_June 18th, 1868._
The charms of flowers have been sung ever since letters have existed.
But in our day the passion for flowers has wonderfully increased, and
the cultivation of them, which is a thing very different from the
sentiment of admiration, has become so common that it is considered as
an evidence of bad taste for one having any ground _not_ to have
flowers about the dwelling-house.
But how few who only receive flowers as gifts, or purchase them, know
the pains and penalties of flower-raising! It may be imagined that one
has only to scratch open the ground, bury the seed, and then patiently
wait for nature to do the rest. Listen! First comes the seed-buying.
We do not think seedsmen any less honest than other men. Indeed, the
conduct of those with whom we have dealt for ten years past leads us
to think that they are honorable and honest in intent. But that does
not insure good _seeds_.
They buy of other seedsmen, in foreign lands, who may not be honest,
or are obliged to trust seed-raisers. And so it comes to pass that
seeds, like thousands of other articles in this wicked and adulterous
generation, are adulterated. Italian carnation seed come up miserable
single pinks, of very poor colors; balsams are not half so choice as
is the _price_ at which the seed is sold; not one in ten of this
year’s _ipomea seed_ (convolvulus) will stir out of the ground,—and so
of stock, sweet-william, etc.
But, that past, and our seed well planted, there often comes a deluge,
and washes the seed-beds to pieces, or a long wet spell rots the seed
in the ground.
At length we gather up what we can, and transplant the remnant, and
patiently wait for the flowers. But we are not the only ones waiting
for them. A legion of various insects seem to think that all our
flowers were planted for _them_. We have been often asked why were
insects created? If it is fair to say that the cause of their
existence may be learned from the effects which they produce, we
boldly aver that they were made to humble man’s arrogance, and to
teach him how much mightier is insect weakness than human power. A
grasshopper is contemptible. The farmer can crush him at a step. But
let the plague of grasshoppers be let loose, and all his fields be
deluged with them; and how easily do myriads of creatures that are
individually weak overwhelm him and destroy all his labor!
We have a realizing sense of the unequal war which is waged between
man and insects. It seems in late years as if horticulture might as
well be abandoned. Cherries and plums go down before the curculio;
apples before the canker-worm, the tent-worm, and the apple-worm;
currants before a worm peculiar to itself; melons before half a dozen
kinds of enemies (not including roguish boys).
Among flowers the destruction is equally great. As soon as the rose
fairly shakes out its leaves it is attacked: one bug cuts circles out
of the leaves, as if busy with a pair of scissors making diagrams;
then comes the _thrip_, that can neither be caught, nor wet with
soapsuds, nor dusted with lime, nor pinched with the fingers,—a nimble
fellow, minute as a speck of flour, but numerous as dust. Close upon
its heels comes the _slug_, whose remorseless appetite leaves nothing
behind it but the ribs and frame of the leaf. Next come the rose-bugs
proper, of a finer appetite, disdaining anything less delicate than
rose-petals. Of these the number is surpassing; their devastation
pitiable. There stand my bushes stripped of leaves and blighted in
flowers.
Of course there are remedies enough. One rose-bush may be treated with
hand-picking, or pinching, or washes, but one or two hundred
rose-bushes would require formidable engineering.
Year by year the number of insects increases. New flowers come into
the blighted circle. Aphides, grubs, worms, moles, flies—at the root,
or on the top—resist your labor at every step. They never tire. They
seem never to be full. They get up before you do, and eat on all
night, after you are asleep.
Well, we are born into a world which pays few premiums to lazy men.
Whatever is worth having is worth working for. At any rate, Providence
seems to design that no man shall gather who does not sow and tend. Of
every lazy man it may well be said, What does he in this world? This
is a place for workers. “He that will not work shall not eat,” is an
inspired command. It is as true of the garden as of the field, of
flowers as of fruit and grain. God sends millions of insects over all
our gardens and flower-beds, saying, “We are sent to make you work.”
Every insect is some malignant enchanter, and every fair-faced flower,
like a maiden lost in the wilderness, beseeches us to deliver it from
its enemies!