There are few things I find so sorrowful as to sit and smoke and reflect on
the splendid deeds that one might have been doing if one had only had the
chance. The PRIME MINISTER feels like this, I suppose, when he remembers
how unkind people have prevented him from making a land fit for heroes to
live in, and I feel it about my garden. There can be no doubt that my
garden is not fit for heroes to saunter in; the only thing it is fit for is
to throw used matches about in; and there is indeed a certain advantage in
this. Some people's gardens are so tidy that you have to stick all your
used matches very carefully into the mould, with the result that next year
there is a shrubbery of Norwegian pine.
The untidiness of my garden is due to the fault of the previous tenants.
Nevertheless one can clearly discern through the litter of packing-cases
which completely surrounds the house that there was originally a garden
there.
I thought something ought to be done about this, so I bought a little book
on gardening, and, turning to September, began to read.
"September," said the man, "marks the passing of summer and the advent of
autumn, the time of ripening ruddy-faced fruits and the reign of a rich and
gloriously-coloured flora."
About the first part of this statement I have no observation to make. It is
probably propaganda, subsidised by the Meteorological Office in order to
persuade us that we still have a summer; it has nothing to do with my
present theme. But with regard to the ripening ruddy-faced fruits I should
like to point out that in my garden there are none of these things, because
the previous tenants took them all away when they left. Not a ruddy-faced
fruit remains. As for the rich and gloriously-coloured flora, I lifted the
edges of all the packing-cases in turn and looked for it, but it was not
there either. It should have consisted, I gather, of "gorgeously-coloured
dahlias, gay sunflowers, Michaelmas daisies, gladioli and other autumn
blossoms, adding brightness and gaiety to our flower-garden."
"Gaiety" seems to be rather a strong point with this author, for a little
further on he says, "The garden should be gay throughout the month with the
following plants," and then follows a list of about a hundred names which
sound like complicated diseases of the internal organs. I cannot mention
them all, but it seems that my garden should be gay throughout with
_Lysimachia clethroides, Kniphofia nobilis_ and _Pyrethrum uliginosum_. It
is not. How anything can be gay with _Pyrethrum uliginosum_ I cannot
imagine. An attitude of reverent sympathy is what I should have expected
the garden to have. But that is what the man says.
Then there is the greenhouse. "From now onwards," he writes, "the
greenhouse will meet with a more welcome appreciation than it has during
the summer months. The chief plants in flower will be _Lantanas_,
_Campanula pyramidalis_, _Zonal Pelargoniums_," and about twenty more. "Oh,
they will, will they?" I thought, and opened the greenhouse door and looked
in. Against the wall there were two or three mouldering peach-trees, and
all over the roof and floor a riot of green tomatoes, a fruit which even
when it becomes ruddy-faced I do not particularly like. In a single large
pot stood a dissipated cactus, resembling a hedgehog suffering from mange.
But what was even more bitter to me than all this ruin and desolation was
the thought of the glorious deeds I might have been doing if the garden had
been all right. Phrases from the book kept flashing to my eye.
"Thoroughly scrub the base and sides of the pots, and see that the
drainage-holes are not sealed with soil." How it thrilled the blood!
"Damp the floors and staging every morning and afternoon, and see that the
compost is kept uniformly moist." What a fascinating pursuit!
"Feed the plants once a week with liquid manure." It went like a clarion
call to the heart.
And here I was condemned to _ennui_ and indolence when I might have been
sitting up all night dosing the _Zonal Pelargoniums_ with hot beef-tea and
taking the temperature of the _Campanula pyramidalis_. Even with the
ruddy-faced fruits there would have been plenty to do.
"Wooden trays with open lath bottoms made to slide into a framework afford
the best means of storing apples and pears. The ripening of pears may be
accelerated by enclosing them in bran or dry clean sand in a closed tin
box." It did not say how often one was to clean out the cage, nor whether
you put groundsel between the bars.