_No animal except man digs and plants_
It was only a little after Christmas that we began planning for our
spring garden. As commuters, we had once possessed a garden--a bit of
ground, thirty-five feet square, but fruitful beyond belief. Now we had
broad, enriched spaces that in our fancy we saw luxuriant with vegetable
and bright with flower.
I suppose one of the most deeply seated of human instincts is to plant
and till the soil. It is the thing that separates us most widely from
other animal life. The beasts and birds and insects build houses, lay up
food, and some of them, even if unwittingly, change the style of their
clothing with the seasons. But no animal except man digs and plants and
cultivates the flower and fruit and vegetable that nourish his body and
soul. It is something that must date back to creation, for in the
deepest winter, when the ground is petrified and the skies are low and
gray, the very thought of turning up the earth, and raking and planting,
awakens a thrill in the innermost recesses of the normal human heart,
while a new seed-catalogue, filled with gay pictures and gaudy promises,
becomes a poem, nothing less.
What gardens we anticipate when the snow lies deep and we pore over
those seductive lists by a blazing fire! Never a garden this side of
Paradise so fair as they. For there are no weeds in our gardens of
anticipation, nor pests, nor drought, nor any blight. The sun always
shines there, and purple flowers are waving in the wind. No real garden
will ever be so beautiful, because it will never quite be bathed in the
tender light, never wave with quite the loveliness of those fair, frail
gardens of our dreams.
We planted many dream gardens that winter. Splendid catalogues came
every little while, and each had its magic of color and special
offers--"Six rare roses for a dollar," "Six papers of seeds for ten
cents"--six of anything to make the heart happy, for a ridiculously
small sum. The rich level behind the barn was to us no longer hard with
frost and buried beneath the drifts, but green and waving. Some days we
walked out to look over the ground a little and pick the places where we
would have things, but our imagination seemed to work better in the
house by the big fireplace, especially when we rattled the
buff-and-green seed-packets that presently began to come and were kept
handy in the sideboard drawer.
Our former garden had been so small that we feared we should not have
enough for these new areas, and almost daily we increased certain
staples and discovered something we had overlooked, some "New Wonder"
tomato, or "Murphy's Miracle" melon. Being strong for melons, I pinned
my faith to Murphy's Miracle, and ordered several packets of the seeds
that would produce it. Then I began to have doubts. I said if half those
seeds sprouted and did half as well as the catalogue promised, the level
behind the barn would fall a prey to Murphy and become just a heap of
melons. Elizabeth suggested that I add another acre and devote my summer
vacation to peddling them.
Elizabeth was mainly for salads. Anything that could be served with
French dressing or mayonnaise found a place on her list. She got a new
copy of her favorite Iowa catalogue, and when she found in it a special
combination offer of "Twelve new things to eat raw" (it had formerly
been nine) she was moved almost to tears.
In the matter of sweet corn and beans our souls were as one--a sort of
spiritual succotash, as it were--and we encouraged one another in any
new departure that would increase or prolong this staple supply. Flowers
we would have pretty much every-where--hollyhocks in odd corners;
delphinium and foxglove along the stone walls; bunches of calliopsis and
bleeding-heart and peonies; borders of phlox and alyssum; beds of
sweet-williams and corn-flowers and columbines--all those lovely,
old-fashioned things, with the loveliest old-fashioned names in the
world. Where did they get those names, I wonder? for they are among the
most wonderful in the language--each one a strain of word music. We
ordered hollyhock roots and hollyhock seed, and delphinium roots and
delphinium seed, and all the others in roots and seeds that could be had
in both ways, and roses and roses and roses, till I found it desirable
to lay aside the fascinating catalogues now and then for certain
industries in the little room behind the chimney, which I called my
study, in order to be able to provide the "inclosed stamps or check, in
payment for the same."
But I believe there is no money that one spends so willingly as that
invested in garden seeds. That is because the normal human being is a
visionary, a speculator in futures, a dealer in dreams. For every penny
he spends in winter he pictures an overflowing return in beauty or
substance, in flower and fruit, the glorious harvest of radiant summer
days.