A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may be
aiding to grow in it. I heard a sermon, not long ago, in which the
preacher said that the Christian, at the moment of his becoming one,
was as perfect a Christian as he would be if he grew to be an archangel;
that is, that he would not change thereafter at all, but only develop.
I do not know whether this is good theology, or not; and I hesitate to
support it by an illustration from my garden, especially as I do not
want to run the risk of propagating error, and I do not care to give
away these theological comparisons to clergymen who make me so little
return in the way of labor. But I find, in dissecting a pea-blossom,
that hidden in the center of it is a perfect miniature pea-pod, with the
peas all in it,--as perfect a pea-pod as it will ever be, only it is as
tiny as a chatelaine ornament. Maize and some other things show the same
precocity. This confirmation of the theologic theory is startling, and
sets me meditating upon the moral possibilities of my garden. I may find
in it yet the cosmic egg.
And, speaking of moral things, I am half determined to petition the
Ecumenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against “pusley.”
Of all the forms which “error” has taken in this world, I think that is
about the worst. In the Middle Ages the monks in St. Bernard's ascetic
community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyard which a less rigid
monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing. In 1120 a bishop of Laon
excommunicated the caterpillars in his diocese; and, the following year,
St. Bernard excommunicated the flies in the Monastery of Foigny; and in
1510 the ecclesiastical court pronounced the dread sentence against
the rats of Autun, Macon, and Lyons. These examples are sufficient
precedents. It will be well for the council, however, not to publish the
bull either just before or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this
pestilent heresy when the ground is wet.
It is the time of festivals. Polly says we ought to have one,--a
strawberry-festival. She says they are perfectly delightful: it is so
nice to get people together!--this hot weather. They create such a good
feeling! I myself am very fond of festivals. I always go,--when I can
consistently. Besides the strawberries, there are ice creams and cake
and lemonade, and that sort of thing: and one always feels so well the
next day after such a diet! But as social reunions, if there are good
things to eat, nothing can be pleasanter; and they are very profitable,
if you have a good object. I agreed that we ought to have a festival;
but I did not know what object to devote it to. We are not in need of
an organ, nor of any pulpit-cushions. I do not know that they use
pulpit-cushions now as much as they used to, when preachers had to have
something soft to pound, so that they would not hurt their fists. I
suggested pocket handkerchiefs, and flannels for next winter. But
Polly says that will not do at all. You must have some charitable
object,--something that appeals to a vast sense of something; something
that it will be right to get up lotteries and that sort of thing for.
I suggest a festival for the benefit of my garden; and this seems
feasible. In order to make everything pass off pleasantly, invited
guests will bring or send their own strawberries and cream, which I
shall be happy to sell to them at a slight advance. There are a great
many improvements which the garden needs; among them a sounding-board,
so that the neighbors' children can hear when I tell them to get
a little farther off from the currant-bushes. I should also like
a selection from the ten commandments, in big letters, posted up
conspicuously, and a few traps, that will detain, but not maim, for the
benefit of those who cannot read. But what is most important is,
that the ladies should crochet nets to cover over the strawberries. A
good-sized, well-managed festival ought to produce nets enough to cover
my entire beds; and I can think of no other method of preserving the
berries from the birds next year. I wonder how many strawberries it
would need for a festival and whether they would cost more than the
nets.
I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with the inequality
of man's fight with Nature; especially in a civilized state. In
savagery, it does not much matter; for one does not take a square
hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodates himself to
the situation, and takes what he can get, without raising any dust, or
putting himself into everlasting opposition. But the minute he begins to
clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in for a night, and to try to
have his own way in the least, Nature is at once up, and vigilant, and
contests him at every step with all her ingenuity and unwearied vigor.
This talk of subduing Nature is pretty much nonsense. I do not intend
to surrender in the midst of the summer campaign, yet I cannot but think
how much more peaceful my relations would now be with the primal forces,
if I had, let Nature make the garden according to her own notion.
(This is written with the thermometer at ninety degrees, and the weeds
starting up with a freshness and vigor, as if they had just thought of
it for the first time, and had not been cut down and dragged out every
other day since the snow went off.)
We have got down the forests, and exterminated savage beasts; but Nature
is no more subdued than before: she only changes her tactics,--uses
smaller guns, so to speak. She reenforces herself with a variety of
bugs, worms, and vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savage state, in
order to make war upon the things of our planting; and calls in the
fowls of the air, just as we think the battle is won, to snatch away the
booty. When one gets almost weary of the struggle, she is as fresh as at
the beginning,--just, in fact, ready for the fray. I, for my part, begin
to appreciate the value of frost and snow; for they give the husbandman
a little peace, and enable him, for a season, to contemplate his
incessant foe subdued. I do not wonder that the tropical people, where
Nature never goes to sleep, give it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence.
Here I have been working all the season to make a piece of lawn. It had
to be graded and sowed and rolled; and I have been shaving it like
a barber. When it was soft, everything had a tendency to go on to
it,--cows, and especially wandering hackmen. Hackmen (who are a product
of civilization) know a lawn when they see it. They rather have a fancy
for it, and always try to drive so as to cut the sharp borders of it,
and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts of cut-up, ruined turf.
The other morning, I had just been running the mower over the lawn, and
stood regarding its smoothness, when I noticed one, two, three puffs
of fresh earth in it; and, hastening thither, I found that the mole
had arrived to complete the work of the hackmen. In a half-hour he had
rooted up the ground like a pig. I found his run-ways. I waited for him
with a spade. He did not appear; but, the next time I passed by, he had
ridged the ground in all directions,--a smooth, beautiful animal, with
fur like silk, if you could only catch him. He appears to enjoy the lawn
as much as the hackmen did. He does not care how smooth it is. He is
constantly mining, and ridging it up. I am not sure but he could be
countermined. I have half a mind to put powder in here and there, and
blow the whole thing into the air. Some folks set traps for the mole;
but my moles never seem to go twice in the same place. I am not sure but
it would bother them to sow the lawn with interlacing snake-grass (the
botanical name of which, somebody writes me, is devil-grass: the first
time I have heard that the Devil has a botanical name), which would
worry them, if it is as difficult for them to get through it as it is
for me.
I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint. He is only a
part of the untiring resources which Nature brings against the humble
gardener. I desire to write nothing against him which I should wish to
recall at the last,--nothing foreign to the spirit of that beautiful
saying of the dying boy, “He had no copy-book, which, dying, he was
sorry he had blotted.”