I left my garden for a week, just at the close of the dry spell.
A season of rain immediately set in, and when I returned the
transformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairly
jumped forward. The tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten of bugs
and debating whether they would go backward or forward, had become
stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some of them
had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank out of the
French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes--I will not speak of
the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus. There was
not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it had sprung up, and
gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than my head. I am entirely
aware of the value of words, and of moral obligations. When I say that
the asparagus had grown six feet in seven days, I expect and wish to be
believed. I am a little particular about the statement; for, if there is
any prize offered for asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish to
compete,--speed to govern. What I claim is the fastest asparagus. As for
eating purposes, I have seen better. A neighbor of mine, who looked in
at the growth of the bed, said, “Well, he'd be -----“: but I told him
there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till I wanted
it on the asparagus affidavit. In order to have this sort of asparagus,
you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork it in, and
top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer of chloride of
sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, and the neighbors
will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl. 58-5, or not.
I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as if the
devil was in them. I know a lady, a member of the church, and a very
good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of that class, who
says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, in going
through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keeping the ten
commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. I asked her
which one, but she said, all of them: one felt like breaking the whole
lot. The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can be said to hate
anything which grows in my own garden) is the “pusley,” a fat,
ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and the most propagatious (it
is not my fault if the word is not in the dictionary) plant I know. I
saw a Chinaman, who came over with a returned missionary, and pretended
to be converted, boil a lot of it in a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and
eat it with relish,--“Me likee he.” It will be a good thing to keep the
Chinamen on when they come to do our gardening. I only fear they will
cultivate it at the expense of the strawberries and melons. Who can say
that other weeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some
remote people or tribe? We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible
that we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in
some other place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are
virtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that this thought
is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weeds are.
There is another subject which is forced upon my notice. I like
neighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to be
united near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden are an annoyance.
Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck the strawberries,
and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them straddling about
in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner, picking inquisitively
here and there. It is of no use to tell the neighbor that his hens eat
your tomatoes: it makes no impression on him, for the tomatoes are not
his. The best way is to casually remark to him that he has a fine lot of
chickens, pretty well grown, and that you like spring chickens broiled.
He will take them away at once.
The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden, in
strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value of children.
We should soon come to nothing without them, though the Shakers have
the best gardens in the world. Without them the common school would
languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in a garden. For they
are not good to eat, and there is a law against making away with them.
The law is not very well enforced, it is true; for people do thin them
out with constant dosing, paregoric, and soothing-syrups, and scanty
clothing. But I, for one, feel that it would not be right, aside from
the law, to take the life, even of the smallest child, for the sake of a
little fruit, more or less, in the garden. I may be wrong; but these
are my sentiments, and I am not ashamed of them. When we come, as Bryant
says in his “Iliad,” to leave the circus of this life, and join that
innumerable caravan which moves, it will be some satisfaction to us,
that we have never, in the way of gardening, disposed of even the
humblest child unnecessarily. My plan would be to put them into
Sunday-schools more thoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an
agricultural turn; teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors'
vegetables. I think that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress
upon children the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into the
neighbors' gardens.