Buying a house when spring is young involves a lot of thought and
anxiety, from which is developed a high nervous pressure. You alternate
days of earnest application and enforced recuperation.
One begins to learn, too, how much he doesn't know.
Our yard, we found, was admirably adapted to quarry purposes, or would
make an excellent clay bank. William told us he would level up the back
lot and then put on a top soil and add a sort of compost of manure and
loam, in which we could plant things. I reserved a square 18 by 25 feet
for a patent wire pigeon fly.
"Why will you raise pigeons?" asked my wife.
"I will raise pigeons," I replied with dignity, "for their giblets. I
love pigeon giblets. You may have the squibs."
"You mean squabs," said my wife.
"I said squibs," I insisted stanchly. "You should say squabs," suggested
my wife mildly. "I will have squibs or nothing," I replied, as becoming
master of the house, and squibs it was. So be it known, we are going to
raise squibs.
"And I," said my wife, "shall raise a tomato. The back of the lot is in
an all-day sun, and tomatoes thrive in the sun."
"And a turnip or two," I said. "If you plant a couple of turnips and let
nature take its course, you'll have turnips all over the place. I've
heard that turnips and belgian hares are noted for----"
"And sweet peas," said my wife, "I shall train them against the house."
"You cannot train a pea," I said scornfully. "You may train a pig, or a
dog, but you cannot train a pea."
One of the reasons women may not vote is that they say just such foolish
things as that! Train a pea, indeed! I would as lief try to train a
doorknob!
With this little difficulty settled and out of the way, we made ready
for serious work.
We were rather late getting into our gardening, but made up in
enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. With a piece of string and a few
sticks, Yours Truly laid off a strip from the steps around the front
porch to the side foundation; and then with a spade the same victim of
circumstances broke his back in three places and wore two lovely
blisters into the palms of his forepaws.
Uncle Henry got his foot into the soil with a spade which, peculiarly
enough, was borrowed from one named Cain, who lives next door. That
other Cain was the father of agricolists. Observe how history carries
itself down the ages with consistency! And to complete the picture,
observe me watering the earth with my sweat!
Who in thunder ever invented the scheme of hiding pieces of brick,
broken concrete, can tops, chunks of wood and the wreck of dishes right
where a fellow wants to dig a garden? I like a practical joke myself,
but that is going too far. In taking off the top soil there was a
reasonably clear thoroughfare, but when the heft of my hoof went against
the heel of the spade for the first downward dash, it struck an
impenetrable ambush of mason's findings.
To make it worse, my wife stood on the porch cheerfully lending her aid
in the form of advice. The man who owned the spade sat comfortably on
his own porch reading THE EVENING SUN, and now and then glancing over
the top at me with an amused smile. William came along.
"Are you digging a garden?" he asked.
"No," I replied idiotically; "I am running a footrace with an
angle-worm!"
The Duke of Mont Alto whizzed by in his automobile and waved his hand.
He tooted twice. I think he was kidding me. A friend, wending homeward
with his dinnerpail, paused to observe that it was hot weather for
digging. That self-consciousness that makes the whole world miserable on
occasion seized me. From every window I imagined delighted neighbors
looking on; in the twitter of the birds I heard merry giggles.
But against and in spite of all these handicaps I persisted. I had as
implements, in addition to Cain's spade--how I love that
connection!--one table knife, one garden claw, one trowel, one sharp
stick, one cracked hoe, and one perfectly good vocabulary. I went after
the clay ground with my hands in preference to any or all of the tools,
and after half an hour of agony had removed, by actual count, one
hundred and thirty-seven large stones and a small pile of pebbles, none
of the pebbles weighing more than one pound. Then with my hands I
crumbled the dirt chunks into powder and carefully sifted, smoothed off,
rolled, tumbled, and otherwise adjusted the net product.
Sweat is the fluid excreted from the sudoriferous glands of the skin.
The sudoriferous glands of Yours Truly worked overtime. Yours Truly
excreted, exuded, flooded. To be swimming around in your own atmosphere
is a novel and sometimes pleasurable experience. It's funny how a man
bowls sixteen-ounce balls until his ribs crack and sits in a Turkish
bath until each pore is a geyser, and yet when that same result is
obtained by means of honest labor and by pushing a spade, he complains.
I cut the lines of this little front garden deep and clean, and sloped
the pulverized earth back so that there would be a perpetual irrigation
in the ditch from the overflow. Rather clever idea, that. Then my wife
got out the dwarf nasturtium seeds and we put them in a box, and the box
in the conservatory, and myself into the shower. I don't see how a
farmer can get along without a shower in the house.
We had about six hundred nasturtium seeds in envelopes bearing totally
misleading pictures of what they will look like. I filled a box with
rough earth and then pulverized it with an ice-pick. Then I stuck holes
with my finger and put one seed in each hole. After my fingernails had
developed into a screaming argument for the use of soap, my wife
discovered that I had planted them too deep.
"You'll have to take them all out and plant them again," she said.