, that they'll
grow and spread all over your field."
The Old Squire spoke at last. He said, "It is not my field any
longer."
I said, "Oh, why?"
"I have given it away; I have been a long time in repenting, but when
I did repent I punished myself. I have given it away."
It overwhelmed me, and when he took up the big paper again, I thought
he was going, and I tried to stop him, for I was sorry I had spoken
unkindly to him, and I wanted to be friends.
"Please don't go," I said. "Please stop and be friends. And oh,
please, please don't give Mary's Meadow away. You mustn't punish
yourself. There's nothing to punish yourself for. I forgive you with
all my heart, and I'm sorry I spoke crossly. I have been so very
miserable, and I was so vexed at wasting the hose-in-hose, because
Bessy's great-aunt gave them to me, and I've none left. Oh, the
unkindest thing you could do to me now would be to give away Mary's
Meadow."
The Old Squire had taken both my hands in his, and now he asked very
kindly--"Why, my dear, why don't you want me to give away Mary's
Meadow?"
"Because we are so fond of it. And because I was beginning to hope
that now we're friends, and you know we don't want to steal your
things, or to hurt your field, perhaps you would let us play in it
sometimes, and perhaps have Saxon to play with us there. We are so
very fond of him too."
"You are fond of Mary's Meadow?" said the Old Squire.
"Yes, yes! We have been fond of it all our lives. We don't think there
is any field like it, and I don't believe there can be. Don't give it
away. You'll never get one with such flowers in it again. And now
there are hose-in-hose, and they are not at all common. Bessy's aunt's
aunt has only got one left, and she's taking care of it with a shovel.
And if you'll let us in we'll plant a lot of things, and do no harm,
we will indeed. And the nightingale will be here directly. Oh, don't
give it away!"
My head was whirling now with the difficulty of persuading him, and I
did not hear what he said across me to my father. But I heard Father's
reply--"Tell her yourself, sir."
On which the Old Squire stuffed the big paper into my arms, and put
his hand on my head and patted it.
"I told you I was a bad hand at talking, my dear," he said, "but
Mary's Meadow is given away, and that's the Deed of Gift which you've
got in your arms, drawn up as tight as any rascal of a lawyer can do
it, and that's not so tight, I believe, but what some other rascal of
a lawyer could undo it. However, they may let you alone. For I've
given it to you, my dear, and it is yours. So you can plant, and play,
and do what you please there. 'You, and your heirs and assigns, for
ever,' as the rascals say."
It was my turn now to be speechless. But as I stared blankly in front
of me, I saw that Father had come round, and was looking at me through
his eye-glass. He nodded to me, and said, "Yes, Mary, the Squire has
given Mary's Meadow to you, and it is yours."
* * * * *
Nothing would induce the Old Squire to take it back, so I had to have
it, for my very own. He said he had always been sorry he had spoken so
roughly to me, but he could not say so, as he and Father were not on
speaking terms. Just lately he was dining with Lady Catherine, to meet
her cousins from the barracks, and she was telling people after dinner
about our game (rather mean of her, I think, to let out our secrets at
a dinner-party), and when he heard about my planting things in the
hedges, he remembered what I had said. And next day he went to the
place to look, and there were the hose-in-hose.
Oh, how delighted the others were when they heard that Mary's Meadow
belonged to me.
"It's like having an Earthly Paradise given to you, straight off!"
said Harry.
"And one that doesn't want weeding," said Adela.
"And oh, Mary, Mary!" cried Arthur. "Think of the yards and yards of
top-spit. It does rejoice me to think I can go to you now when I'm making
compost, and need not be beholden to that old sell-up-your-grandfather John
for as much as would fill Adela's weeding basket, and that's about as small
an article as any one can make-believe with."
"It's very heavy when it's full," said Adela.
"Is everything hers?" asked Christopher. "Is the grass hers, and the
trees hers, and the hedges hers, and the rooks hers, and the starling
hers, and will the nightingale be hers when he comes home, and if she
could dig through to the other side of the world, would there be a
field the same size in Australia that would be hers, and are the sheep
hers, and--"
"For mercy's sake stop that catalogue, Chris," said Father. "Of course
the sheep are not hers; they were moved yesterday. By the bye, Mary, I
don't know what you propose to do with your property, but if you like
to let it to me, I'll turn some sheep in to-morrow, and I'll pay you
so much a year, which I advise you to put into the Post Office Savings
Bank."
I couldn't fancy Mary's Meadow always without sheep, so I was too
thankful; though at first I could not see that it was fair that dear
Father should let me have his sheep to look pretty in my field for
nothing, and pay me, too. He is always teasing me about my field, and
he teases me a good deal about the Squire, too. He says we have set up
another queer friendship in the family, and that the Old Squire and I
are as odd a pair as Aunt Catherine and Chris.
I am very fond of the Old Squire now, and he is very kind to me. He
wants to give me Saxon, but I will not accept him. It would be
selfish. But the Old Squire says I had better take him, for we have
quite spoilt him for a yard dog by petting him, till he has not a bit
of savageness left in him. We do not believe Saxon ever was savage;
but I daren't say so to the Old Squire, for he does not like you to
think you know better than he does about anything. There is one other
subject on which he expects to be humoured, and I am careful not to
offend him. He cannot tolerate the idea that he might be supposed to
have yielded to Father the point about which they went to law, in
giving Mary's Meadow to me. He is always lecturing me on
encroachments, and the abuse of privileges, and warning me to be very
strict about trespassers on the path through Mary's Meadow; and now
that the field is mine, nothing will induce him to walk in it without
asking my leave. That is his protest against the decision from which
he meant to appeal.
Though I have not accepted Saxon, he spends most of his time with us.
He likes to come for the night, because he sleeps on the floor of my
room, instead of in a kennel, which must be horrid, I am sure.
Yesterday, the Old Squire said, "One of these fine days, when Master
Saxon does not come home till morning, he'll find a big mastiff in his
kennel, and will have to seek a home for himself where he can."
Chris has been rather whimsical lately. Father says Lady Catherine
spoils him. One day he came to me, looking very peevish, and said,
"Mary, if a hedgehog should come and live in one of your hedges,
Michael says he would be yours, he's sure. If Michael finds him, will
you give him to me?"
"Yes, Chris; but what do you want with a hedgehog?"
"I want him to sleep by my bed," said Chris. "You have Saxon by your
bed; I want something by mine. I want a hedgehog. I feel discontented
without a hedgehog. I think I might have something the matter with my
brain if I didn't get a hedgehog pretty soon. Can I go with Michael
and look for him this afternoon?" and he put his hand to his forehead.
"Chris, Chris!" I said, "you should not be so sly. You're a real
slyboots. Double-stockings and slyboots." And I took him on my lap.
Chris put his arms round my neck, and buried his cheek against mine.
"I won't be sly, Mary," he whispered; and then, hugging me as he hugs
Lady Catherine, he added, "For I do love you; for you are a darling,
and I do really think it always was yours."
"What, Chris?"
"If not," said Chris, "why was it always called MARY'S MEADOW?"
LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GARDEN.
LETTER I.
"All is fine that is fit."_--Old Proverb._
DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,
When, with the touching confidence of youth, that your elders have
made-up as well as grown-up minds on all subjects, you asked my
opinion on _Ribbon-gardening_, the above proverb came into my head, to
the relief of its natural tendency to see an inconvenient number of
sides to every question. The more I reflect upon it, the more I am
convinced it is a comfortably compact confession of my faith on all
matters decorative, and thence on the decoration of gardens.
I take some credit to myself for having the courage of my moderation,
since you obviously expect a more sweeping reply. The bedding-out
system is in bad odour just now; and you ask, "Wasn't it hideous?"
and "Wasn't it hateful?" and "Will it ever come into fashion again, to
the re-extermination of the dear old-fashioned flowers which we are
now slowly, and with pains, recalling from banishment?"
To discover one's own deliberate opinion upon a subject is not always
easy--prophetic opinions one must refuse to offer. But I feel no doubt
whatever that the good lady who shall coddle this little garden at
some distant date after me will be quite as fond of her borders as I
am of mine; and I suspect that these will be about as like each other
as our respective best bonnets.
The annals of Fashion must always be full of funny stories. I know two
of the best amateur gardeners of the day; they are father and son. The
father, living _and gardening_ still (he sent me a specimen lily
lately by parcel post, and is beholden to no one for help, either with
packing or addressing, in his constant use of this new convenience),
is making good way between ninety and a hundred years of age. What we
call old-fashioned flowers were the pets of his youth. About the time
when ribbon-bordering "came in," he changed his residence, and, in the
garden where he had cultivated countless kinds of perennials, his son
reigned in his stead. The horticultural taste proved hereditary, but
in the younger man it took the impress of the fashion of his day.
Away went the "herbaceous stuff" on to rubbish heaps, and the borders
were soon gay with geraniums, and kaleidoscopic with calceolarias. But
"the whirligig of Time brings in his revenges," and, perhaps, a real
love for flowers could never, in the nature of things, have been
finally satisfied by the dozen or by the score; so it came to pass
that the garden is once more herbaceous, and far-famed as such. The
father--a _perennial_ gardener in more senses than one, long may he
flourish!--has told me, chuckling, of many a penitential pilgrimage to
the rubbish heaps, if haply fragments could be found of the herbaceous
treasures which had been so rashly cast away.
Doubtless there were many restorations. Abandoned "bedding stuff" soon
perishes, but uprooted clumps of "herbaceous stuff" linger long in
shady corners, and will sometimes flower pathetically on the heap
where they have been thrown to rot.
I once saw a fine Queen Anne country house--an old one; not a modern
imitation. Chippendale had made the furniture. He had worked in the
house. Whether the chairs and tables were beautiful or not is a matter
of taste, but they were well made and seasoned; so, like the
herbaceous stuff, they were hardy. The next generation decided that
they were ugly. New chairs and tables were bought, and the Chippendale
"stuff" was sent up into the maids' bedrooms, and down to the men's.
It drifted into the farmhouses and cottages on the estate. No doubt a
good deal was destroyed. The caprices of fashion are not confined to
one class, and the lower classes are the more prodigal and
destructive. I have seen the remains of Elizabethan bedsteads under
hay-ricks, and untold "old oak" has fed the cottage fire. I once asked
a village maiden why the people made firewood of carved arm-chairs,
when painted pinewood, upholstered in American cloth, is, if lovelier,
not so lasting. Her reply was--"They get stalled on[3] 'em." And she
added: "Maybe a man 'll look at an old arm-chair that's stood on t'
hearth-place as long as he can remember, and he'll say--I'm fair sick
o' t' seet o' _yon_. We mun have a new 'un for t' Feast. _I'll chop
thee oop_!'"
[Footnote 3: "Stalled on" = tired of. "T' feast" = the village feast,
an annual festival and fair, for which most houses in that district
are cleaned within and whitewashed without.]
Possibly some of the Chippendale chairs also fell to the hatchet and
fed the flames, but most of them bore neglect as well as hardy
perennials, and when Queen Anne houses and "old Chips" came into
fashion again, there was routing and rummaging from attic to cellar,
in farmhouse and cottage, and the banished furniture went triumphantly
back to its own place.
I first saw single dahlias in some "little gardens" in Cheshire, five
or six years ago. No others had ever been cultivated there. In these
quiet nooks the double dahlia was still a new-fangled flower. If the
single dahlias yet hold their own, those little gardens must now find
themselves in the height of the floral fashion, with the unusual luck
of the conservative old woman who "wore her bonnet till the fashions
came round again."
It is such little gardens which have kept for us the Blue Primrose, the
highly fragrant Summer Roses (including Rose de Meaux, and the red and
copper Briar), countless beautiful varieties of Daffy-down-dillies, and all
the host of sweet, various and hardy flowers which are now returning, like
the Chippendale chairs, from the village to the hall.
It is still in cottage gardens chiefly that the Crown Imperial hangs
its royal head. One may buy small sheaves of it in the Taunton
market-place on early summer Saturdays. What a stately flower it is!
and, in the paler variety, of what an exquisite yellow! I always fancy
_Fritillaria Imperialis flava_ to be dressed in silk from the Flowery
Land--that robe of imperial yellow which only General Gordon and the
blood royal of China are entitled to wear!
"All is fine that is fit." And is the "bedding-out"
system--Ribbon-gardening--ever fit, and therefore ever fine? My
little friend, I am inclined to think that it sometimes is. For long
straight borders in parks and public promenades, for some terrace
garden on a large scale, viewed perhaps from windows at a considerable
distance, and, in a general way, for pleasure-grounds ordered by
professional skill, and not by an _amateur_ gardener (which, mark you,
being interpreted, is gardener _for love_!), the bedding-out style
_is_ good for general effect, and I think it is capable of prettier
ingenuities than one often sees employed in its use. I think that, if
I ever gardened in this expensive and mechanical style, I should make
"arrangements," à la Whistler, with flowers of various shades of the
same colour. But harmony and gradation of colour always give me more
pleasure than contrast.
Then, besides the fitness of the gardening to the garden, there is the
fitness of the garden to its owner; and the owner must be considered
from two points of view, his taste, and his means. Indeed, I think it
would be fair to add a third, his leisure.
Now, there are owners of big gardens and little gardens, who like to
have a garden (what Englishman does not?), and like to see it gay and
tidy, but who don't know one flower from the rest. On the other hand,
some scientists are acquainted with botany and learned in
horticulture. They know every plant and its value, but they care
little about tidiness. Cut flowers are feminine frivolities in their
eyes, and they count nosegays as childish gauds, like daisy chains and
cowslip balls. They are not curious in colours, and do not know which
flowers are fragrant and which are scentless. For them every garden is
a botanical garden. Then, many persons fully appreciate the beauty and
the scent of flowers, and enjoy selecting and arranging them for a
room, who can't abide to handle a fork or meddle with mother earth.
Others again, amongst whom I number myself, love not only the lore of
flowers, and the sight of them, and the fragrance of them, and the
growing of them, and the picking of them, and the arranging of them,
but also inherit from Father Adam a natural relish for tilling the
ground from whence they were taken and to which they shall return.
With little persons in little gardens, having also little strength and
little leisure, this husbandry may not exceed the small uses of fork
and trowel, but the earth-love is there, all the same. I remember
once, coming among some family papers upon an old letter from my
grandmother to my grandfather. She was a clever girl (she did not
outlive youth), and the letter was natural and full of energy and
point. My grandfather seems to have apologized to his bride for the
disorderly state of the garden to which she was about to-go home, and
in reply she quaintly and vehemently congratulates herself upon this
unpromising fact. For--"I do so dearly love _grubbing_." This touches
another point. She was a botanist, and painted a little. So were most
of the lady gardeners of her youth. The education of women was, as a
rule, poor enough in those days; but a study of "the Linnean system"
was among the elegant accomplishments held to "become a young woman";
and one may feel pretty sure that even a smattering of botanical
knowledge, and the observation needed for third or fourth-rate
flower-painting, would tend to a love of variety in beds and borders
which Ribbon-gardening would by no means satisfy. _Lobelia erinus
speciosa_ does make a wonderfully smooth blue stripe in sufficient
quantities, but that would not console any one who knew or had painted
_Lobelia cardinalis_, and _fulgens_, for the banishment of these from
the garden.
I think we may dismiss Ribbon-gardening as unfit for a botanist, or
for any one who happens to like _grubbing_, or tending his flowers.
Is it ever "fit" in a little garden?
Well, if the owner has either no taste for gardening, or no time, it
may be the shortest and brightest plan to get some nurseryman near to
fill the little beds and borders with Spring bedding plants for
Spring (and let me note that this _Spring bedding_, which is of later
date than the first rage for ribbon-borders, had to draw its supplies
very largely from "herbaceous stuff," _myosotis_, _viola_, _aubretia_,
_iberis_, &c., and may have paved the way for the return of hardy
perennials into favour), and with Tom Thumb Geranium, Blue Lobelia,
and Yellow Calceolaria for the summer and autumn. These latter are
most charming plants. They are very gay and persistent whilst they
last, and it is not their fault that they cannot stand our winters.
They are no invalids till frost comes. With my personal predilections,
I like even "bedding stuff" best in variety. The varieties of what we
call geraniums are many and most beautiful. I should always prefer a
group of individual specimens to a band of one. And never have I seen
the canary yellow of calceolarias to such advantage as in an
"old-fashioned" rectory-garden in Yorkshire, where they were cunningly
used as points of brilliancy at corners of beds mostly filled with
"hardy herbaceous stuff."
But there, again, one begins to spend time and taste! Let us admit
that, if a little garden must be made gay by the neighbouring
nurseryman, it will look very bright, on the "ribbon" system, at a
minimum cost of time and trouble--_but not of money!_
Even for a little garden, bedding plants are very expensive. For you
must either use plenty, or leave it alone. A ragged ribbon-border can
have no admirers.
If time and money are both lacking, and horticulture is not a hobby,
divide what sum you are prepared to spend on your little garden in
two. Lay out half in making good soil, and spend the rest on a limited
range of hardy plants. If mother earth is well fed, and if you have
got her _deep down_, and not a surface layer of half a foot on a
substratum of builder's rubbish, she will take care of every plant you
commit to her hold. I should give up the back of the borders (if the
aspect is east or south) to a few very good "perpetual" roses to cut
from; dwarfs, not standards; and for the line of colour in front it
will be no great trouble to arrange roughly to have red, white, blue,
and yellow alternately.
One of the best cheap bedders is Pink Catchfly (_Silene pendula_). Its
rosy cushions are as neat and as lasting as Blue Lobelia. It is a
hardy annual, but the plants should be autumn sown of the year before.
It flowers early and long, and its place might be taken for the autumn
by scarlet dwarf nasturtiums, or clumps of geranium. Pink Catchfly,
Blue Forget-me-not, White Arabis, and Yellow Viola would make gay any
Spring border. Then to show, to last, and to cut from, few flowers
rival the self-coloured pansies (Viola class). Blue, white, purple,
and yellow alternately, they are charming, and if in good soil, well
watered in drought, and constantly cut from, they bloom the whole
summer long. And some of them are very fragrant. The secret of success
with these is never to leave a flower to go to seed. They are not cut
off by autumnal frosts. On the contrary, you can take them up, and
divide, and reset, and send a portion to other little gardens where
they are lacking.
All mine (and they have been very gay this year and very sweet) I owe
to the bounty of friends who garden _non sibi sed toti_.
Lastly, if there is even a very little taste and time to spare, surely
nothing can be so satisfactory as a garden full of such flowers as (in
the words of John Parkinson) "our English ayre will permitt to be
noursed up." Bearing in mind these counsels:
Make a wise selection of hardy plants. Grow only good sorts, and of
these choose what suit your soil and climate. Give them space and good
feeding. Disturb the roots as little as possible, and cut the flowers
constantly. Then they will be fine as well as fit.
Good-bye, Little Friend,
Yours, &c.
LETTER II.
"The tropics may have their delights; but they have not
turf, and the world without turf is a dreary desert. The
original Garden of Eden could not have had such turf as one
sees in England.
* * * * *
"Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a garden.
* * * * *
"Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron
back, with a hinge in it."
_Pusley; or, My Summer in a Garden_.--C. D. WARNER.
DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,
Do you know the little book from which these sayings are quoted? It is
one you can laugh over by yourself, again and again. A very good
specimen of that curious, new-world kind of wit--American humour; and
also full of the truest sense of natural beauty and of gardening
delights.
Mr. Warner is not complimentary to woman's work in the garden, though
he displays all the graceful deference of his countrymen to the weaker
sex. In the charming dedication to his wife, whilst desiring "to
acknowledge an influence which has lent half the charm to my labour,"
he adds: "If I were in a court of justice, or injustice, under oath, I
should not like to say that, either in the wooing days of spring, or
under the suns of the summer solstice, you had been, either with hoe,
rake, or miniature spade, of the least use in the garden." Perhaps our
fair cousins on the other side of the Atlantic do not _grub_ so
energetically as we do. Certainly, with us it is very common for the
ladies of the family to be the practical gardeners, the master of the
house caring chiefly for a good general effect, with tidy walks and
grassplots, and displaying less of that almost maternal solicitude
which does bring flowers to perfection.
I have sometimes thought that it would be a good division of labour in
a Little Garden, if, where Joan coddles the roses and rears the
seedlings, Darby would devote some of his leisure to the walks and
grassplots.
Few things in one's garden are pleasanter to one's own eye, or gain
more admiration from others, than well-kept turf. Green grass is one
of the charms of the British Isles, which are emerald isles
throughout, though Ireland is so _par excellence_. It is so much a
matter of course to us that we hardly realize this till we hear or
read what foreigners say about it, and also our own American and
colonial cousins. We go abroad and revel in real sunshine, and come
home with glowing memories to abuse our own cloudy skies; but they
come from burnt-up landscapes to refresh their eyes with our perpetual
green.
Even a little grassplot well repays pains and care. If you have to
make it, never use cheap seed. Buy the very best from seedsmen of
repute, or you will get a conglomeration of weeds instead of a
greensward of fine grasses and white clover. Trench the ground to an
_even_ depth, tread it firm, and have light, finely-sifted soil
uppermost. Sow thickly early in April, cover lightly, and protect from
birds. If the soil is good, and the seed first-rate, your sward will
be green the first season.
Turfs make a lawn somewhat quicker than seed. The best are cut from
the road-side, but it is a hateful despoiling of one of the fairest of
travellers' joys. Those who commit this highway robbery should reckon
themselves in honour bound to sow the bare places they leave behind.
Some people cut the pieces eighteen inches square, some about a yard
long and twelve inches wide. Cut thin, roll up like thin
bread-and-butter. When they are laid down, fit close together, like
bits of a puzzle, and roll well after laying. If they gape with
shrinking, fill in between with finely-sifted soil, and roll again and
again.
Strictly speaking, a grassplot should be all grass, grass and a little
white clover. "Soldiers" (of the plantain type) are not to be
tolerated on a lawn, but I have a weak corner for dog-daisies. I once
owned a little garden in Canada, but never a dog-daisy grew there. A
lady I knew had one--in a pot--sent from "Home." But even if you have
a sentimental fondness for "the pretty things" (as their botanical
name signifies), and like to see their little white faces peeping out
of the grass, this must not be carried too far. In some soils
dog-daisies will soon devour the whole lawn.
How are they, and "soldiers," and other weeds to be extirpated? There
are many nostrums, but none so effectual as a patient digging up (with
a long "daisy fork") of plant after plant _by the roots_. The whole
family party and any chance visitors will not be too many for the
work, and, if each labourer is provided with a cast-iron back with a
hinge in it, so much the better. A writer in the _Garden_ seems to
have been very successful with salt, used early in the season and with
great care. He says: "After the first cutting in the spring put as
much salt on each weed, through the palm of the hand, as will
distinctly cover it. In two or three days, depending on the weather,
they will turn brown. Those weeds that have escaped can be distinctly
seen, and the operation should be repeated. The weeds thus treated
die, and in about three weeks the grass will have grown, and there
will not be a vestige of disturbance left. Two years ago I converted
a rough pasture into a tennis-ground for six courts. Naturally the
turf was a mass of rough weeds. It took three days to salt them, and
the result was curiously successful."
Another prescription is to cut off the crowns of the offending plants,
and dose them with a few drops of carbolic acid.
Grass will only grow dense by constant cutting and moisture. The
scythe works best when the grass is wet, and the machine when it is
dry. Sweep it and roll it during the winter. Pick off stones, sticks,
or anything that "has no business" on it, as you would pick "bits" off
a carpet.
If grass grows rank and coarse, a dressing of sand will improve it; if
it is poor and easily burned up, give it a sprinkling of soot, or
guano, or wood ashes (or all three mixed) before rain. "Slops" are as
welcome to parched grass as to half-starved flowers. If the weather is
hot and the soil light, it is well occasionally to leave the short
clippings of one mowing upon the lawn to protect the roots.
I do not know if it becomes unmanageable, but, in moderation, I think
camomile a very charming intruder on a lawn, and the aromatic scent
which it yields to one's tread to be very grateful in the open air. It
is pleasant, too, to have a knoll or a bank somewhere, where thyme can
grow among the grass. But the subject of flowers that grow well
through grass is a large one. It is one also on which the members of
our Parkinson Society would do kindly to give us any exceptional
experiences, especially in reference to flowers which not only
flourish among grass, but do not resent being mown down. The lovely
blue windflower (_Anemone Apennina_) is, I believe, one of these.
There is no doubt that now and then plants prefer to meet with a
little resistance, and despise a bed that is made too comfortable.
Self-sown ones often come up much more vigorously through the hard
path than when the seed has fallen within the border. The way to grow
the parsley fern is said to be to clap a good big stone on his crown
very early in the spring, and let him struggle out at all corners from
underneath it. It is undoubtedly a comfort to rock-plants and creeping
things to be planted with a stone over their feet to keep them cool!
Which reminds me of stones for bordering. I think they make the best
of all edgings for a Little Garden. Box-edgings are the prettiest, but
they are expensive, require good keeping, and harbour slugs. For that
matter, most things seem to harbour slugs in any but a very dry
climate, and there are even more prescriptions for their destruction
than that of lawn weeds. I don't think lime does much, nor soot. Wet
soon slakes them. Thick slices of turnip are attractive. Slugs really
do seem to like them, even better than one's favourite seedlings.
Little heaps of bran also, and young lettuces. My slugs do not care
for cabbage leaves, and they are very untidy. Put thick slices of
turnip near your auriculas, favourite primroses and polyanthuses, and
Christmas roses, and near anything tender and not well established,
and overhaul them early in the morning. "You can't get up too early,
if you have a garden," says Mr. Warner; and he adds: "Things appear to
go on in the night in the garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble
to stay up than it is to get up so early!"
To return to stone edgings. When quite newly laid, like miniature
rockwork, they are, perhaps, the least bit cockneyfied, and suggestive
of something between oyster-shell borderings and mock ruins. But this
effect very rapidly disappears as they bury themselves in cushions of
pink catch-fly (v. _compacta_), or low-growing pinks, tiny campanulas,
yellow viola, London pride, and the vast variety of rock-plants,
"alpines," and low-growing "herbaceous stuff," which delight in
squeezing up to a big cool stone that will keep a little moisture for
their rootlets in hot summer weather. This is a much more interesting
kind of edging than any one kind of plant can make, I think, and in a
Little Garden it is like an additional border, leaving the other free
for bigger plants. If one kind is preferred, for a light soil there is
nothing like thrift. And the white thrift is very silvery and more
beautiful than the pink. There is a large thrift, too, which is
handsome. But I prefer stones, and I like varieties of colour--bits of
grey boulder, and red and yellow sandstone.
I like warm colour also on the walks. I should always have red walks
if I could afford them. There is a red material, the result of some
process of burning, which we used to get in the iron and coal
districts of Yorkshire, which I used to think very pretty, but I do
not know what it is called.
Good walks are a great luxury. It is a wise economy to go round your
walks after rain and look for little puddles; make a note of where the
water lodges and fill it up. Keep gratings swept. If the grating is
free and there is an overflow not to be accounted for, it is very
possible that a drain-pipe somewhere is choke-full of the roots of
some tree.
Some people advise hacking up your walks from time to time, and other
people advise you not. Some people say there is nothing like salt to
destroy walk weeds and moss, and brighten the gravel, and some people
say that salt in the long run feeds the ground and the weeds. I am
disposed to think that, in a Little Garden, there is nothing like a
weeding woman with an old knife and a little salt afterwards. It is
also advisable to be your own weeding woman, that you may be sure that
the weeds come up by the roots! Next to the cast-iron back before
mentioned, I recommend a housemaid's kneeling mat (such as is used for
scrubbing floors), as a gardener's comfort.
I hope, if you have been bulb planting, that you got them all in by
Lord Mayor's Day. Whether bulbs should be planted deep or shallow is
another "vexed question." In a Little Garden, where you don't want to
disturb them, and may like to plant out some small-rooted annuals on
the top of them later on, I should plant deep.
If you are planting roses, remember that two or three, carefully
planted in good stuff that goes deep, will pay you better than six
times the number stuck _into a hole_ in cold clay or sand or builders'
rubbish, and left to push their rootlets as best they can, or perish
in the attempt. Spread out these rootlets very tenderly when planting.
You will reap the reward of your gentleness in flowers. Rose roots
don't like being squeezed, like a Chinese lady's feet. I was taught
this by one who knows,--He has a good name for the briar suckers and
sprouts which I hope you carefully cut off from your grafted
roses,--He calls it "the old Adam!"
Yours, &c.
LETTER III.
"A good rule
Is a good tool."
DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,
January is not a month in which you are likely to be doing much in
your Little Garden. Possibly a wet blanket of snow lies thick and
white over all its hopes and anxieties. No doubt you made all tidy,
and some things warm, for the winter, in the delicious opportunities
of St. Luke's and St. Martin's little summers, and, like the amusing
American I told you of, "turned away writing _resurgam_ on the
gate-post."
I write _resurgam_ on labels, and put them wherever bulbs lie buried,
or such herbaceous treasures as die down, and are, in consequence, too
often treated as mere mortal remains of the departed, by the
undiscriminating hand of the jobbing gardener.
Winter is a good time to make plans, and to put them down in your
Garden-book. Have you a Garden-book? A note-book, I mean, devoted to
garden memoranda. It is a very useful kind of commonplace book, and
soon becomes as fascinating as autumn and spring catalogues.
One has to learn to manage even a Little Garden chiefly by experience,
which is sure teaching, if slow. Books and gardeners are helpful; but,
like other doctors, they differ. I think one is often slower to learn
anything than one need be, from not making at once for first
principles. If one knew more of these, it would be easier to apply
one's own experience, and to decide amid conflicting advice.
Here are a few rough-and-ready "first principles" for you.
_Hardy flowers in hedges and ditches are partly fed, and are also
covered from cold and heat, and winds, and drought, by fallen leaves
and refuse. Hardy flowers in gardens have all this tidied away from
them, and, being left somewhat hungry and naked in proportion, are all
the better for an occasional top-dressing and mulching, especially in
autumn._ It is not absolutely necessary to turn a flower border upside
down and dig it over every year. It may (for some years at any rate),
if you find this more convenient, be treated on the hedge system, and
_fed from the top_; thinning big clumps, pulling up weeds, moving and
removing in detail.
_Concentrated strength means large blooms._ If a plant is ripening
seed, some strength goes to that; if bursting into many blooms, some
goes to each of them; if it is trying to hold up against blustering
winds, or to thrive on exhausted ground, or to straighten out cramped
and clogged roots, these struggles also demand strength. Moral: Plant
carefully, support your tall plants, keep all your plants in easy
circumstances, don't put them to the trouble of ripening seed (unless
you specially want it). To this end cut off fading flowers, and also
cut off buds in places where they would not show well when they came
out, and all this economized strength will go into the blossoms that
remain.
_You cannot grow everything. Grow what suits your soil and climate,
and the best kinds of these, as well as you can._ You may make soil to
suit a plant, but you cannot make the climate to suit it, and some
flowers are more fastidious about the air they breathe than about the
soil they feed upon. There are, however, scores of sturdy, handsome
flowers, as hardy as Highlanders, which will thrive in almost any
soil, and under all the variations of climate of the British Isles.
Some will even endure the smoke-laden atmosphere of towns and town
suburbs; which, sooner or later, is certain death to so many. It is a
pity that small florists and greengrocers in London do not know more
about this; and it would be a great act of kindness to them and to
their customers to instruct them. Then, instead of encouraging the
ruthless slaughter of primroses, scores and hundreds of plants of
which are torn up and then sold in a smoky atmosphere to which they
never adapt themselves, these small shopkeepers might offer plants of
the many beautiful varieties of poppies, from the grand _Orientalis_
onwards, chrysanthemums, stocks, wall-flowers, Canterbury bells,
salvias, oenotheras, snapdragons, perennial lobelias, iris, and
other plants which are known to be very patient under a long course of
soot. Most of the hardy Californian annuals bear town life well.
Perhaps because they have only to bear it for a year. _Convolvulus
major_--the Morning Glory, as our American cousins so prettily call
it--flourishes on a smutty wall as generously as the Virginian
creeper.
_North borders are safest in winter._ They are free from the dangerous
alternation of sunshine and frost. Put things of doubtful hardihood
under a north wall, with plenty of sandy soil or ashes over their
roots, some cinders on that, and perhaps a little light protection,
like bracken, in front of them, and their chances will not be bad.
Apropos to tender things, if your Little Garden is in a cold part of
the British Isles, and has ungenial conditions of soil and aspect,
don't try to keep tender things out of doors in winter; but, if it is
in the south or west of the British Isles, I should be tempted to very
wide experiments with lots of plants not commonly reckoned "hardy."
Where laurels flower freely you will probably be successful eight
years out of ten. Most fuchsias, and tender things which _die down_,
may be kept.
_Very little will keep Jack Frost out, if he has not yet been in_,
either in the garden or the house. A "hot bottle" will keep frost out
of a small room where one has stored geraniums, &c., so will a small
paraffin lamp (which--N.B.--will also keep water-pipes from
catastrophe). How I have toiled, in my young days, with these same
hot-water bottles in a cupboard off the nursery, which was my nearest
approach to a greenhouse! And how sadly I have experienced that where
Mr. Frost goes out Mr. Mould is apt to slink in! Truly, as Mr. Warner
says, "the gardener needs all the consolations of a high philosophy!"
It is a great satisfaction if things _will_ live out of doors. And in
a _little_ garden a good deal of coddling may be done. I am going to
get some round fruit hampers to turn over certain tender pets this
winter. When one has one's flowers by the specimen and not by the
score, such cosseting is possible. Ashes and cinders are excellent
protection for the roots, and for plants--like roses--which do not die
back to the earth level, and which sometimes require a screen as well
as a quilt, bracken, fir branches, a few pea-sticks, and matting or
straw are all handy helps. The old gentleman who ran out--without his
dressing-gown--to fling his own bed-quilt over some plants endangered
by an unexpected frost, came very near to having a fine show of bloom
and not being there to see it; but, short of this excessive zeal, when
one's garden is a little one, and close to one's threshold, one may
catch Jack Frost on the surface of many bits of rough-and-ready
fencing on very cold nights.
_In drought, one good soaking with tepid water is worth six
sprinklings._ Watering is very fatiguing, but it is unskilled labour,
and one ought to be able to hire strong arms to do it at a small rate.
But I never met the hired person yet who could be persuaded that it
was needful to do more than make the surface of the ground look as if
it had been raining.
There is a "first principle" of which some gardeners are very fond,
but in which I do not believe, that if you begin to water you must go
on, and that too few waterings do harm. What I don't believe is that
they do harm, nor did I ever meet with a gardener who complained of an
odd shower, even if the skies did not follow it up. An odd sprinkling
does next to no good, but an odd soaking may save the lives of your
plants. In very hot weather don't grudge a few waterings to your
polyanthuses and primroses. If they are planted in open sunny borders,
with no shade or hedge-mulching, they suffer greatly from drought.
_Flowers, like human beings, are, to some extent, creatures of habit._
They get used to many things which they can't at all abide once in a
way. If your Little Garden (like mine) is part of a wandering
establishment, here to-day and there to-morrow, you may get even your
roses into very good habits of moving good-humouredly, and making
themselves quickly at home. If plants from the first are accustomed to
being moved about,--every year, or two years,--they do not greatly
resent it. A real "old resident," who has pushed his rootlets far and
wide, and never tried any other soil or aspect, is very slow to settle
elsewhere, even if he does not die of _nostalgia_ and nervous shock!
In making cuttings, consider the habits and customs of the parent
plant. If it has been grown in heat, the cuttings will require heat to
start them. And so on, as to dry soil or moist, &c. If somebody gives
you "a root" in hot weather, or a bad time for moving, when you have
made your hole pour water in very freely. Saturate the ground below,
"puddle in" your plants with plenty more, and you will probably save
it, especially if you turn a pot or basket over it in the heat of the
day. In warm weather plant in the evening, the new-comers then have a
round of the clock in dews and restfulness before the sun is fierce
enough to make them flag. In cold weather move in the morning, and for
the same period they will be safe from possible frost. Little, if
any, watering is needed for late autumn plantings.
_Those parts of a plant which are not accustomed to exposure are those
which suffer from it._ You may garden bare-handed in a cold wind and
not be the worse for it, but, if both your arms were bared to the
shoulders, the consequences would probably be very different. A bundle
of rose-trees or shrubs will bear a good deal on their leaves and
branches, but for every moment you leave their roots exposed to drying
and chilling blasts they suffer. When a plant is out of the ground,
protect its crown and its roots at once. If a plant is moved quickly,
it is advantageous, of course, to take it up with as much earth as
possible, if the roots remain undisturbed in their little plat.
Otherwise, earth is no better than any other protection; and in
sending plants by post, &c. (when soil weighs very heavily), it is
better to wash every bit of soil out of the roots, and then thoroughly
wrap them in moss, and outside that in hay or tow, or cotton-wool.
Then, if the roots are comfortably spread in nice mould at the other
end of the journey, all should go well.
I reserve a sneaking credulity about "lucky fingers." Or rather, I
should say, a belief that some people have a strange power (or tact)
in dealing with the vegetable world, as others have in controlling and
coaxing animals.
It is a vivid memory of my childhood that (amongst the box-edged
gardens of a family of eight), that of my eldest brother was almost
inconvenienced by the luck of his fingers. "Survival of the fittest"
(if hardiest does mean fittest!) kept the others within bounds; but
what he begged, borrowed, and stole, survived, all of it, conglomerate
around the "double velvet" rose, which formed the centre-piece. We
used to say that when the top layer was pared off, a buried crop came
up.
An old friend with lucky fingers visited my Little Garden this autumn.
He wanders all over the world, and has no garden of his own except
window-boxes in London, where he seems to grow what he pleases. He is
constantly doing kindnesses, and likes to do them his own way. He
christened a border (out of which I had not then turned the builders'
rubbish) Desolation Border, with more candour than compliment. He said
it wanted flowers, and he meant to sow some. I suggested that, sown at
that period of the summer, they would not flower this season. He said
they would. (They did.) None of my suggestions met with favour, so I
became gratefully passive, and watched the lucky fingers from a
distance, fluttering small papers, and making mystic deposits here and
there, through the length and breadth of the garden. I only begged him
to avoid my labels. The seeds he sowed ranged from three (rather old)
seeds of bottle gourd to a packet of mixed Virginian stock. They all
came up. He said, "I shall put them in where I think it is desirable,
and when they come up you'll see where they are." I did.
For some days after his departure, on other country visits, I received
plants by post. Not in tins, or boxes, but in envelopes with little or
no packing. In this way came sea lavender in full bloom, crimson
monkey plant from the London window-box, and cuttings of
mesembryanthemum. They are all alive and thriving!
The bottle gourd and the annuals have had their day, and it is over;
but in the most unexpected places there still rise, like ghosts,
certain plants which completely puzzle me.[4] They have not blossomed,
but they grow on in spite of frost. Some of them are nearly as tall as
myself. They almost alarm me when I am dividing violas, and trifling
with alpines. They stand over me (without sticks) and seem to say, "We
are up, you see where we are! We shall grow as long as we think it
desirable."
Farewell for the present, Little Friend,
Yours, &c.
[Footnote 4: When fully grown these plants proved to be the
Tree-Mallow, _Lavatera arborea_; the seeds were gathered from
specimens on the shores of the Mediterranean.]
LETTER IV.
"When Candlemas Day is come and gone,
The snow lies on a hot stone."--_Old Saw_.
DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,
Among all the changes and chances of human life which go to make up
fiction as well as fact, there is one change which has never chanced
to any man; and yet the idea has been found so fascinating by all men
that it appears in the literature of every country. Most other fancied
transformations are recorded as facts somewhere in the history of our
race. Poor men have become rich, the beggar has sat among princes, the
sick have been made whole, the dead have been raised, the neglected
man has awoke to find himself famous, rough and kindly beasts have
been charmed by lovely ladies into very passable Princes, and it would
be hard to say that the ugly have not seen themselves beautiful in the
mirror of friendly eyes; but the old have never become young. The
elixir of youth has intoxicated the imagination of many, but no drop
of it has ever passed human lips.
If we ever do just taste anything of the vital, hopeful rapture, the
elastic delight of the old man of a fairy tale, who leaves his cares,
his crutches, and his chimney-corner, to go forth again young amongst
the young,--it is when the winter is ended and the spring is come.
Some people may feel this rising of the sap of life within them more
than others, but there are probably very few persons whom the first
mild airs and bursting buds and pushing flower-crowns do not slightly
intoxicate with a sort of triumphant pleasure.
What then, dear little friend, must be the February feelings of the
owner of a Little Garden? Knowing, as we do, every plant and its
place,--having taken just pride in its summer bloom,--having preserved
this by cares and trimmings and proppings to a picturesque and florid
autumn, though wild-flowers have long been shrivelled and
shapeless,--having tidied it up and put a little something comforting
round it when bloom and outline were absolutely no more: what must we
feel when we first detect the ruddy young shoots of our favourite
pæonies, or perceive that the brown old hepaticas have become green
and young again and are full of flower-buds?
The process of strolling, with bent back and peering eyes, by the side
of the still frosty borders is so deeply interesting, and a very
little sunshine on a broad band of crocuses has such a summer-like
effect, that one is apt to forget that it is one of the cheapest ways
of catching cold. The last days of the gardening year not unfrequently
lead from the flower-bed to the sick-bed. But though there is for
susceptible folk a noxious influence in the decaying vegetation of
autumn, from which spring is free, there is bitter treachery in many a
spring wind, and the damp of the ground seems to reek with the exuding
chill of all the frosts that have bound it in mid-winter.
I often wonder that, for some exigencies of weather, the outdoor
red-flannel knickerbockers which one wears in Canada are not more in
use here. The very small children have all their clothes stuffed into
them, and tumble safely about in the snow like little Dutchmen. Older
wearers of petticoats cram all in except the outermost skirt. It is a
very simple garment made of three pieces,--two (straight) legs and a
large square. The square is folded like a kerchief, and the leg pieces
attached to the two sloping sides. A broad elastic and small openings
on each side and at the top enable these very baggy knickerbockers to
be easily pulled on for going out (where they effectually exclude cold
exhalations from snow or damp ground), and pulled off on coming in.
Short of such coddling as this, I strongly urge fleecy cork socks
inside your garden boots; and I may add that if you've never tried
them, you can have no idea of the warmth and comfort of a pair of
boy's common yellow-leather leggings, but the buttons will require
some adjusting.
Of course, very robust gardeners are independent of these troublesome
considerations; but the gardening members of a family, whether young
or old, are very often not those vigorous people who can enjoy their
fresh air at unlimited tennis or a real good stretching walk over the
hills. They are oftener those weaker vessels who have to be content
with strolls, and drives, and sketching, and "pottering about the
garden."
Now, pottering about the garden in spring and autumn has many risks
for feeble vitalities, and yet these are just the seasons when
everything requires doing, and there is a good hour's work in every
yard of a pet border any day. So _verbum sap_. One has to "pay with
one's person" for most of one's pleasures, if one is delicate; but it
is possible to do a great deal of equinoctial grubbing with safety and
even benefit, if one is very warmly protected, especially about the
feet and legs. These details are very tedious for young people, but
not so tedious as being kept indoors by a cold.
And not only must delicate gardeners be cosseted with little
advantages at these uncertain seasons, the less robust of the flowers
gain equally by timely care. Jack Frost comes and goes, and leaves
many plants (especially those planted the previous autumn) half jumped
out of the ground. Look out for this, and tread them firmly in again.
A shovel-full of cinder-siftings is a most timely attention round the
young shoots of such as are poking up their noses a little too early,
and seem likely to get them frost-bitten. Most alpines and low-growing
stuff will bear light rolling after the frost has unsettled them. This
is done in large gardens, but in a Little Garden they can be attended
to individually. Give a little protection to what is too forward in
growth, or badly placed, or of doubtful hardihood, or newly planted.
Roses and hardy perennials can be planted in open weather.
But you will; not really be very busy outside till March, and we are
not concerning ourselves with what has to be done "in heat," where a
good deal is going on.
Still, in mild climates or seasons (and one must always remember how
greatly the British Isles vary in parts, as to climate), the idea of
seedlings and cuttings will begin to stir our souls, when February
"fills dike," if it is "with black and not with white," _i.e._ with
rain and not snow. So I will just say that for a Little Garden, and a
mixed garden, demanding patches, not scores of things, you can raise a
wonderfully sufficient number of half-hardy things in an ordinary
room, with one or two bell-glasses to give the moist atmosphere in
which sitting-rooms are wanting. A common tumbler will cover a dozen
"seedlings," and there you have two nice little clumps of half-a-dozen
plants each, when they are put out. (And mind you leave them space to
spread.) A lot of little cuttings can be rooted in wet sand.
Hard-wooded cuttings may grow along slowly in cool places; little
juicy soft ones need warmth, damp, and quick pushing forward. The very
tips of fuchsias grow very easily struck early in wet sand, and will
flower the same year. Kind friends will give you these, and if they
will also give you "tips" of white, yellow, and blue Marguerites (this
last is _Agathea celestis_), these strike as easily as chrysanthemums,
and are delightful afterwards to cut from. They are not very tender,
though not quite hardy.
For the few pots and pans and boxes of cuttings and seedlings which
you require, it is well worth while to get a small stock of good
compost from a nursery gardener; leaf mould, peat, and sand, whether
for seedlings or cuttings. Always _sink_ your pot in a second
covering. Either have your pots sunk in a box of sand, which you can
keep damp, or have small pots sunk in larger ones. A _great-coat_ to
prevent evaporation, in some shape, is invaluable.
Yours, &c.,
J.H.E.
GARDEN-LORE.
Every child who has gardening tools,
Should learn by heart these gardening rules.
He who owns a gardening spade,
Should be able to dig the depth of its blade.
He who owns a gardening hoe,
Must be sure how he means his strokes to go.
But he who owns a gardening fork,
May make it do all the other tools' work.
Though to shift, or to pot, or annex what you can,
A trowel's the tool for child, woman, or man.
'Twas a bird that sits in the medlar-tree,
Who sang these gardening saws to me.
THE LITTLE GARDENER'S ALPHABET OF PROVERBS.
AUTUMN-SOWN annuals flower soonest and strongest.
What you sow in the spring, sow often and thin.
BULBS bought early are best chosen.
If you wish your tulips to wake up gay,
They must all be in bed by Lord Mayor's Day.
"Cut my leaves this year, and you won't cut my flowers next
year," said the Daffodil to Tabitha Tidy.
CUT a rose for your neighbour, and it will tell two buds to blossom
for you.
DON'T let me forget to pray for travellers when I thank Heaven I'm
content to stay in my own garden. It is furnished from the ends of the
earth.
ENOUGH comes out of anybody's old garden in autumn, to stock a new one
for somebody else. But you want sympathy on one side and sense on the
other, and they are rarer than most perennials.
FLOWERS are like gentlemen--"Best everywhere."[5]
[Footnote 5: "Clowns are best in their own company, but gentlemen are
best everywhere."--_Old Proverb._]
GIVE Mother Earth plenty of food, and she'll give you plenty of
flowers.
HE who can keep what he gets, and multiply what he has got, should
always buy the best kinds; and he who can do neither should buy none.
IF nothing else accounts for it, ten to one there's a worm in the pot.
JOBBING gardeners are sometimes neat, and if they leave their rubbish
behind them, the hepaticas may turn up again.
KNOWN sorts before new sorts, if your list has limits.
LEAVE a bit behind you--for conscience's sake--if it's only
_Polypodium Vulgaris_.
MISCHIEF shows in the leaves, but lies at the root.
NORTH borders are warmest in winter.
OLD women's window-plants have guardian angels.
PUSSY cats have nine lives and some pot-plants have more; but both do
die of neglect.
QUAINT, gay, sweet, and good for nosegays, is good enough for my
garden.
RUBBISH is rubbish when it lies about--compost when it's all of a
heap--and food for flowers when it's dug in.
SOW thick, and you'll have to thin; but sow peas as thick as you
please.
TREE-LEAVES in the garden, and tea-leaves in the parlour, are good for
mulching.
"USEFUL if ugly," as the toad said to the lily when he ate the grubs.
VERY little will keep Jack Frost out--_before he gets in_.
WATER your rose with a slop-pail when it's in bud, and you'll be asked
the name of it when it's in flower.
XERANTHEMUM, Rhodanthe, Helichrysum, white yellow, purple, and red.
Grow us, cut us, tie us, and hang us with drooping head.
Good Christians all, find a nook for us, for we bloom for the Church
and the Dead.
YOU may find more heart's-ease in your garden than grows in the
pansy-bed.
ZINNIA elegans flore-pleno is a showy annual, and there's a coloured
picture in the catalogue; but--like many other portraits--it's a
favourable likeness.
SUNFLOWERS AND A RUSHLIGHT.
_Sunflowers and a Rushlight originally appeared in "Aunt
Judy's Magazine," November 1882. It is now re-published for
the first time._
CHAPTER I.
"A MAN NAMED SOLOMON"--JAEL AND THE CHINA POODLE--JOHNSON'S
DICTIONARY--NAIL-SPOTS--FAMILY BEREAVEMENTS--A FAMILY
DOCTOR--THE BOOKS IN THE ATTIC--A PUZZLING TALE--"A JOURNEY
TO GO."
Doctor Brown is our doctor. He lives in our village, at the top of the
hill.
When we were quite little, and had scarlet-fever, and measles, and
those things, Dr. Brown used to be very kind to us, and dress his
first finger up in his pocket-handkerchief with a knot for the turban,
and rings on his thumb and middle finger, and do--"At the top of a
hill lived a man named Solomon," in a hollow voice, which frightened
me rather.
And then he used to say--"Wise man, Solomon! He lived at the top of a
hill," and laugh till his face got redder than usual, and his eyes
filled with laughter-tears, and twinkled in the nice way they do, and
I was not frightened any more.
Dr. Brown left off being our doctor once. That was when he and
Grandmamma quarrelled. But they made it up again.
It was when I was so unhappy--I tried to help it, but I really could
not--about my poor dear white china poodle (Jael broke him when she
was dusting, and then she swept up his tail, though I have so begged
her to keep the bits when she cleans our room, and breaks things; and
now he never never can be mended, all the days of my life):--it was
when I was crying about him, and Grandmamma told Dr. Brown how silly I
was, to make me feel ashamed, that he said--"There are some tempers
which, if they haven't enough people to love, will love things."
Margery says he did not say _tempers_ but _temperaments_. I know it
began with temper, because it reminded me of Jael, who said "them
tears is all temper, Miss Grace," which was very hard, because she
knew--she knew quite well--it was about my poodle; and though
accidents will happen, she need not have swept up his tail.
Margery is sure to be right. She always it. Besides, we looked it out
in Johnson's Dictionary, which we are rather food of, though it is
very heavy to lift. We like the bits out of books, in small print; but
I could not understand the bits to the word _temperament_, and I do
not think Margery could either, though she can understand much more
than I can.
There is a very odd bit to the word _temperamental_, and it is signed
_Brown_; but we do not know if that means our Dr. Brown. This is the bit:
"That _temperamental_ dignotions, and conjecture of prevalent humours, may
be collected from spots in our nails, we concede."--_Brown_.
We could not understand it, so we lifted down the other volume (one is
just as heavy as the other), and looked out "Dignotion," and it means
"distinction, distinguishing mark," and then there is the same bit
over again, but at the end is "_Brown's Vulgar Errors_." And we did
not like to ask Dr. Brown if they were his vulgar errors, for fear he
should think us rude. I thought we might perhaps ask him if they were
his errors, and leave out _vulgar_, which is rather a rude word, but
Margery thought it better not, and she is sure to be right. She always
is.
But we should have liked to ask Dr. Brown about it, if it had not been
rude, because we think a good deal of spots on our nails. All we know
about them is that you begin at your thumb, and count on to your
little finger, in this way,
"A Gift, a Beau,
A Friend, a Foe,
A Journey to go."
I like having a Beau, or a Friend; Margery likes a Gift, or a Journey
to go. We neither of us like having Foes.
And it shows that it does come true, because Margery had a white spot
in the middle of her left little finger-nail, just when our father's
old friend wrote to Grandmamma, for one of us to go and pay him a
visit; and Margery went, because she was the elder of the two.
I do not know how I bore parting with her, except with hoping that she
would enjoy herself, for she always had wanted so very much to have a
journey to go. But if she had been at home, so that I could have taken
her advice, I do not think I should have been so silly about the
Sunflowers and the Rushlight.
She says--"You'd have put on your slippers, and had a blanket round
you at least. But, oh, my dear Grace, you always are so rash!"
I did not know I was. I thought rash people were brave; and if I had
been brave, the Rushlight would never have come out of the roof. Still
Margery is sure to be right. I know I am very foolish and lonely
without her.
There are only two of us. Our father, and our mother, and our brother,
all died of fever, nearly five years ago. We shall never see them
again till we go to Paradise, and that is one reason why we wish to
try to be good and never to be naughty, so that we may be sure to see
them again.
I remember them a little. I remember being frightened by sitting so
high up on my father's shoulder, and then feeling so safe when I got
into my mother's lap; and I remember Robin's curls, and his taking my
woolly ball from me. I remember our black frocks coming in the
hair-trunk with brass nails to the seaside, where Margery and I were
with our nurse, and her telling the landlady that our father and
mother and brother were all laid in one grave. And I remember going
home, and seeing the stone flags up in the yard, and a deep dark hole
near the pump, and thinking that was the grave; and how Margery found
me stark with fright, and knew better, and told me that the grave was
in the churchyard, and that this hole was only where workmen had been
digging for drains.
And then never seeing those three, day after day, and having to do
without them ever since!
But Margery remembers a good deal more (she is three years older than
I am). She remembers things people said, and the funeral sermon, and
the books being moved into the attic, and she remembers Grandmamma's
quarrel with Dr. Brown.
She says she was sitting behind the parlour curtains with Mrs.
Trimmer's Roman History, and Grandmamma was sitting, looking very
grave in her new black dress, with a pocket-handkerchief and book in
her lap, and sherry and sponge biscuits on a tray on the piano, for
visitors of condolence, when Dr. Brown came in, looking very grave
too, and took off one of his black gloves and shook hands. Then he
took off the other, and put them both into his hat, and had a glass of
sherry and a sponge biscuit, so Margery knew that he was a visitor of
condolence.
Then he and Grandmamma talked a long time. Margery does not know what
about, for she was reading Mrs. Trimmer; but she thinks they were
getting rather cross with each other. Then they got up, and Dr. Brown
looked into his hat, and took out his gloves, and Grandmamma wiped her
eyes with her pocket-handkerchief, and said, "I hope I know how to
submit, but it has been a heavy judgment, Dr. Brown."
And Margery was just beginning to cry too, when Dr. Brown said, "A
very heavy judgment indeed, Madam, for letting the cesspool leak into
the well;" and it puzzled her so much that she stopped.
Then Grandmamma was very angry, and Dr. Brown was angry too, and then
Grandmamma said, "I don't know another respectable practitioner, Dr.
Brown, who would have said what you have said this morning."
And Dr. Brown brushed his hat the wrong way with his coat-sleeve, and
said, "Too true, madam! We are not a body of reformers, with all our
opportunities we're as bigoted as most priesthoods, but we count fewer
missionary martyrs. The sins, the negligences, and the ignorances of
every age have gone on much the same as far as we have been concerned,
though very few people keep family chaplains, and most folk have a
family doctor."
Then Grandmamma got very stiff, Margery says (she always is rather
stiff), and said, "I am sorry, Dr. Brown, to hear you speak so ill of
the members of an honourable profession, to which you yourself
belong."
And Dr. Brown found out that he had brushed his hat the wrong way, and
he brushed it right, and said, "Not at all, Madam, not at all! I think
we're a very decent set, for men with large public responsibilities,
almost entirely shielded from the wholesome light of public criticism,
who handle more lives than most Commanders, and are not called upon to
publish our disasters or make returns of our losses. But don't expect
too much of us! I say we are not reformers. They rise up amongst us
now and again; but we don't encourage them, we don't encourage them.
We are a privileged caste of medicine men, whose 'mysteries' are
protected by the faith of those to whom we minister, a faith
fortified by ignorance and fear. I wish you good-morning, Madam."
Margery has often repeated this to me. We call it "Dr. Brown's
Speeches." She is very fond of spouting speeches, much longer ones
than Dr. Brown's. She learns them by heart out of history books, and
then dresses up and spouts them to me in our attic.
Margery says she did not understand at the time what they were
quarrelling about; and when, afterwards, she asked Grandmamma what a
cesspool was, Grandmamma was cross with her too, and said it was a
very coarse and vulgar word, and that Dr. Brown was a very coarse and
vulgar person. We've looked it out since in Johnson's Dictionary, for
we thought it might be one of Dr. Brown's vulgar errors, but it is not
there.
Margery reads a great deal of history; she likes it; she likes all the
sensible books in the attic, and I like the rest, particularly poetry
and fairy tales.
The books are Mother's books, they belonged to her father. She liked
having them all in the parlour, "littering the whole place," Jael
says; but Grandmamma has moved them to the attic now, all but a volume
of Sermons for Sunday, and the Oriental Annual, to amuse visitors if
they are left alone. Only she says you never ought to leave your
visitors alone.
Jael is very glad the books were taken to the attic, because "they
gather dust worse than chimney ornaments;" so she says.
Margery and I are very glad too, for we are sent to play in the attic,
and then we read as much as ever we like; and we move our pet books to
our own corner and pretend they are our very own. We have very cosy
corners; we pile up some of the big books for seats, and then make a
bigger pile in front of us for tables, and there we sit.
Once Dr. Brown found us. We had got whooping cough, and he had come to
see if we were better; and he is very big, and he tramped so heavily
on the stairs I did really think he was a burglar; and Margery was a
little frightened too, so we were very glad to see him; and when he
saw us reading at our tables, he said, "So this is the Attic salt ye
season life with, is it?" And then he laughed just as he always does.
There is one story in my favourite Fairy Book which Margery likes too;
it is called "A Puzzling Tale." I read it to Margery when we were
sitting in our tree seat in the garden, and I put my hand over the
answer to the puzzle, and she could not guess; and if Margery could
not guess, I do not think any one else could.
This is the tale:--"Three women were once changed into flowers, and
grew in a field; but one was permitted to go home at night. Once,
when day was dawning, and she was about to return to her companions in
the field and become a flower again, she said to her husband, 'In the
morning come to the field and pick me off my stalk, then I shall be
released, and able to live at home for the future.' So the husband
went to the field as he was told, and picked his wife and took her
home.
"Now how did he know his wife's flower from the other two, for all the
three flowers were alike?"
(That is the puzzle. This is the answer:)
"_He knew his wife because there was no dew upon her flower._"
There is a very nice picture of the three flowers standing stiff and
upright, with leaves held out like hands, and large round flower
faces, all three exactly alike. I have looked at them again and again,
but I never could see any difference; for you can't see the dew on the
ones who had been out all night, and so you can't tell which was the
one who was allowed to go home. But I think it was partly being so
fond of those round flower faces in the Puzzling Tale, that made me
get so very very fond of Sunflowers.
We have splendid Sunflowers in our garden, so tall, and with such
large round faces!
The Sunflowers were in bloom when Margery went away. She bade them
good-bye, and kissed her hands to them as well as to me. She went
away in a cab, with her things in the hair trunk with brass nails on
the top. She waved her hand to me as long as ever I could see her, and
she wagged one finger particularly. I knew which finger it was, and
what she meant. It was the little finger with that dignotion on the
nail, which showed that she had a journey to go.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE WING--SUNFLOWER SAINTS--DEW-DRENCHED--A BAD NIGHT--A
BAD HEADACHE--REGULAR REGIMEN IN GRANDMAMMA'S YOUNG
DAYS--TIRED NATURE'S SWEET RESTORER--A SINFUL WASTE OF
CANDLE-GREASE.
The Sunflowers were in bloom when Margery went away; and the swallows
were on the wing. The garden was full of them all the morning, and
when she had gone, they went too. They had been restless for days
past, so I dare say they had dignotions of their own, that they had a
journey to go as well as Margery.
But when they were gone, and she was gone, the garden felt very
lonely. The Sunflowers stretched out their round faces just as if they
were looking to see if the cab was coming back; and there was a robin,
which kept hopping on and off the pump and peeping about with his
eyes, as if he could not imagine what had become of all the swallows.
And Margery's black cat came and mewed to me, and rubbed itself
against my pinafore, and walked up and down with me till I went in and
got the "Ancient Mariner" and my little chair, and came back and read
to the Sunflowers.
Sunflowers are quite as good as dolls to play with. Margery and I
think them better in some ways. You can't move them about unless you
pick them; but then they will stand of themselves, which dolls will
not. You can give them names just as well, and you can teach them
lessons just as well. They will grow, which dolls won't; and they
really live and die, which dolls don't. In fact, for tallness, they
are rather like grown-up people. Then more come out, which is nice;
and you see the little Sunflowers growing into big ones, which you
can't see with dolls.
We can play a Sunday game with the Sunflowers. We do not have any of
our toys on Sunday, except in winter, when we have Noah's Ark. In the
summer we may go in the garden between the services, and we always
walk up and down together and play with the Sunflowers.
The Sunday Sunflower game is calling them after the black-letter
saints in the Kalendar, and reading about them in a very old book--a
big one with a black leather binding--in the attic, called _Lives of
the Saints_. I read, and then I tell it to Margery as we walk up and
down, and say--"This is St. Prisca, this is St. Fabian, this is St.
Agnes, this is St. Agatha, and this is St. Valentine"--and so on.
What made us first think of having them for Saints on Sunday, was that
the yellow does sometimes look so very like a glory round their faces.
We choose by turns which name to give to each, but if there is a very
big one with a lot of yellow flaming out, we always called him St.
George of England, because there is a very old figure of St. George
slaying the Dragon, in a painted window in our Church; and St.
George's hair is yellow, and standing out all round; and when the sun
shines through the window, so that you can't see his nose and his
mouth at all clearly, he looks quite wonderfully like a Sunflower.
Then on week-days, the game I like best is pretending that they are
women changed into flowers.
They feel so grown up with being so tall, that they are much more like
grown-up people turned into flowers than like children. I pretend my
doll is my child when I play with her; but I don't think I could
pretend a Sunflower was my child; and sometimes if Margery leaves me
alone with rather big Sunflowers, when it is getting dusk, and I look
up at them, and they stare at me with their big faces in the twilight,
I get so frightened for fear they should have got leave to go home at
night, _and be just turning_, that I run indoors as hard as ever I
can.