to supplement its natural stem. Therefore cut the stake a little shorter
than the top of the foliage and drive it firmly at the back of the
plant, fastening the main stem to the stake by loosely woven florist's
string.
If, on the other hand, the plant to be supported is a maze of side
branches, like the cosmos, or individual bushes blended so as to form a
hedge, a row of stout poles, also a little lower than the bushes, should
be set firmly behind them, the twine being woven carefully in and out
among the larger branches, and then tightened carefully, so that the
whole plant is gradually drawn back and yet the binding string is
concealed.
If it is possible to locate cosmos, hollyhocks, and Dahlias (especially
Dahlias) in the same place for several successive years, a flanking
trellis fence of light posts, with a single top and bottom rail and
poultry wire of a three inch mesh between, will be found a good
investment. Against this the plants may be tethered in several places,
and thus not only separate branches can be supported naturally, but
individual flowers as well, in the case of the large exhibition Dahlias.
[Illustration: A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE!]
Practicable as is the proper carrying out of the matter, in a score of
otherwise admirable gardens we have seen the results of weeks and months
of preparation either throttled and bound martyrlike to a stake or
twisted and tethered, until the natural, habit of growth was wholly
changed. In some cases the plants were so meshed in twine and choked
that it seemed as if a spiteful fairy had woven a "cat's cradle" over
them or that they had followed out the old proverb and, having been
given enough rope, literally hanged themselves. In other gardens green
stakes were set at intervals (I noticed it in the case of gladioli and
carnations especially) and strings carried from one stake to the other,
leaving each plant in the centre of a twine square, like chessmen
imprisoned on the board. But the most terrible example of all was where
either the owner or the gardener, for they were not one and the same,
had purchased a quantity of half-inch pine strips at a lumber yard and
proceeded to scatter them about his beds at random, regardless of height
or suitability, very much as if some neighbouring Fourth of July
celebration had showered the place with rocket sticks.
If your young German has time in the intervals of tree-planting and
trellis-making, get him to trim some of the cedars of a diameter of two
or three inches and stack them away for Dahlia poles. Next season you
will become a victim of these gorgeous velvet flowers, I foresee,
especially as I have fully a barrel of the "potatoes" of some very
handsome varieties to bestow upon you. Make the most of Meyer, for he
will probably grow melancholy as soon as cool weather sets in and he
thinks of winter evenings and a sweetheart he has left in the
fatherland!
We have had several Germans and they all had _lieber schatz_, for
jealousy or the scorn of whom they had left home, were for the same
reason loath to stay away from it, and at the same time, owing to
contending emotions, were unable to work so that they might return.
Are you not thinking about returning to your indoor bed and board again?
With warm weather I fly out of the door as a second nature, but with a
smart promise of frost I turn about again and everything--furniture,
pictures, books, and the dear people themselves--seems refreshingly new
and wholly lovable!
If you are thinking of making out a book list of your needs as an answer
to your mother's or your "in-law's" query, "What do you want for
Christmas?" write at the beginning--Bailey's _Cyclopædia of American
Horticulture_, in red ink. Lavinia and Martin Cortright gave it to us
last Christmas, the clearly printed first edition on substantial paper
in four thick volumes, mind you, and it is the referee and court of
appeals of the Garden, You, and I in general and myself in particular.
Not only will it tell you everything that you wish or ought to know, but
do it completely and truthfully. In short it is the perfect antidote to
_Garden Goozle_!
XIX
PANDORA'S CHEST
(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)
_Woodridge, October 10_. Nearly a month of pen silence on my part,
during which I have felt many times as if I must go from one to another
of our chosen trees in the river woods and shake the leaves down so that
the transplanting might proceed forthwith, lest the early winter that
Amos Opie predicts both by a goose bone and certain symptoms of his own
shall overtake us. Be this as it may, the leaves thus far prefer their
airy quarters to huddling upon the damp ground.
However, there is another reason for haste more urgent than the fear of
frost--the melancholy vein that you predicted we should find in Meyer is
fast developing, and as we wish to have him leave us in a perfectly
natural way, we think it best that his stay shall not be prolonged. At
first he seemed not only absorbed by his work and to enjoy the garden
and especially the river woods, but the trees and water rushing by.
A week ago a change came over him; he became morose and silent, and
yesterday when I was admiring, half aloud, the reflection of a beautiful
scarlet oak mirrored in the still backwater of the river, he paused in
the kneeling position in which he was loosening the grasp of a white
flowering dogwood, and first throwing out his arms and then beating his
chest with them, exclaimed--"Other good have trees and water than for
the eye to see; they can surely hang and drown the man the heart of whom
holds much sorrow, and that man is I!"
Of course I knew that it was something a little out of the ordinary
state of affairs that had sent a man of his capability to tramp about as
a vagrant sort of labourer, but I had no previous idea that melancholy
had taken such a grip upon him. Much do I prefer Larry, with periods of
hilarity ending in peaceful "shlape." Certain peoples have their
peculiar racial characteristics, but after all, love of an occasional
drink seems a more natural proposition than a tendency to suicide, while
as to the relative value of the labour itself, that is always an
individual not a racial matter.
I too am feeling the domestic lure of cooler weather. All the day I wish
to be in the open, but when the earlier twilight closes in, the house,
with its lamps, hearth fires, and voices, weaves a new spell about me,
though having once opened wide the door of outdoors it can never be
closed.
Do you remember the _Masque of Pandora_, and the mysterious chest?
"_Pandora_
Hast thou never
Lifted the lid?
_Epimetheus_
The oracle forbids.
Safely concealed there from all mortal eyes
Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods.
Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee
Till they themselves reveal it."
Bart was reading it aloud to me last night. Prose read aloud always
frets me, because one's mind travels so much faster than the spoken
words and arrives at the conclusion, even if not always the right one,
long before the printed climax is reached; but with good poetry it is
different--the thoughts are so crystallized that the sound of a
melodious voice liberates them more swiftly.
Verily Pandora's Chest has been opened this season here in the garden;
the gods were evidently not unwilling and turned the lock for me, though
perhaps I have thrown back the cover too rashly, for out has flown,
instead of dire disaster, ambition in a flock of winged ideals, hopes,
and wishes masquerading cleverly as necessities, that will keep me alert
in trying to overtake and capture them all my life long.
Last night, once again comfortably settled in the den, we took inventory
of the season's doings, and unlike most ventures, find there is nothing
to write upon the nether page that records loss. Of the money set aside
for the improvement of the knoll half yet remains, allowing for the
finishing of the tree transplanting. Into this remainder we are
preparing to tuck the filling for the rose bed, a goodly store of lily
bulbs, some flowering shrubs, an openwork wire fence to be a
vine-covered screen betwixt us and the road, instead of the broken
rattling pickets, a new harness for Romeo to wear when he returns home,
as a thank offering for his comfortable services (really the bridle of
the old one is quite scratched to bits upon the various trees and rough
fence rails to which he has been tethered), and last of all, what do you
think? Three guesses may be easily wasted without hitting the mark, for
instead of, as we expected, tearing down the old barn, our summer camp,
we are going to remodel it to be a permanent outdoor shelter. It is to
have a wide chimney and fireplace at one end, before which our beds may
be drawn campfire fashion if it is too cool, and adjustable shutters so
that it may be either merely a roof or a fairly substantial cabin and at
all possible seasons a study and playroom for us all. Then too we shall
overlook "Maria Maxwell's Experiment," as Bart calls her scheme of
running the Opal Farm. We were heartily glad to know that she had leased
and not bought it, but we were much surprised to learn, first through
the village paper, and not the man and woman concerned, that "Mr. Ross
Blake, the engineer in charge of the construction of the new reservoir,
believing in the future of the real-estate boom in Woodridge (we didn't
know there was one), has recently purchased the Amos Opie farm as an
investment, the deed being to-day recorded in the town house. He has
already leased it for a young ladies' seminary, pending its remodelling,
for which he himself is drawing the plans."
Dear _Man from Everywhere!_ much as I like Maria, I think he would be
the more restful neighbour of the two. What a complete couple they might
have made, but that is a bit of drift thought that I have put out of my
head, for if any two people ever had a chance this summer to fall in
love if they had the capacity, it was Maria and _The Man_, and the
strange part of it is that as far as may be known neither is nourishing
the sentiment of a melancholy past and no other present man or woman
stands between; perhaps it is some uncanny Opal spell that stays them.
Yet even as it is, in this farm restoration both are unconsciously
preparing to take a peep into Pandora's Chest full of the unknown, so
let us hope the gods are willing.
_Hallowe'en._ The Infant and Anastasia, her memories revived by Larry's
voluble and personally adapted folk-lore, are preparing all sorts of
traps and feasts for good luck and fairies, while Lady Lazy is content
to look at the log fire and plan for putting the garden to sleep.
Yesterday I finished taking up my collection of peonies, Iris, and hardy
chrysanthemums that had been "promised" at various farm gardens beyond
the river woods, and duly cleared off my indebtednesses for the same
with a varied assortment of articles ranging from gladioli bulbs, which
seem to multiply by cube root here, to a pair of curling tongs, an
article long coveted by a simple-minded woman of more than middle age,
for the resuscitation of her Sunday front locks, and which though
willing to acquire by barter she, as a deacon's wife, had a prejudice
against buying openly over the counter.
Meyer has gone, having relapsed into comparative cheerfulness a few days
before his departure on the receipt of a bulky letter which, in spite of
the wear and tear of travel, remained heavily scented, coupled with
Bart's assurance that he could remain in America another four weeks and
still be at a certain Baltic town of an unpronounceable name in time for
Christmas.
In spite of heavy frosts my pansies are a daily cheer, but it is really
of no use for even the flowers of very hardy plants to struggle on
against nature's decree of a winter sleeping time; the wild animals all
come more or less under its spell, and the dogs, the nearest creatures
of all to man, as soon as snow covers the ground and they have their
experience of ice-cut feet, drowse as near the fire as possible and in
case of a stove almost under it. I wonder if nature did not intend that
we also should have at least a half-drowsy brooding time, instead of
making the cold season so often a period of stress and strain and short
days stretched into long nights. If so, we have taken the responsibility
of acting for ourselves, of flying in nature's face in this as in many
other ways.
Does it ever seem to you strange that our contrariness began within the
year of our legendary creation, when Eve came to misery not by gazing in
a bonnet shop, but when innocently wandering in her garden, the most
beautiful of earth? By which we women gardeners should all take warning,
for though the Tree of Life may be found in every garden,
"Yet sin and sorrow's pedigree
Spring from a garden and a tree."
_December 10._ Snow a month earlier than last year, but we rejoice in
it, for it will keep the winds from the roots of the trees not yet
wholly settled and comfortable in their new homes. The young hemlocks
are bewitching in their wreaths and garlands, and one or two older trees
give warmth to the woods beyond the Opal Farm and sweep the low,
snow-covered meadow, that looks like a crystal lake, with their feathery
branches. The cedars were beautiful in the May woods and so are they
now, where I see them through the gap standing sentinels against the
white of the brush lot. It seems to me that we cannot have too many
evergreens any more than we can have too much cheerfulness.
[Illustration: THE LOW, SNOW-COVERED MEADOW THAT LOOKS LIKE A CRYSTAL LAKE.
Copyright, 1902, H. Hendrickson]
There are no paths in the garden now, a hint that our feet must travel
elsewhere for a time, and I confess that Lady Lazy has not yet
redeemed herself, and at present likes her feet to fall upon soft rugs.
The Infant's gray squirrels, Punch and Judy, and the persistent sparrows
have found their way to the house, taking their daily rations from the
roof of the shed. Punch, stuffed to repletion, has a _cache_ under the
old syringa bushes, the sparrows seeming to escort him in his travels to
and fro, but whether for companionship or in hope of gain, who can say?
The plans for the remodelling of Opal Farm-house are really very
attractive and yet it will be delightfully simple to care for. Maria and
_The Man_ have agreed better about them than over anything I have ever
heard them discuss; but then, as it is purely a business arrangement, I
suppose that Maria feels free from her usual pernickety restraint.
We surmise that either she has much more laid by than we supposed or she
is waxing extravagant, for she has had the opal, that _The Man_ gave her
once in exchange for an old coin, surrounded with very good diamonds and
set as a ring! Really I never before noticed what fine strong white
hands she has.
I shall ask Father Penrose for the _Cyclopædia_--it has a substantial
sound that may soften his suspicion that we are not practical and were
not properly grieved over the loss of the hens!
XX
EPILOGUE
(DICTATED)
_Woodridge, January 3._ In the face of circumstances that prevent my
holding the pen in my own hand, I am resolved that the first chronicle
of the New Year shall be mine,--for by me it has sent The Garden, You,
and I a new member and our own garden a new tree, an oak we hope.
The Infant is exultant at the evident and direct result of her dealings
with the fairies, and keeps a plate of astonishing goodies by the
nursery hearth fire; these, if the fairies do not feast upon personally,
are appreciated by their horses, the mice.
His name is John Bartram Penrose, a good one to conjure with gardenwise,
though he is no kin to the original. He has fresh-air lungs, and if he
does not wax strong of limb and develop into a naturalist of some sort,
he cannot blame his parents or their garden vacation.
MARY PENROSE,
her [Illustration: ROSE MOTIF.] mark.
[Illustration: PUNCH ... HAS A CACHE UNDER THE OLD SYRINGA
BUSHES.]
FOR THE HARDY SEED BED