II

_I planted some canterbury-bells_

I believe our agriculture may be said to have been successful. William

was a faithful gardener. His corn, beans, pease, and potatoes were

abundant, and all the other good things, whether to eat boiled, raw, or

roasted. Our table was almost embarrassed by these riches, which perhaps

helped us to weaken on the chicken idea.

I think our favorite staple was corn--green sweet corn, carried directly

from the patch to the pot, and from the pot to the table. If you have

not eaten it under these conditions you have never really known what

green corn should be like. The flavor of corn begins to go the moment it

is pulled from the stalk, also the moment it leaves the pot. Cooked

instanter, buttered, with salt and pepper, eaten the moment it does not

blister your mouth, it is the pride of the garden. Cooked the next day

and eaten when it has become cool and flabby, it becomes a reproach. It

is different with beans. Beans keep, and, hot or cold or warmed over,

they are never to be despised. The heaping platters of corn and the

bowls of beans that our family could destroy after a morning of hearty

exercise were rather staggering. Then presently the cantaloups

came--fragrant, juicy ones, and all the salads, and--oh, well, never

mind the list--I have heard of living like a lord, but I can't imagine

any lord ever living as near to the sap and savor of life's luxuries as

we did.

I must not overlook our rye. By June it was a cloth of gold, and of such

elevation that I could barely see over it. There is something stately

and wonderful about standing rye, when one is close enough to see the

individual stalks. They are so tall and slim that you cannot understand

why the lightest wind does not lay them flat. Yet all day long they sway

and ripple and billow in the summer wind, and unless the heavy, driving

storm comes the ranks remain unbroken to the last and face the sickle in

golden dress parade.

Westbury came with a force of men one blazing morning, and the sound of

the cutting-machine was a music that carried me back to days when I had

followed the reaper in the Mississippi Valley, from the first ray of

sunrise to the last ray of sunset, eaten five times a day, drunk water

out of a jug under the shock, and once picked up a bundle with a snake

in it and jumped fourteen feet, more or less, straight up in the air. It

was not that I was afraid, you understand, but just surprised. Snakes

nearly always surprise me. I remember once when I was a little boy, on

the way to visit a friend about my size, I took a short cut across a

little clearing, and was hopping and singing along when I hopped onto

something firm that moved twistingly under my bare foot. I did not jump

or run that time; I merely opened out my wings and flew. Corn-rows,

brush-piles, fences, were as nothing. I sailed over them like a gnat

till I reached the big main road. I was not interested in short cuts,

after that, and I didn't cross that field again for years. I was not

afraid, but I did not wish to be surprised again. I recall another

time--

But this is not a snake story. I told Westbury that I could bind as well

as ever, and would give them an exhibition of a few rounds. But it was

impressively hot and at about the third bundle I remembered an important

memorandum I wanted to make, and excused myself. It was quite pleasant

in my study, and I kept on making memorandums until by and by Westbury

sent the Hope to tell me that they'd like me to come out and give the

rest of the exhibition. It was not very considerate of Westbury when I

was busy that way, and I ignored his suggestion.

We did not go in for selling seed rye, as I had once contemplated, but I

think we might have done so if there had been a demand. Westbury and

the men put it into the barn, and later flailed it out on the barn

floor, after the manner of Abraham and Boaz and Bildad the Shuhite,

beating the flails in time and singing a song that Bildad himself

composed. Who would have a dusty, roaring thrashing-machine when one can

listen to the beating flails and be back with Boaz and Bildad in the

days when the world was new?

* * * * *

Just a word more of our vegetable experiments. For one thing, our

asparagus-bed thrived. Those hot mornings I put in paid the biggest

return of any early-morning investment I ever made. Each year it came

better and better--in May and June we could not keep up with it and

shared it with our neighbors. The farm-dweller who does not plant an

asparagus-bed as quickly as he can get the ground ready, and the plants

for it, makes a grave mistake.

Perhaps I ought to record here that our sweet-potatoes were a success.

We were told that they would not grow in New England, but they grew for

us and were sweet and plentiful.

The waning of the year in a garden is almost the best of it, I think.

Spring with its thrill of promise, summer with its fulfilment--meager or

abundant, according to the season--are over. Then comes September and

October, the season of cool, even brisk, mornings and mellow afternoons.

It is remnant-day in the garden, the time to take a basket and go

bargain-hunting on the "as is" counter. Where the carrots have been

gathered there are always a few to be found, if one looks carefully, and

in the melon-patch there is sure to be one or two that still hold the

bouquet of summer, with something added that has come with the first

spicy mornings of fall. Also, if one is lucky, he will find along the

yellowing rows a few ears of corn, tender enough and sweet enough for

the table, with not quite the flavor of July, perhaps, but with

something that appeals as much to the imagination, that belongs with the

spectral sunlight, the fading stalks and vines, and carries the memory

back to that first day of April planting. To bring in a basket, however

scanty, of those odds and ends and range them side by side on the

kitchen table affords a gratification that is not entirely material, I

believe, for there is a sort of pensive sadness in it that I have been

told is related to poetry.

* * * * *

I have said little of our flowers, but they were a large part--sometimes

I think the largest part--of our happiness. Going back through the

summers now, I cannot quite separate those of that first year from those

of the summers that followed. It does not matter; sooner or later we had

all the old-fashioned things: hollyhocks in clusters and corners, and on

the high ground in a long row against the sky; poppies and

bleeding-heart, columbine and foxglove, bunches of crimson bee-balm and

rows of tall delphinium in marvelous shades of blue. And we had banks of

calliopsis and sunflowers--the small sunflowers of Kansas, that bloom a

hundred or more to a stalk--and tall phlox whose fragrance carries one

back to some far, forgotten childhood. Then there were the roses--the

tea-roses that one must be careful of in winter and the hardy

climbers--the Dorothy Perkins and ramblers clambering over the walls. As

I look back now through the summers I seem to see a tangle of color

stretching across the years. It is our garden--our flowers--always a

riot of disorder, always a care and a trial, always beloved and

glorious.

One year I planted some canterbury-bells--the blue and the white. They

are biennials, and bloom the second year. The blue ones came

wonderfully, but the white ones apparently failed. I did not plant them

again, for I went in mainly for perennials that, once established, come

year after year. I tried myosotis, too, but that also disappeared after

the second year. Our garden, such as it was, was a hardy garden, where

only the fittest survived.

There was an accompaniment to our garden. It was the brook. Nearly

always, as I dug and planted, I could hear its voice. Sometimes it rose

strong and insistent--in spring, when rains were plenty; sometimes in

August when the sky for weeks had been hard and dry, it sank to a low

murmur, but it was seldom silent. All the year through its voice was a

lilting undertone, and the seasons ran away to the thread of its silver

song.

After all, a garden in any season is whatever it seems to its owner. To

one who plans and plants it, tends and loves it, any garden is a world

in little, a small realm of sentient personalities, of quaint and lovely

associations, of anxious strivings and concerns, of battles, of

triumphs, and of defeats. To one who makes a garden under compulsion it

is merely an inclosure of dirt and persistent weeds, a place of sun and

sweat and some more or less perverse and reluctant vegetables that would

be much more pleasantly obtained from the market-wagon. There is no

personality in it to him, nor any poetry. I know this, because I was

once that kind of a gardener myself. It was when I was a boy and had to

hoe one every Saturday forenoon, when there were a number of other

things I wanted to do. It was almost impossible to study lovingly the

miracle of the garden when duty was calling me to play short-stop on

the baseball nine that I knew was assembling on the common, with some

irresponsible one-gallus substitute in my place. Yet even in those days

I loved the fall garden. The hoeing was all done then, the weeds were no

longer my enemies. One could dig around among them and find a belated

melon, and in the mellow sunlight, between faded corn-rows, scoop out

its golden or ruby heart and reflect on many things.