I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable
total depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it. It
is the bunch, or joint, or snakegrass,--whatever it is called. As I do
not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do as Adam did
in his garden,--name things as I find them. This grass has a slender,
beautiful stalk: and when you cut it down, or pull up a long root of it,
you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two it will come up in the
same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades. Cutting down and pulling up
is what it thrives on. Extermination rather helps it. If you follow a
slender white root, it will be found to run under the ground until it
meets another slender white root; and you will soon unearth a network
of them, with a knot somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed,
healthy shoots, every joint prepared to be an independent life and
plant. The only way to deal with it is to take one part hoe and two
parts fingers, and carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere.
It will take a little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a
small patch; but if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have
no further trouble.
I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt to pull
up and root out any sin in you, which shows on the surface,--if it does
not show, you do not care for it,--you may have noticed how it runs into
an interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting branch of them roots
somewhere; and that you cannot pull out one without making a general
internal disturbance, and rooting up your whole being. I suppose it is
less trouble to quietly cut them off at the top--say once a week, on
Sunday, when you put on your religious clothes and face so that no one
will see them, and not try to eradicate the network within.
Remark.--This moral vegetable figure is at the service of any clergyman
who will have the manliness to come forward and help me at a day's
hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need apply.
I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualities of
vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that
(or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row of
bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the trellis.
When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see what it should
do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-pole was empty. There
was evidently a little the best chance of light, air, and sole
proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started for the pole, and began
to climb it with determination. Here was as distinct an act of choice,
of reason, as a boy exercises when he goes into a forest, and, looking
about, decides which tree he will climb. And, besides, how did the vine
know enough to travel in exactly the right direction, three feet, to
find what it wanted? This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand,
have hateful moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do
a moral action. I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an
instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view
of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else
does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not a
pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days and the
weeds lengthen.
Observation.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is a
cast-iron back,--with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious instrument,
calculated to call out a great deal of strength at a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies away
so that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, but
utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close to the
ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself. I find
him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be a cholera-year, and
we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss), and the melons (which
never ripen). The best way to deal with the striped bug is to sit down
by the hills, and patiently watch for him. If you are spry, you can
annoy him. This, however, takes time. It takes all day and part of the
night. For he flieth in darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get
up before the dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can
sprinkle soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease
of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right) and soot
is unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is to set a toad to
catch the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most intimate relations
with the bug. It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower
animals. The difficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill.
If you know your toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build
a tight fence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over. This,
however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoological
garden on my hands. It is an unexpected result of my little enterprise,
which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris “Jardin des
Plantes.”