smartweed, shepherd’s purse, mallow, mustard, sorrel, and many more,
which make the first crop. The second consists largely of quitch-grass,
the very worst of all, and purslain or pusley, which Charles Dudley
Warner has immortalized in his charming book, “My Summer in a Garden.”
The roots of quitch-grass are as strong as steel and run rapidly in all
directions underneath the surface, sending up tender shoots that break
too easily when you touch them. The root must be found, grasped firmly,
and followed its whole length to utter extermination, or the grass will
come up like a giant, and later cannot be dealt with except by pulling
up also the flowers among which it inextricably entangles itself. The
flat, olive-green leaves and red fleshy stems of the pusley, running
over the ground in a mat, next appear; this is easily disposed of, only
it continues to come up,--fresh plants in endless succession rise from
the soil all summer, and must be watched and faithfully destroyed.
There is one weed, or wild plant, dodder by name, which has given my
island garden the greatest possible trouble. It is often wrongly called
gold-thread, because it looks like a tangled mass of amber thread,
but the true gold-thread is quite different. The whole plant consists
of nothing but these seemingly endless brittle reddish yellow stalks
with bunches of small, dull, whitish flowers without stems, borne at
intervals, with no leaves at all. It has no root in the earth, it is a
parasite, and not at all particular as to what it fastens itself upon;
anything that comes in its way will answer its purpose. It is very
pretty in its place, growing among the goldenrod and blue skullcap at
the top of the rocky little coves that slope down to the water about
the island, throwing itself from plant to plant, and making a mass
of translucent amber color. But alas! when it gets into a civilized
garden, woe, woe unto that garden! A handful of it in bloom was brought
to my piazza twenty years ago, and some of it was accidentally thrown
into the flower beds; I have been fighting it ever since. I have never
yet been able to get rid of it! Next year I found my Nasturtiums,
Cornflowers, Marigolds, and all the rest tangled together in this
yellow web, a mass of inextricable confusion. Year after year I waged
war against it, but even yet it is not entirely exterminated. I never
allow a plant of it in the garden, no seeds of it ripen there, and
none of it grows near the place outside; not a single atom of it in
my small domain could possibly escape my eye, and yet its seeds come
up more or less every year; I am sure to find one or two plants of it
in the garden somewhere. They emerge from the ground, each like a fine
yellow hair, till they are an inch and a half or two inches long; they
reach with might and main toward the nearest legitimate growing plant,
and when they touch it cling to it like a limpet; then they draw their
other end up out of the ground and set up housekeeping for the rest
of their lives. They adhere to the unhappy individual upon which they
have fixed themselves with a grip that grows more and more horrible;
they suck all its juices, drink all its health and strength and beauty,
and fling out trailers to the next and the next and the next, till the
whole garden is a mass of ruin and despair.
For many springs after the first year it appeared I used to take a
glass tumbler and go all over the beds soon after they were laid out,
pulling up these tiny yellow hairs, and in an hour or two I have pulled
up five or six tumblers full. I gathered them in glasses so that I
might be quite sure of all I plucked, and because they could not easily
blow away out of such a receptacle. For wherever they might fall, if
they touched a green growing thing they would in an astonishingly short
space of time make themselves fast for good, or rather for ill! Every
year I watch for it with the most eager vigilance as I weed carefully
over the whole surface of the little pleasance, but sometimes it steals
up after all the weeding is done, and, before I know it, I find it has
begun to tie the flowers together. Then I pull up all the plants it has
touched, lay them in a basket, carry them down, and cast the whole into
the sea. It is the only way to be rid of it. I have known it wind its
inexorable way tightly up the large smooth stem of a tall Sunflower,
where I had not thought of looking for it, till there was not an atom
of the skin of the stalk visible, only amber-colored dodder and its
white, dull flowers from the great head of the blossoming Sunflower
tree to its root. Into the sea the whole thing went, at once, without a
moment of delay!
These are only a few of the weeds with which one must battle, though
dodder, I fancy, seldom troubles any one on the planet as it does me.
It takes an island garden to produce so remarkable a growth! Most
of them soon become familiar, too familiar, indeed, and at last one
learns how to manage them. The great mistake which the inexperienced
gardener makes is in leaving a morsel of the root of a weed in the
ground. Only by combing the earth through and through between the rows
of plants with the small hand-fork (after all the intruders have been
removed as carefully as possible with the hand), can you be sure that
they are gone. Other seeds of weeds will be overturned and brought
to the surface in the process, and these will sprout in their turn,
but by this time the flowers will have made so much headway that
they will crowd out the new crop of weeds enough to insure their own
safety, except in some few instances. Apple of Peru (Stramonium) is
one of the most powerful and persistent among the enemies; a poisonous
thing with a loathsome odor, it must be watched for and routed, which
fortunately is easily done. In its perfected growth this is the most
uncanny plant,--a strong, low bush with bat-like leaves of dark green,
and long, pale lavender, lily-like flowers, followed by a round spiked
seed-vessel. Says Hawthorne: “What hidden virtue is in these things
that it is granted to sow themselves with the wind and to grapple the
earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of
obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but
always to mock their enemies with the same wicked luxuriance?” Mrs.
Gatty (the mother of that beautiful woman, Juliana Horatia Ewing, who
has so discoursed on the subject of flowers and many other things as
to make all time her debtor) answers the question, “What is a weed?”
by this statement, “A weed is a plant out of place.” A keen and close
observer of nature says: “A better definition would be, ‘A plant which
has an innate disposition to _get_ into the wrong place;’” and goes
on to say: “This is the very essence of weed character--in plants as
in men. If you glance through your botanical books you will see often
added to certain names, ‘a troublesome weed.’ It is not its being
venomous or ugly, but its being impertinent--thrusting itself where
it has no business and hinders other people’s business--that makes a
weed of it.... Who ever saw a wood anemone or a heath blossom out of
place? ... What is it, then, this temper in some plants--malicious as
it seems, intrusive, at all events, or erring--which brings them out of
their places, thrusts them where they thwart us and offend?” This seems
to me the best definition of what constitutes a weed that I have seen.
And their strength is mighty, and their name is legion. If there were
no other enemies which the gardener must fight, this one of weeds alone
is quite enough to tax all his powers and patience.
Then the plants kill each other if they are left to grow as thickly
together as the seeds were sown; they must be “thinned out” as soon as
they have attained to their second leaf, leaving two, three, four, or
five inches between each two plants side by side. I always leave two
plants where one would be enough, because something is so likely to
happen to destroy them, and if there are two the hard fates may perhaps
leave one. Some things require much more space than others. Pinks that
spire up so thin and tall can be set closer together than Poppies,
which spread widely in all directions. This pulling up and throwing
away of the superfluous plants is a very difficult thing for me to do.
I cannot bear to destroy one of the precious young seedlings that I
have watched and tended with such love and care, but it must be done.
It is a matter of the very greatest importance. The welfare of the
garden depends on it. I comfort myself as best I may by saving all that
will bear transplanting, and then giving them away to the flower plots
of my fellow-gardeners on neighboring islands.
Soon the whole plot mantles over all its surface with the rich, warm
green of vigorous leafage. The new growth rejoices. That is the right
word for it. The gladness of green growing things is apparent to any
seeing eye. They rejoice with a radiant joy in sun and rain and air
and dew, in all care and kindness. They know and respond to everything
that is done for them. The low-growing Drummond’s Phlox is one of the
most satisfactory flowers for a beginner in the art of gardening.
There is no such word as fail in its bright lexicon; and it blossoms
continually from the last of June till frost. Looking carefully every
day, by the last half of June I find the pale clustered flower buds
showing; then it is not long to wait before the whole bed is a blaze
of varied color, a delicate woven carpet of myriad vivid hues. In the
lovely buds the petals are folded one over the other in beautiful
succession. The flowers are five-petaled, with a faint, sweet perfume;
they are borne in flat clusters of an exquisite, velvety texture, with
a clearly marked eye in the centre encircling the few pearl-white
stamens; this eye varies with the hue of each different flower. There
will be delicious pinks among these Phloxes, from the palest rose to
the deepest cherry; all shades of red from bright, light scarlet, clear
and pure, to a rich black red,--the Black Warrior. There will be all
heavenly purples, pale lilacs, deep red purple and blue purple, perfect
snow white: the eye in this last is soft green, like the touches on a
Snowdrop bell. The scarlet flowers have a ring of black-red about the
centre, delicately gorgeous. There are almost endless varieties and
mixtures of color; they are full of surprises. The Star of Quedlinburg
is such a pretty, quaint change rung upon this pleasant theme of
Phloxes. The centre of the outer line of each petal is drawn out at the
edge like the tails on the under wings of the Luna moth. These long
tails in which each petal terminates give the flower the aspect of a
star with rays. “Ask of Nature why the star form she repeats,” says
Emerson. It is forever repeated among the flowers.
[Illustration: _The Garden in its Glory_]
At bird-peep, as the country folk have a charming way of calling the
break of day, I am in my dear garden,--planting and transplanting,
hoeing, raking, weeding, watering, tying up and training those plants
that need it, and always fighting for their precious lives against
their legions of enemies. There is a time of great danger upon the
island from the birds when they are migrating northward. They come
suddenly down from the sky in myriads, on their way to the continent,
and I have known them to strip the little plot of every green shoot
in a single day, utterly bare. Nothing but fishing nets draped over
the whole space will save the garden when these hungry hordes descend.
But I do not lose patience with the birds, however sorely they try
me. I love them too well. How should they know that the garden was
not planted for them? Those belonging to the thrush tribe are the
most mischievous; the others do not disturb the flower beds so much.
The friendly robin, though a thrush, only comes for worms, to
which he is more than welcome. Most of the other birds--bobolinks,
kingbirds, orioles, purple finches, and many other beautiful creatures
less familiar--stay with us for a short time only, on their passage
north or south every year; but a single pair of kingbirds build every
summer in the one tall elm-tree on the island, where also builds a cosy
nuthatch and raises a numerous family, and one pair of most interesting
kingfishers haunts the upper cove till late in the season. A Maryland
yellow-throat began building here last summer. For several years one
pair of cuckoos lingered through the summer, but at last ceased to
come. A few blackbirds build, the white-throats stay late, but several
varieties of swallows, the song-sparrows, and sandpipers remain and
rear their broods. How we wish the robins would stay too, and the
orioles and all the sweet company! But there are no trees to shelter
them. Their coming and going, however, is a matter of the greatest
interest to the little family on the island, and we are thrown into a
state of the deepest excitement by the apparition of a scarlet tanager,
or a rose-breasted grosbeak, or any of those unfamiliar beauties. Once
a ferruginous thrush came and stayed a week with us in early June.
Every day when he perched on a ridge-pole or chimney-top and sang, the
whole family turned out in a body to listen, making a business of it,
attending to nothing else while that thrilling melody was poured out on
the silent air. That was a gift of the gods which we could, none of us,
afford to neglect!
Says the wise Lord Bacon again: “And because the Breath of Flowers is
far sweeter in the Aire (when it comes and goes, like the Warbling of
Music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight
than to know what be the Flowers and Plants that doe best perfume the
Aire.”
The most exquisite perfume known to my garden is that of the
Wallflowers; there is nothing equal to it. They blossom early,
and generally before June has passed they are gone, and have left
me mourning their too swift departure. I wonder they are not more
generally cultivated, but I fancy the fact that they do not blossom
till the second year has much to do with their rarity. It requires
so much more faith and patience to wait a whole year, and meanwhile
carefully watch and tend the plants, excepting during the time when
winter covers them with a blanket of snow; but when at last spring
comes and the tardy flowers appear, then one is a thousand times repaid
for all the tedious months of waiting. They return such wealth of bloom
and fragrance for the care and thought bestowed on them! Their thick
spikes of velvet blossoms are in all shades of rich red, from scarlet
to the darkest brown, from light gold to orange; some are purple; and
their odor,--who shall describe it! Violets, Roses, Lilies, Sweet Peas,
Mignonette, and Heliotrope, with a dash of Honeysuckle, all mingled
in a heavenly whole. There is no perfume which I know that can equal
it. And they are so lavish of their scent; it is borne off the garden
and wafted everywhere, into the house and here and there in all
directions, in viewless clouds on the gentle air. To make a perfect
success of Wallflowers they must be given lime in some form about the
roots. They thrive marvelously if fed with a mixture of old plastering
in the soil, or bone meal, or, if that is not at hand, the meat
bones from the kitchen, calcined in the oven and pounded into bits,
stirred in around the roots is fine for them. This treatment makes
all the difference in the world in their strength and beauty. After
the Wallflowers, Roses and Lilies, Mignonette, Pinks, Gillyflowers,
Sweet Peas, and the Honeysuckles for fragrance, and of these last,
the monthly Honeysuckle is the most divine. Such vigor of growth I
have never seen in any other plant, and it is hardy even without the
least protection in our northern climate. It climbs the trellis on my
piazza and spreads its superb clusters of flowers from time to time all
summer. Each cluster is a triumph of beauty, flat in the centre and
curving out to the blossoming edge in joyous lines of loveliness, most
like a wreath of heavenly trumpets breathing melodies of perfume to the
air. Each trumpet of lustrous white deepens to a yellower tint in the
centre where the small ends meet; each blossom where it opens at the
lip is tipped with fresh pink; each sends out a group of long stamens
from its slender throat like rays of light: and the whole circle of
radiant flowers has an effect of gladness and glory indescribable: the
very sight of it lifts and refreshes the human heart. And for its odor,
it is like the spirit of romance, sweet as youth’s tender dreams. It
is summer’s very soul.
This beautiful vine will grow anywhere, for anybody, only give it half
a chance, such is its matchless vigor. I wonder why it is not found in
every garden; nothing so well repays the slightest care.
Next in power come the Sweet Peas, blossoming the livelong summer
in all lovely tints save only yellow, and even that the kind called
Primrose approaches, with its faint gold suffusion of both inner and
outer petals. I plant them by myriads in my tiny garden--all it will
hold. Transplant, I should say, because of my friends the birds,
who never leave me one if I dare plant them out of doors. But this
transplanting is most delightful. I thoroughly enjoy digging with the
hoe a long trench six inches deep for the strong young seedlings,
lifting them from the boxes, carefully disentangling their long white
roots each from the other as I take them out, and placing them in a
close row the whole length of the deep furrow, letting the roots drop
their whole length, with no curling or crowding, then half filling the
hollow with water, drawing the earth about the roots and firming the
whole with strong and gentle touch. They do not droop a single leaf so
transplanted; they go on growing as if nothing had happened, if only
they are given all the water they need. Already they stretch out their
delicate tendrils to climb, and I love to give them for support the
sticks with which the farmers supply their pea vines for the market;
but on my island are no woods, so I am thankful for humble bayberry
and elder branches for the purpose. It is another pleasure to go afar
among the rocks for these and wheel them to the flower beds in a light
wheelbarrow, which is one of the most useful things one can possess
for work about the garden. At once the vines lay hold of the slender
sticks and climb to the very top, fain are they to go much farther. But
I cut the tops so that they may branch from the sides and keep within
bounds, and they soon make a solid hedge of healthy green. Oh, when the
blossoms break from these green hedges like heavenly winged angels, and
their pure, cool perfume fills the air, what joy is mine!
I find Sweet Peas can hardly have too rich a soil, provided always
that they are kept sufficiently wet. They _must_ have moisture, their
roots must be kept cool and damp,--a mulch of leaves or straw is a very
good thing to keep the roots from drying,--and they must always be
planted as deep as possible. Wood ashes give them a stronger growth.
Their colors, the great variety of them, and their vivid delicacy are
wonderful; they are most beautiful against the background of the sea;
they are a continual source of delight, and never cease to bloom, with
me, if gathered every day and watered abundantly, the whole summer
long, even through the autumn till November. But they must never be
suffered to go to seed; that would check their blossoming at once. I
revel in their beauty week after week, bringing them into the house
and arranging them in masses every other day. Clear glass vases are
most effective for them, and they look loveliest, I think, when each
color is kept by itself. For the Princess Beatrice, which is a divine
pale pink, a shade of rose refined and exquisite, there are glasses of
clear pink that repeat the hues of the flowers with magical gradations
and reflections. For the white kinds there are white vases, the most
effective of ground glass, the opaque surface of which matches the tone
of the flowers.
Of the named kinds of Sweet Peas the most beautiful shades of pink
that I know are the divinely delicate Princess Beatrice, the palest
rose-color; Adonis, a deeper pink, very clear and rich; the Orange
Prince, a most ineffably splendid color of bright yellow-rose; these
together make a combination of color that satisfies the inmost soul.
Carmine Invincible is the most splendid red; the Butterfly is white
edged with mauve, and combined with the delicate rose Princess Beatrice
makes a delicious harmony. Blanche Ferry is also a lovely rose. Queen
Victoria is the best white I have known; but every year new varieties
are found which seem more and more beautiful, and it is only by trying
them that one finds which to depend on.
Of the worth of these I have mentioned I am sure; they are the
strongest growers, the freest bloomers, and the most beautiful of their
kind. They never disappoint you if you give them the right care. The
list of flowers in my island garden is by no means long, but I could
discourse of them forever! They are mostly the old-fashioned flowers
our grandmothers loved. Beginning with Snowdrops, Crocuses, Daffodils,
Narcissus, a few Hyacinths, Scillas, an English Primrose or two,
Tulips, and several other early blooming plants, one big red Peony,
Columbine, Ragged Robin, Cornflowers, Roses and Lilies, Larkspurs,
Pinks and Gillyflowers, Sweet Williams, Wallflowers, Forget-me-nots,
single Dahlias, Sunflowers of every kind, and Hollyhocks of all
colors, Poppies in almost endless variety, Nasturtiums of all hues,
pot Marigolds, summer Chrysanthemums in great variety, Rose Campion,
or Rose of Heaven, Pansies, Phlox, Sweet Peas, and Mignonette,
Crimson Flax and the tall blue Perennial Flax (a wonderful blue!),
many kinds of Coreopsis,--all most valuable and decorative,--Asters,
Honeysuckle and Clematis, Morning-glories, Lavender and Foxgloves,
Candytuft, Verbenas, Thunbergia, Penstemon, the heaven-blue Ipomea,
white Petunias,--because they are so beautiful by moonlight,--a few
Four-o’clocks, and so forth. These are enough for a most happy little
garden. A few more modern plants are added, a golden and a rosy Lily
from Japan, a lustrous white gold-hearted Anemone from the same
country, for autumn blooming, one or two tuberous-rooted Begonias,
some Gaillardias and Zinnias, the fragrant little Asperula (Woodruff),
and some others. Among the new plants one of the most interesting
is the Hugelia Cœrulea, which grows a foot and a half high, with a
many-branched woolly leaf, and flowers in flat clusters of the most
delicious light blue. This is a flower with an atmosphere; it has a
quality of beauty quite indescribable.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
I copy the notes of a few days’ work in the garden in May, just to give
an idea of their character and of the variety of occupation in this
small space of ground.