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THE GARDEN BOOK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
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PLATE I
. — JOSEPH WAS THE REAL GARDENER
Photograph by Alice Boughton
The
/Garden Book
for
Young Peopl^
By Alice Lounsberry
Author of A Guide to the Trees f Guide to the
Wild Flowers f ^'‘Southern Wild Flowers and Trees ^ ” “ The Wild Flower Book for Young People^ ’ ’ etc.
New York
Frederick A. Stokes Company Publishers
Copyright 1908, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
March, iqo8
All rights reserved
PREFACE
This book tells the story of a young girl and her brother Joseph, who utilise a triangular strip of ground for planting a flower garden. The girl loves her roses best, and the boy finds delight In working the soil and In tending his hardy plants. Together they sow seeds and watch for them to sprout; they set out young plants and wait In patience until their flowers unfold; they wage war with weeds and Insect pests, and, at length, prepare to meet the winter.
These young people learn the habits of birds that build nests among the flowers and In the bordering coppice where shy wildlings grow. Their life Is far from dull.
Older Inhabitants of the suburb, who have beautiful gardens, become Interested In the desire of Joseph and his sister to make their home attractive, and continually encourage and teach them. The garden Is their meeting place of work and play and their opportunity for studying the out-of-door world, the secrets of which they would gladly share with the reader.
A. L.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I — The Decision i
II — Early Preparations .j 9
III — The First Planting 17
IV — Miss Wiseman’s Suggestions. 24
V — Day’s Hard Work 32
VI — Joseph Does Some Transplanting. . 40
VII — Making the Seed and Flower Beds 48
VIII — Planting in the Seed-Bed 56
IX— Joseph Continues Sowing Seeds. ... 64
X — Finding Ferns to Transplant 72
XI — My Rosarium 80
XII — Planting Before the Wall 88
XIII — Joseph Completes the Planting of
the Garden 96
XIV — May Time 104
XV — ^About Wild and Cultivated Flowers 113
XVI — The Last May Days 122
XVII — The Opening Day for Roses 130
XVIII — The Comedy of the Garden 138
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Vlll
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XIX— A Day of Play 147
XX — The Garden Gives Its Reward ... 155
XXI— The Drought 163
XXII — Our Phloxes and Heliotrope. ... 17 1
XXIII— The End of the Drought 179
XXIV — The Fall of One of the Spruces. . 187
XXV — Our Golden Glow and Hollyhocks 195
XXVI — Water Gardens and Other Things 203
XXVII — Early August Days 21 1
XXVIII — Little Joseph Wins the Tourna- ment 219
XXIX — The Return Home 227
XXX — September Days 236
XXXI — Getting Ready for Bulb-Planting 244
XXXII — Chrysanthemums 252
XXXIII — The Autumn Work 261
XXXIV — Days Near Thanksgiving 269
XXXV — The Snow 277
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE FACING PAGE
I — Joseph was the Real Gardener,
Frontispiece
II — Map of the Triangle i
III — The Bluebirds took Possession of the
House hung to the Tree 6
IV — “Summer is not here” 26
V — He slept without rocking 38
VI — A Border of Narcissus poeticus 52
VII — “I have a bird’s egg” 60
VIII—Fiddleheads 72
IX — ^Windflowers 74
X — '“Fronds uncoiled beside some lovely
wake-robins” 78
XI — Rose Fantasy 82
XII — “I may become a Rosarian” 86
XIII— Wild Ginger 94
XIV— Two Spring Orchids 98
XV — “Blue flowers that should bloom for
us soon” 100
XVI — “Blowing out his cheeks and breath
to keep the moths away” 102
ix
X
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE FACING PAGE
XVII — “May in the country is as lovely
as June” 104
XVIII— The Wild Blue Flag 108
XIX — Pink Dogwood no
XX — Columbines 114
XXI — “Apple blossoms have begun to
drop their petals” 122
XXII — Pointed Blue-eyed Grass 124
XXIII — June Roses 132
XXIV — “Joseph had to get down on his
knees and use the sickle”. . . . 144
XXV— “The long drive outlined by
spruces where the bridal
wreath is in bloom” 154
XXVI — “We like to observe these lark- spurs” 156
XXVII — Phlox Drummondi 160
XXVIII — Nasturtiums 170
XXIX — -Cosmos 176
XXX — “Their golden cups gleamed as
brightly as ever’ ’ 184
XXXI— “The foxgloves are still lovely” . 188 XXXII — “Golden glow against the sky”. 196 XXXIII — “He knows without being told
just how to handle a plant” . . 198 XXXIV — “Pink, blue and yellow lilies float
on the surface” 204
XXXV — Countless Irises 208
XXXVI — Rose-mallows 212
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
XI
PLATE FACING PAGE
XXXVII— A Petted Hydrangea 216
XXXVIII — “Miss Wiseman’s narrow path
with the hedge on one side and the flowering shrubs on the
other” 224
XXXIX — Hydrangeas and Phloxes 230
XL — The Tamed Butterfly 234
XLI — “Joseph with a large package of seeds, dropping them awk- wardly over the ground” .... 238
XLII — Wichuraianas over Arches 244
XLIII — ^The Drive up to Nestly Heights. 248 XLIV — Chrysanthemums in the Glass
House at Nestly Heights . . . 252 XLV — “The chrysanthemums that Tim- othy brought us” . 254
XLVI — The Men at Work 262
XLVII — “Timothy has been in the clutches
of the farmer” 268
XLVIII — -“At the point of the triangle all
is dead” 272
XLIX — “Queenie trudges through the
snow” 282
THE GARDEN BOOK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
PLATE II.— MAP OF THE TRIANGLE
THE GARDEN BOOK FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
CHAPTER I
THE DECISION
For some time Joseph and I had thought that we should like to have a garden. Not until we inherited the homestead of a great-aunt, how- ever, did we regard our desire with seriousness. Then the first decision we were obliged to make was whether our garden should be of vegetables or of flowers.
The square brick house into which we moved, while March was trying to make us believe it was still winter, stood in the suburb of Nestly, a pretty place, and readily accessible to the city by railway, trolleys and automobiles. It was a suburb where many people lived, and had lost, therefore, the rural charm it possessed in Revolutionary days, when our great-aunt’s home had been one of the three
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THE DECISION
important places in that part of the country. Nev- ertheless, in Nestly to-day gardens are still thought quite as important as houses, which can never be true in a large city.
For generations our great-aunt’s place has been called the Six Spruces, because at a short distance in front of the house there stands in a circle that number of spruce trees, their great, out-held branches enclosing, according to the season, a sum- mer house or supporting one of snow. Joseph, who is barely thirteen, and much in sympathy with the lore of fairy folk and the adventures of pirates, thinks a great deal of these trees. I am four years his senior, besides being his sister and natural guar- dian. To me, as to Joseph, these six spruces seem the most wonderful trees in the world.
When my brother and I are alone, I call him “Little Joseph,” although he is now so well grown for his age that he dislikes me to do' so when neigh- bours are present. At first we were both chagrined that our inherited mansion was so' severe in looks and so dilapidated, because our means for making alterations are small. This, however, has not in- terfered with Joseph’s lasting admiration for the cupola, which reminds him of a sentry box, and neither of us would exchange the Six Spruces for the highly cultivated acres of our neighbour, Mr. Hayden of Nestly Heights.
Within, the seriousness of our aunt’s disposition was indicated by the plain furniture and walls,
THE DECISION
3
while outside, the overgrown and unkempt grounds were evidence of her dislike for out-of-door life and the trouble of flower-growing.
Mrs. Keith stayed with us as a reminder of our great-aunt’s day and power. She had been the housekeeper of the Six Spruces for many years, and saw no reason for changing her abode because two children were coming there to grow up. Indeed, Little Joseph and I greatly preferred to have her remain. We had discovered that her heart was good and kind, although from what she said about It we might have believed she had no such organ at all.
Both our near neighbours have gardens for vege- tables and for flowers, and their contentment Is very great. We hear that last autumn Miss Wise- man, whose place adjoins ours on the north, had a single dahlia, larger and finer than any which unfolded at Nestly Heights. Earlier In the sea- son, however, the beets grown by Mr. Hayden’s gardener were somewhat sweeter than her own, so the dahlia was doubly prized as making up for their deficiency. Hearing our neighbours argue whether It was more pleasing to plant pansies by themselves, or to use them as ground covers for rose-beds, we became convinced that great enjoy- ment was to be found In watching things grow, and incidentally, of course. In outdoing one’s neigh- bours.
Our neighbour, Mr. Hayden, has three sons:
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THE DECISION
one a year older than Joseph and one a year younger; the eldest, a boy of twenty, whom we have not seen, is away at college. The only little girl in the neighbourhood is Queenie Perth. She lives with her aunt. Miss Wiseman, who takes a wonderful amount of care of her, and talks a great deal about her health. Whenever she plays with Joseph or the boys at Nestly Heights, however, I notice that she romps as hard as any of them.
The strip of ground that Joseph and I thought possible for our garden lies in the shape of a long triangle, one end of which snuggles up closely to our south veranda. Bordering the longest side of this triangle there is a strip of light woodland, com- posed mostly of coppice, while both the point and the straight side fit into Mr. Hayden’s well-kept land. This straight side, moreover, is outlined by a high wall.
It was not on account of any preconceived plan that our garden plot is so shaped. We perhaps should have preferred a circular or a rectangular garden; but the triangle happened to be the most available bit of ground for planting that our great- aunt had left us. Joseph, who has the gift of spy- ing out the advantageous in all things, says that at least we can put the same plants in a triangular plot that we can in any other.
The great decision was about the kind of garden to plant; for we soon became sufficiently modern in the fashion of gardens to feel that it should be
THE DECISION
i
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of some particular type. I remembered that one or two authors recommended Japanese gardens, that others preferred the old-fashioned kind, while one of ambitious talents described gardening on miniature mountains. The more I read, the more I looked askance at our triangular patch, and twice I dreamed of it covered with cabbages; when one day Joseph wisely remarked that we would plant the prettiest flowers, grasses and ferns, and trust to luck to get vegetables to eat. Above all, we should try to make the places where we set out the flowers look like their native homes.
Then a little trouble arose. Whenever, at gath- erings in the neighbourhood, our friends discussed the prices of bulbs, seeds and young plants, Joseph’s eyes sought mine, and it seemed as if a mist had passed over our imagined garden. We had, in truth, but little money to spend for flowers. But again Joseph wisely said that we could at least go to the woods and fields and get pretty plants, even if we could not afford to buy them of the nurserymen.
One day, still early in March, an old man came to the Six Spruces to sell some bird-houses which he had made when storm-bound during the winter. They were short pieces of the hollowed-out stems of trees, covered with pointed roofs, and given firm floors and open doorways. A bird might well be- lieve that Nature herself had made them. Joseph’s delight in these houses so pleased the old man that
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THE DECISION
he helped him to hang one from a tree; to swing another from the veranda, and to set the third in a niche of the wall separating the triangle from Nestly Heights. We flattered ourselves then that we were quite In advance of the bird season.
Yet the very next day a bluebird flew with much directness and took possession of the house hung to the tree. It must have been the female bird that slipped In first to see If it pleased her practical mind. She very quickly decided to occupy It for the summer, and when she joined her mate, who sat on the top of the house, she nodded her head and appeared to be telling him all her Intended arrange- ments. Joseph thought that they were also con- gratulating themselves that their long trip north- ward was over and that they could now settle down in so cosy a home.
Soon after this we were overtaken by the ap- proach of spring. There was a scent of new earth In the air and the sound of soft winds In the tree- tops. Winter with its biting cold was being driven away. The bluebirds talked loudly together, and at the point of the triangle where it becomes soft and. spongy to the feet we saw a number of long, slender, black birds, very merry and busy with woo- ing and chatter. Yet the grass that covered the triangle was still colourless; the trees were bare, and the earth under them was strewn with dead leaves. Noticing these things. Little Joseph asked if spring really began in March.
PLATE III. — THE BLUEBIRDS TOOK POSSESSION OF THE HOUSE HUNG TO
THE TREE
THE DECISION
7
On the morrow Joseph awoke early. He was enthusiastic.
“Those long, black birds,” he told me at break- fast, “that stay at the lower end of the wood by the triangle are called grackles; and a pair of blue- birds have taken possession of the house in the wall. There is now only one house to let for the summer.”
Thus far we had secured our tenants without the slightest exertion.
This same day the man who had made the bird- houses came and asked if he could help us get ready for planting. The back of winter now seemed to be broken, he said. Here indeed was something definite. “The farmers hardly think it is time for ploughing yet,” he remarked, and added that there was a good deal of clearing up to be done about the Six Spruces. Further, he told us that his name happened to be Timothy Pennell, and that he took an interest in the place, having sometimes worked on it for our great-aunt. It was he who had told Joseph the long, black birds were called grackles. Timothy seemed to know all about planting turnips and potatoes and beans and a good deal about flowers, although he said he mostly noticed the wild ones that came up of themselves in the woods and swamps.
“We shall plant some wild flowers,” Little Jo- seph told him, “and have others that grow only in gardens.”
8
THE DECISION
“You’ll tame the wild ones?” Timothy asked, for he had caught the idea.
Indeed, I began to think that Joseph’s simple garden in which wild plants would grow freely and birds build nests might be made as attractive as one where only rare and costly flowers bloomed. We both listened eagerly as the old man related how, when his boy was ill, he had taken hepaticas from the woods and forced them to open before their natural season. He abetted Joseph’s scheme of getting flowers and ferns from our own woods and transplanting them in the garden. The num- ber of ideas that soon began to tumble over each other in our minds was astonishing.
It was perhaps unfortunate that Timothy spoke so strongly about weeds. This word shocked us both, since it made us foresee strife and innumer- able difficulties. He had said that weeds in a garden were not only probable but necessary to its beauty, and that some of the rankest of them there were handsomer than many hot-house flowers. “A gar- den without weeds,” he declared, “would be like a loaf of bread without salt.”
“They will come anyway,” Joseph replied, “there is no’ use in planning for them. What we must think about,” he added, and, from the way Little Joseph spoke, the old man must have known that the decision was made, “is how to plant the triangle with real flowers, both tamed and wild.”
CHAPTER II
EARLY PREPARATIONS
HE lively way in which the bluebirds continued
1 to build their nests caused Little Joseph and me to think that spring was coming with hasty strides, and that there was not a minute to lose in making preparations to plant the triangle. Joseph had bought some flower seeds with the first money we had set aside for our garden, and his fingers tingled to put them in the ground. We could not, however, induce Timothy to agree that the time for doing so really had come. The old man had a provoking way of looking at the clouds and then dubiously shaking his head. “The farmers are still asleep,” he said, “and it is best to follow their movements.” From his doubtful expression Little Joseph and I began to fear there might always be frost behind the clouds.
In the meantime the Six Spruces was having such a clearing up as it had not had in years. Timothy assured us that it was better to make the things that were already on the old place look “ship- shape” before giving attention to new ones. He
9
10
EARLY PREPARATIONS
first borrowed Miss Wiseman’s heavy roller and used it on the lawn in front of the house, and the triangle. Then he trimmed the edges of the gravel path that circles the lawn, and raked up all dead leaves and tufts of grass lying about the Six Spruces. He worked very hard over the front lawn, and seemed sorry we had no new ones to make, as he said it was the right time of year for making lawns.
Timothy had a pair of pruning shears that seemed to give him great delight. They were so large and heavy that I could barely open and close them, although Little Joseph soon learned to use them with ease. When Timothy had finished trimming the lawn borders, he pruned the grape- vine with such eagerness that he appeared to be chopping it up for fire-wood.
“I am sure Aunt Amanda never would have allowed him to do that,” I said to Joseph, and the old man overheard.
“No, miss,” he replied, “but it is just what the vine has needed these many years.”
We were really thankful when he left the cur- rant-bushes alone, only remarking that in a day or two he would give them a good spraying with lime- sulphur. He went next to the blush-rose bush that stands near the south veranda and began clipping. Now I had heard that this rose-bush and the lemon verbena that was planted each year on the other side of the veranda steps were the only flowers in
EARLY PREPARATIONS
11
the world that Aunt Amanda had really loved. It was pitiful to hear Timothy’s sharp scissors going clip, clip every minute. He had always told our great-aunt, he said, how much finer the roses would be if he could have pruned the bush properly. Of course we let him go on.
He did not clip the yellow bell shrub, nor the two spireas that stand near one of the front corners of the house. Neither did he touch the three lilac bushes near the stable. These are the only orna- mental shrubs on the place. With a wave of his hand, Timothy said that he would give them all a good spraying before their buds opened.
We had then no outfit for spraying. We de- cided, however, to buy one, since it would be needed throughout the blossoming season, and we could not be always borrowing Miss Wiseman’s tools. Already Little Joseph and Timothy had cleaned up and sharpened the tools we had found at the Six Spruces; but many of them were now anti- quated, although we were glad enough to have them.
After rolling and raking the lawns, clipping the grape-vine and the blush-rose bush, and spraying the cherry-trees, currant-bushes and shrubs, it was astonishing how tidy the old place looked.
When Miss Wiseman came to see us she ex- claimed : “Goodness, children, how surprised your Aunt Amanda would have been ! You really have given this place a quite different look, and with only
EARLY PREPARATIONS
Timothy Pennell to work a day for you now and then. You have started to make your garden in the best way — by clearing up first.”
Of course I told her that Little Joseph was the real gardener, and that he was impatient because not a single grass or flower seed had as yet been planted.
“Make ready first,” Miss Wiseman said again, and went away, leaving on the table a beautiful book for Joseph, called “An Ambitious Boy’s Gar- den.”
We have both noticed since living at the Six Spruces the beautiful colours of the out-of-door world. Here spring is like a fairy tale. First of all, the grey look of winter fades out of the atmos- phere. Then the birds began to chirp, toads croak, and bullfrogs are heard in swampy places. Every- thing appears to grow slightly pink. The great, bare trees are touched with it, and the grey, dead look vanishes from their twigs. Wherever there are willows, they turn yellow, and can be distinctly recognised among other trees. The red maples that grow in moist places are covered suddenly with tiny red blossoms. Neither Joseph nor I had ever noticed this before.
Near our wood-border there are three red maples which we are now watching grow redder and red- der every day. But this red is not, as one might suppose from a distance, just a thick cloud that lights on the trees. It is caused by little blossoms
EARLY PREPARATIONS
13
that burst out from the twigs, each one being as perfect as if it were a grand lotus lily. When Joseph saw these blossoms for the first time he could scarcely believe his eyes. A day or two ago he asked Mr. Hayden of Nestly Heights if he had noticed how finely our red maples were blos- soming.
Mr. Hayden said: “Gracious, they are a splen- did sight !”
There is no weeping willow at the Six Spruces. I should very much like one, but those the nursery- men have for sale look very small in comparison with the great ones in this part of the country. Nevertheless, I shall buy one when autumn comes, since Timothy says that is the best time for trans- planting them.
It has always been declared by the people of Nestly that the soil at the Six Spruces was rich and well drained, and that flowers would have grown there luxuriously if our great-aunt had de- sired them. The blush-rose bush was noted for sending out many and perfect flowers each season when, from one year to another, it was neither pruned nor sprayed. It was left instead to grow by the south veranda as unmolested as a wild flower in the woods.
Timothy talks now a great deal about the prepa- ration of the soil since the triangle is to be planted ,with flowers. Mrs. Keith tells us that it was once our Aunt Amanda’s favourite bit of lawn, and was
14.
EARLY PREPARATIONS
the one place where she minded weeds as much as Betsy Trotwood disliked donkeys. Still, Timothy thought necessary to roll it down a number of times, to sprinkle fertilising powder over it, and then to sow it with grass seed. This he did one day after a night of rain, when the earth was moist and therefore ready to take the seed. He lamented that he could not have sown the seeds in late Sep- tember, since they might then have taken root and had a long sleep during the winter. He said his old head had then no idea that, when spring came, he would be working at the Six Spruces for two children instead of for our great-aunt.
It seems all right for Timothy tO' call my brother a child and to have his own way in spite of what Jo- seph says ; but I do think he sometimes forgets that I am nearly seventeen.
Naturally, one of the difficulties we shall have with the garden is that no work was done here in the autumn. No preparations were then made for spring. Moreover, at the Six Spruces there are hardly any flowers to reseed themselves. There are none of the kind that come up year after year. Here we found only the blush-rose bush, the yellow bell, the spireas, and the lilacs. Little Joseph realises that this spring the garden is merely to be started. It is likely that we shall have but few flowers, but we hope that with each succeeding year the garden will become more beautiful.
Even if shabby and neglected, the Six Spruces is
EARLY PREPARATIONS
16
one of the most important places in Nestly, and we have no need to economise space. But just because there is so much room and opportunity for growing flowers, we have decided this first year to make our garden exclusively on and about the triangle. In front of the house we shall only try to improve the lawn. Sometimes we dread lest what we do will not be quite right; but then Joseph says that pretty flowers can never make a place look ugly.
Joseph indeed has his own ideas about flowers. Although he has never before had a garden to work in and to rule, he has often watched the gar- dens of other people. His love for most flowers is very great, and at the Six Spruces he hopes to see growing the ones that he loves best and to have none that give him no pleasure. Several times he has said: “I do hope you will not ask me to plant petunias.” For some reason he seems to think that these flowers mar the look of a garden as much as the appearance of a tree is spoiled by being struck by lightning. If all Joseph’s ideas about the gar- den come true, I think we shall some day have flowers and shrubs rivalling Miss Wiseman’s and even those at Nestly Heights. It delights me to imagine how the old place will look when the wall is covered with vines, when flowers of many colours bloom on the triangle, and when others peep from the wood-border.
It has lately turned so cold that Little Joseph has been prevented from working out-of-doors and
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EARLY PREPARATIONS
has been busy making window-boxes in which to start seeds. These boxes are not pretty, but Miss Wiseman says they are ingenious. She always calls Joseph “Master,” instead of “Little,” which makes him feel very grown-up in her presence.
To begin with, Joseph cut down some old soap boxes to about two and a half or three inches in height, and then filled them with some of the rich earth that lies all through our woods under the dead leaves. He intended to place them in the library window, where the sun would shine brightly upon them. But, even so, he was not quite satis- fied. At Miss Wiseman’s he saw the gardeners starting their seeds in glass houses, and this filled him with alarm lest they should sprout long before his own.
One day in a dark closet he found a high pile of my camera plates which unhappily had been fail- ures. He washed them ofl: with hot water and soda, and soon had a number of neat pieces of clean glass five inches by seven in size. With strong gum he then pasted several of them together on strips of cloth until he had three lengths of glass as long as the boxes. He intended to cover the seeds with them when they were sown, and to hold them up with little prop-sticks whenever he wished to admit the air. Of course such covers were wabbly and difficult to handle; but Little Joseph did not mind this. He would now be able to have some of his seeds under glass.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRST PLANTING
My way of helping Joseph in these March days has been to attend to the correspondence. I have written to a number of nurseiymen for catalogues, which, after much reading and ponder- ing over, have helped us to decide on the seeds for our garden. Many of the names In these cata- logues we had never heard before. It would be fun, we thought, to buy all the seeds mentioned and then to find out for ourselves what kind of flowers they would turn Into; but this we did not venture to do, since we wished first to be sure of having some of our old friends In the garden.
We chose ten-weeks stocks, baby’s breath and cardinal-flowers to start In the boxes, and bought numbers of other seeds to sow out-of-doors as soon as the frost left the ground. Almost every day Little Joseph looks over these seed packages, read- ing anew their labels and thinking how wonderful It will be when through his care they turn into pretty flowers of different forms and colours.
I helped him sow the seeds In the boxes. It was
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THE FIRST PLANTING
the easiest work of all. We first passed the top soil through a sieve, In order that It might be fine and free from lum.ps. Then with a pointed stick we made little furrows, dropped in the seeds, and drew the soil over them, patting It down evenly with a ruler. The furrows for the baby’s breath, which we planted In a box by itself, were about an eighth of an inch deep, and those for the ten-weeks stocks which filled the second box were made a full quarter of an Inch In depth. Mrs. Keith, who seems to know as much as Timothy about planting seeds, told Joseph that such matters as these were most Important. The very small seeds of the car- dinal-flowers In the third box were simply sprinkled over the surface of the soil and then pressed down lightly.
It was most fascinating to handle these little seeds, which looked as though they had no life at all In them; and to know that they will certainly turn Into real flowers. When Joseph gave them water, I felt that their thirst was being quenched and that they would begin at once to soften and grow. Of course Joseph could have wet them with the rose sprayer, but thought It safer to submerge the boxes in a large tub of water, since the small seeds, especially those of the cardinal-flowers, were not so likely to become dislodged.
The seeds that we did not use In the boxes Little Joseph put carefully away In their packages. Later on they might be sown out-of-doors. Mrs. Keith
THE FIRST PLANTING
19
bound some green paper muslin around the outside of the trays after they had been placed in the sunny library window, and we all quite ceased to think that they were only ugly soap boxes filled with dead- looking seeds. We already imagined the little plants shooting up through the earth.
Joseph said it was too bad to have made three boxes and three glass covers for but three kinds of flowers. I told him, however, that I would rather have a good many flowers of one kind early in the year, than to have only a few later of a great many kinds.
Little Joseph knew as I did that It was not neces- sary to plant the baby’s breath, the ten-weeks stocks or the cardinal-flowers Indoors. We could have waited and sown them In the open when the frost had left the ground. But Little Joseph’s fingers and mine also were tingling to plant something. We could not wait with patience until the farmers began to plough. The window-boxes made us feel that some things were already started. In fact, they were our first experiments. Joseph was pleased besides to think that he had done something which was not mentioned in “An Ambitious Boy’s Gar- den.” That boy had not a bit of glass on his place as large as a camera plate. But then this was not the first year that he had had a garden.
The closet that Little Joseph uses for his tools, seeds and spraying outfit is in the hall opening on the south veranda. It Is a convenient place, since,
THE FIRST PLANTING
SO
when It is warm, he can do his hammering and other work on the veranda. While working he can also watch the bluebirds make their nests. He notices that they are very clever at this building. In fact, Joseph says he would rather try to build a man’s house than the nest of a little bird.
There is another closet In the library which Jo- seph has taken possession of for his magazines and catalogues. These latter are coming now by almost every post. The nurserymen have somehow found out that Joseph Is one of the heirs of the Six Spruces and many of them attach “Esquire” to his name. This makes my calling him “Little Joseph” seem very familiar, and even Miss Wiseman’s “Master Joseph” sounds too unimportant. The shelf In the bookcase that he has cleared for his garden books has as yet but one occupant. This, of course. Is “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden.”
Lately we have been so busy getting ready to make our garden that I have said nothing about the wrens that have settled In the house, swung from the veranda. Timothy says they have come earlier than usual this year, and thinks the spring may follow their lead. Nothing was pressing to-day, so Joseph tried to discover how nearly they had completed their nest.
He was surprised to find that they had made a blockade in front of the doorway to their house. He pushed his finger through the small opening in the house until It touched a heap of fine, smooth
THE FIRST PLANTING
21
sticks so interwoven that they were almost as re- sisting as a stone wall. By it the doorway appeared quite closed. Joseph wondered how the wrens ever went in and out. He had watched them so often since they moved into the house that they had wisely made up their minds he meant to do them no harm. He was now hoping that one or the other would go in or come out, so that he might see how they managed to slip through the blockade.
Suddenly then the female bird flew towards the house. She slipped in without apparently waiting a minute to think how she would enter. It almost appeared as though she went through the barricade. Little Joseph was quick enough, however, to see that from the bottom of the doorway her flight slanted upward to where a tiny space had been left free. Indeed, the little wrens had been clever enough to block completely the doorway at the bot- tom and to let the nest slant back a little from the top, thus leaving the space to slip in by an upward line of flight.
Only a little bird knows how to build in that way, Joseph thought, when out she flew so quickly that he could not see where she went. When she returned she had another tiny twig in her mouth. So the nest is not yet finished, Joseph mused, and wondered if they were fastening things up tighter to keep him out. He then remembered that birds had other enemies besides boys, for, only a day after the wrens had come to the house, a pair of
^2
THE FIRST PLANTING
bluebirds had tried to drive them away. Although the wrens were the smaller, they had fought very hard to keep their home, and, after a battle that lasted two days, the bluebirds had left them in peace.
No doubt Little Joseph would have paid a visit to the bluebirds and also to the grackles, had I not gone to tell him that Queenie Perth had come with a note from Miss Wiseman asking us there for luncheon.
At first Joseph shook his head, saying he had far too many things to attend to at home to spend nearly a whole day visiting. I reminded him that Timothy had not come to help him, and just then Queenie ran out and joined us. Joseph very quickly said we would go to Miss Wiseman’s. He then showed Queenie the bird-houses and told her about their occupants. He would not let her go as close to them as he did because, he said, the birds were not accustomed to her.
“Birds like me very much, and butterflies, too,” Queenie told him. “Down at Auntie’s they are no more afraid of me than your birds are of you.”
She ran home after this, since she had to carry the message back to Miss Wiseman.
Little Joseph then spent the rest of the morning raking up the dried leaves and dead twigs that were lying In the coppice by the longest side of the tri- angle. The earth had begun to feel slightly moist, and we wondered if the frost was not now nearly
THE FIRST PLANTING
23
out of the ground. The air, however, was still chilly. As Joseph gradually raked down by the boggy point of the triangle he saw that the pussy- willow shrubs were nearly covered with soft grey catkins. They had grown a great deal since the last time he looked at them, and were the largest pussy-willows he had ever seen. This was because no one had picked from or marred the bushes for many years. In this quiet corner of Nestly they had grown stronger and lustier every season.
Our Aunt Amanda had not cared for flowers, except the blush-rose bush and the lemon verbena ; neither had she cared for people, and surely no one would have ventured into her place to pick or to destroy anything. These pussy-willows looked different from the thin, little twigs and small cat- kins that we had seen by the side of the public road- way. They, poor things, stand where any one may pluck them. After a few more years they will perhaps grow tired of blooming for no better purpose and will give up altogether.
Joseph was extremely cheerful at having such fine pussy-willows at the Six Spruces. He thought they could not have more perfect ones even at Nestly Heights. I knew then that Joseph was touched by the spirit of rivalry which lies hidden in all gardeners.
/
CHAPTER IV
MISS WISEMAN S SUGGESTIONS
S we drove through Miss Wiseman’s gateway
jt\ and looked over her lawn, Joseph exclaimed, “Surely there are flowers in bloom, see there, every- where !”
This was true. Little baby snowdrops were lift- ing their heads and blooming in many places. Some of them were only in bud, but they also made a white gleam through the grass.
“I wonder that no one reminded us about snow- drops,” I said. “We might have set out a few through our own lawn.”
“Their bulbs have to be planted in the autumn,” Joseph replied, “and last autumn we were not the owners of the Six Spruces.”
“You must just enjoy my snowdrops and crocuses and Siberian squills this year,” Miss Wiseman said, when we spoke to her about them, “and next spring you can have your own. This is the first day,” she added, “that they have made much of a showing. These little snowdrops come first of all. In a fort- night larger ones will be in bloom, while the
24
MISS WISEMAN'S SUGGESTIONS 25
crocuses and squills will soon make the ground look as gay as a carnival.”
“Will they also come up through the lawn, or be in beds by themselves?” I asked.
“Ohj through the lawn,” Miss Wiseman an- swered. “We make believe they come up by them- selves at random, instead of having to be planted in the autumn with an English bulb planter. But next autumn will be time enough for you to attend to that matter, while to-day I have a surprise for you.”
We followed Miss Wiseman to a part of her grounds where a great deal of shrubbery grew. Two men were busy taking up bushes from some places and planting them over again in others.
“You see I am thinning out my shrubs,” she said, “they grow at a rate we think little about in the first ardour of planting. I have now more than I can take care of, so to-morrow, Master Joseph, some are to go over to the Six Spruces.”
Master Joseph was delighted. He had been wishing that we might have more shrubs at the Six Spruces than just the one yellow bell, the two spireas and the three lilacs. He and Queenie at once ran to ask the men to tag the shrubs with their names, that he might later read about them in “An Ambitious Boy's Garden.”
After we had lunched and had seen the other changes Miss Wiseman was making in order that her place might be more beautiful this year than
26 MISS WISEMAN’S SUGGESTIONS
ever, Little Joseph wondered if people ever really find out how to make a perfect garden. Until to- day he thought that Miss Wiseman had learned it long ago like a lesson. She always spoke with decision, and as though there was only one way in the world of doing things. To-day, however, she continually pointed out to us the changes she in- tended to make. The year before, she told us, she had noticed that colours of certain plants did not look well side by side, and that some had outgrown others and left ugly gaps in the top line.
All this time Little Joseph was learning impor- tant things. Now, whenever he sows seeds, he will think about the colours of the blossoms, and how each will look beside its neighbour. He will re- member, also, not to plant flowers that are very small by the side of those that are very large. He thinks it will be a good plan to keep a little diary of the things he should and should not do.
Queenie did not like to stay in the garden, nor did she wish to talk about it. “Summer is not here,” she said, “the butterflies have not come.” She loved the butterflies and often ran and played with them. The flowers, of course, could not fol- low her as she dodged and sprang lightly from place to place. Indeed, Queenie Perth reminded me of a butterfly herself. She was not exactly a shy child, yet, when one attempted to catch or to caress her, she sprang away and ran about playing little games which only she understood.
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MISS WISEMAN’S SUGGESTIONS 27
At another part of Miss Wiseman’s place, Jo- seph saw that the men had dug a deep trench and that seed packages were lying near it on the ground. He had heard of no seeds being planted out-of- doors as yet, so he thought they must be grass seed, and he wondered if the grass would come up and turn green by the time the birds had finished their nests. He did not like to appear ignorant about such things before Mr. Bradley, the head gardener, so he said very jauntily:
“It’s just the right time to plant grass seed.”
“Is it?” Mr. Bradley replied. “We were thinking it was the season for putting in sweet peas.”
Then Little Joseph asked a great many ques- tions: why Mr. Bradley dug the trench twO' feet deep — for it seemed to him that the plants would have to climb a long way before getting out of the earth — and why he had turned the sods taken from the top of the trench upside down, laid them at its bottom, and then spread them over with manure.
“That is rotted cow’s manure,” Mr. Bradley answered. “It settles down after it has been wet, and makes the earth rich for the roots to sink into.” Joseph then saw the men fill the trench nearly to the top with a rich-looking soil made of old ma- nure, garden loam, and earth from the woods. He saw them pat it down firmly. They then made a furrow for the seeds about six inches deep, and planted them an inch apart. Mr. Bradley told
28 MISS WISEMAN’S SUGGESTIONS
Joseph to notice these things, since they were of great Importance.
As the seeds were covered up with only about two inches of soil, Joseph asked what was to be done with the rest of the earth lying by the side of the seed-row.
“That,” Mr. Bradley answered, “will later be drawn in to cover the plants partly when they have shot up to the length of my thumb; and as they continue to grow the soil will be used In this way until the furrow is filled. It Is likely that we shall give it a good watering about twice a week.”
After the newly sown seeds were watered, Mr. Bradley said things were pretty well looked after for the present. Joseph then asked when the sweet peas would be in bloom and what would be the colour of their flowers. He had other questions on the tip of his tongue when Mr. Bradley said:
“My lad, those flowers will be In bloom about two months from now — that is. If we watch them well, water them and cultivate them. You see these strong posts we have driven Into the earth? Later we will cover them with wire In order that the sweet peas may have a suitable place on which to climb.”
This all seemed very wonderful to Little Joseph, who told Mr. Bradley that he wished he had bought more sweet peas and less grass seed.
“No need of wishing that,” Mr. Bradley an- swered heartily. “We have more here than we
MISS WISEMAN’S SUGGESTIONS
shall use this year, and the grass seed will always come in handy.”
He then gave Joseph several packages of sweet pea seeds, white, blue, red, lavender, green and pink. Mr. Bradley was a fashionable gardener as well as a wise one, and knew that sweet peas of one colour make prettier bouquets than when vari- ous kinds are mixed together. While assorted seeds cost a little more than mixed ones, consider- able time was saved later in picking the flowers.
Joseph’s pockets stuck out on both sides when he returned to the house, and he had naturally a great deal to say about what he intended doing at the Six Spruces. First of all, it was necessary for us to decide where we should plant our sweet peas. We could not put them on the triangle itself, and they were not suitable for flower-beds or borders. The boggy corner would not do, since there the soil was too moist, and the side by the wood-border was far too shady a place. Mr. Bradley had told Joseph that they needed plenty of sunshine.
‘‘Perhaps we can plant them along the wall that separates the triangle from Nestly Heights,” Lit- tle Joseph said. “The sun can peep at them there and the wall will be good for them to lean against when they begin to climb.”
We believed we had decided the matter, when Miss Wiseman returned from where she had been looking for a catalogue, and naturally had some- thing to say about planting sweet peas.
so MISS WISEMAN’S SUGGESTIONS
“It will never do to plant them by the stone wall,” she said at once. “They need light on both sides, and it is best to have them running from east to west. Now if you had a rail fence — — ”
“But we have not,” Little Joseph replied mourn- fully. He had begun to feel very disturbed about the sweet peas.
“Then the best thing you can do. Master Joseph, is to set about and build a wire trellis. If I were a boy, I would help you,” Miss Wiseman said, in a way that made Little Joseph think it must be no end of fun to build a trellis. “You can make it any shape you like and place it wherever you like. You just set posts in the ground and fasten your wire around them. At least that is the way I man- age to accommodate my sweet peas.”
I hastened to say that her flowers were very beau- tiful, for Miss Wiseman is as sensitive about them as many mothers are about their children.
Here then was a new idea for Joseph. He not only had to dig a trench and to plant his sweet peas, but to build a trellis for them to grow upon.
“I seldom hasten things as much as Mr. Bradley does,” Miss Wiseman said. “If I were you, I should not put in the seeds for a week or ten days.”
“But the wrens have their nest nearly built,” Little Joseph replied. “Spring will soon grow warm, and we shall have no flowers.”
“It is just because the wrens have their nest ready that they can keep warm when the late frost
MISS WISEMAN’S SUGGESTIONS 31
comes ; but there is no place for a flower to snuggle into when it unfolds before the weather is settled. You set about the trellis to-morrow, Master Joseph, and plant the seeds when it is finished. Your flow- ers will be here soon enough.”
We both felt that about this, as about everything else, Miss Wiseman must be quite right.
After we had returned home. Little Joseph and I walked down by the six spruces. They were moving very gently in the breeze, and had the sol- emn look that always comes over them when the sun begins to sink in the west. Underneath them, the ground was a mat of needles, and they had still the dull brownish look which they assume in the winter. Little Joseph said that, if we had some seats and a table within their circle, we should have a real summer-house where there would always be a breeze. We wondered if Timothy, who had made the bird-houses so well, would not help with the trellis and furniture for the summer-house.
The six spruces began to wave their branches more strongly: the sun dropped quite out of sight. We then went into the house. Little Joseph thinking of the many things he had to do on the morrow.
CHAPTER V
A DAY^S HARD WORK
Although Timothy came early the next morning, Little Joseph was already up and astir with several new Ideas In his head gathered the night before from “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden.” First of all, he determined to settle the matter of the trellis for the sweet peas. As they would not bloom until two months after the seeds were put In the ground, he thought the bare posts with wire stretched on them would look very ugly awaiting them all that time. We, therefore, de- cided to plant our sweet peas along the upper side of the plot where the clothes-posts stand. They would then be near enough the house for us to see them often and to enjoy their delicate scent. At Miss Wiseman’s, they are far away from the house in what she calls her picking garden. Before break- fast, Joseph and the old man had set about making a strong but simple trellis.
It took them some time to drive the posts firmly Into the ground, and to think out the exact way In which they would manage the wire. It ran from
32
A DAY’S HARD WORK
S3
east to west, the exposure Miss Wiseman had so strongly advised, and it was in two sections, each being placed at right angles to the square of the clothes-posts, so that these sections appeared to form the borders of a little path.
When the trellis was well along, I told Joseph that it looked strong and new, but not exactly pretty.
“It is not yet finished,” he replied, “we are going to paint the posts green.”
While helping Timothy build this trellis, Joseph learned the knack of swinging a hammer. When he first began to drive nails into the window-boxes, they entered the wood much as they pleased, and twice he bruised his fingers. His birthday was now not far off, and I thought that I would give him a box of carpenter’s tools instead of the base- ball bat I had had in mind.
Just as the last nail was being driven into the trellis, and Joseph and the old man stood viewing their work, a wheelbarrow full of shrubs came over from Miss Wiseman’s. The plants were not much to look at, being then entirely without leaves, and we could not even imagine what blossoms would do for them. To us, one bare twig had an appear- ance very like another. Still they were tagged as Mr. Bradley had promised, but with names that neither we nor Timothy had ever heard before. Timothy looked at them most carefully.
“This one has reddish twigs,” he said, “see how
34
A DAY’S HARD WORK
different it is from the others. I am thinking it must be the red-twigged dogwood.”
“The twigs of this one look reddish underneath, while above they are covered with a greenish-brown roughness,” I said.
“Then it is likely to be that old-fashioned sweet syringa that has flowers as smooth and white as wax,” the old man told us.
“These twigs look yellower.”
“Likely another yellow, or golden bell, the same as the one by the west corner of the house,” Tim- othy said.
“And this one?” I asked, for he seemed to be able to tell by the twigs the names of the shrubs.
“It may be called Deutzia,” he answered. “You notice it is not very tall. Most likely it will bear white flowers. These three are the bridal-wreath, and these two are hydrangeas,” he continued. “I feel doubtful about this large tree-like one here, but, if I am not mistaken, it will turn out to be the smoke-bush.”
“If that means smoke-bush, you are right,” said Little Joseph, and he held up the small labelled bit of wood he had found tied to the shrub. The old man nodded his head.
“So that is what those smart gardeners call it,” he said.
I then looked at the label and it read rhus cotinus, which we found out later was the scientific name for the smoke-bush.
A DAY’S HARD WORK
85
“It Is a fine* collection,” the old man commented. “The yellow bell will bloom along with your own in April, the spireas will be like brides in June, and that little Deutzia will be coming on In July. The smoke-bush will be all feathery In August, and for September you have the hydrangeas lasting until frost.”
“But May has been skipped,” Little Joseph said.
“Indeed, then, you have the dogwood,” Timothy answered briskly, “and your own three lilacs, which did your Aunt Amanda every year as long as I can remember. It is October that has been skipped, and for that month I will bring you myself as fine and odd-mannered a shrub as any of these — ^just one of our own wild ones from the woods.”
While we were looking at the shrubs, I had grown quite chilly, for the sun had gone under the clouds and a piercing east wind was blowing. It was one of the days when March makes believe that spring has moved very far off. Little Joseph also was tired from his work on the trellis and from looking over the shrubs, and Timothy said he would take care of them until later In the day when we should all attend to their planting. Joseph and I then went into the house for luncheon.
Afterwards, he took out “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden.” The book, how^ever, had not a word In It about shrubs. It was all about flowers.
“It Is fortunate that we have shrubs,” Little Joseph said, “for, although we shall not plant them
36
A DAY’S HARD WORK
on the triangle, they will give the Six Spruces a very gay look.”
We then began to think where we should plant the shrubs, and this led to my getting a pad and pencil and drawing a small plan of the triangle, the paths between It and the veranda, and the circle In front of the house.
It was easy enough to dispose of the yellow bell, for we both thought It should go near the one which stood by the corner of the west veranda. The old-fashioned syringa I wished to plant just outside the dining-room window. I remembered the sweet scent of Its waxen flowers, and thought In that posi- tion It would be near to us. The hydrangeas were more difficult to decide about, but we concluded to put them at the bottom of the circle, slightly follow- ing its curve. They were even now tall shrubs.
Joseph thought one of the spireas would look pretty between the south veranda steps and the wall, and we marked a place for It there on the plan. The other we planted by the long drive bor- dered by spruces that leads out of the front gate. The smoke-bush we placed rather near the house on the side where the triangle Is bordered by the wood. Only the Deutzia and the red-twigged dog- wood then remained, and, as neither of us knew how they looked In bloom, we left their placing to Timothy.
When once Little Joseph begins a thing. It Is very difficult for him to leave before It is finished.
A DAY’S HARD WORK
ST
His head this afternoon was full of going to town to buy paint, that he might continue work on the trellis. At length, I persuaded him to leave that entirely to Timothy and to occupy himself with drawing designs for planting our flower-seeds. Any day, I said, the spring might surprise us by growing very warm, and I especially wished him to make up his mind where we should have roses.
“The smell of paint,” I said, “makes me very sick, and" I have heard of boys having painter’s colic as well as girls.”
Little Joseph then wondered if this smell might not disturb the sweet pea seeds, but soon concluded that they would know nothing about it, as they would be well covered up with earth. From the window we could see the old man busy digging the trench before the trellis.
“To-morrow,” Little Joseph said, “he must go somewhere else to work, so he is doing as much as he can to-day.”
When he had finished digging and had put the overturned sods and the manure in the bottom of the trench, and had filled it nearly to the top with earth, Joseph went out with his sweet peas. He placed each little seed on the soft earth himself, remembering all that Mr. Bradley had told him, and lightly covered them over with soil. Later, Timothy showed Joseph about putting on the hose. The water trickled gently down to the seeds and settled them into the soft earth. The planting
38
A DAY’S HARD WORK
of the sweet peas had been very simple, but when Little Joseph had first seen Mr. Bradley and his men at work, he had wondered if he ever would be able to put the seeds in the ground in just the right way.
Later in the afternoon we helped Timothy plant the shrubs. He had already dug holes in the places we had chosen, and we held the shrubs straight while he shovelled in and packed the earth about their roots. They too were given a good soaking. The Deutzia was set in front of the house and the red-twigged dogwood at the edge of the wood- border, opposite the middle of the triangle.
“It will feel at home there,” Timothy said, “for many of its relatives are in the woods.”
At first Joseph could not follow Timothy when he talked about the relatives of plants. He thought relatives meant parents or people like our great- aunt. Afterwards he found out from “An Ambi- tious Boy’s Garden” that plants are divided into great tribes and families. This interested him ex- tremely, and now he seldom hears of a plant with- out wondering to what tribe it belongs, what fam- ily, and then what kind of a member it is in that family. All plants, it seems, are not good and lovable any more than all boys are wise and useful.
It was after five o’clock when the last shrub was planted, and Little Joseph’s hands were red with the cold. He went into the house, and, after con- siderable scrubbing and dressing, he appeared
Photograph by Alice Boughton
A DAY’S HARD WORK
39
transformed from a young gardener to a small gen- tleman.
“The trellis is built,” he said while we were at dinner, “the sweet peas are planted, the shrubs are set, the old place has been cleaned up, and some seeds have been sown in the window-boxes. It is only the twentieth of March and, as the wrens have not yet finished building their nest, I think we are keeping up with them pretty well.”
Almost before Little Joseph had finished speak- ing, and long before he was through with his din- ner, I noticed that his q^elids slipped down often over his eyes. His work in the open had caused the “sandman” to come unusually early. “An Am- bitious Boy’s Garden” was not even opened after dinner, and, as our Aunt Amanda would have said, he slept without rocking.
CHAPTER VI
JOSEPH DOES SOME TRANSPLANTING
SEVERAL days passed before Timothy came to work for us again. The weather continued chilly and damp, although each time that the sun peeped out and lingered on certain spots, it seemed warmer than the time before. Over at Miss Wise- man’s the snowdrops have been joined by hundreds or even thousands of Siberian squills tossing little blue flowers through the grass, while in their neigh- bourhood there are many crocuses of bright yellow which appear to play at being laughing spots on the emerald grass. Some of the snowdrops, I no^ ticed, even began to fade and to hasten out of sight before the sun had a good chance to warm them. It appears that they really love March with its cold air and winds.
Little Joseph still regrets that we have none of these flowers to cheer up the Six Spruces and help us say good-bye to winter. He enjoys seeing them at Miss Wiseman’s and at Nestly Heights, but this kind of enjoyment is quite different from the pleas- ure of having them yourself. In his note-book, he
40
JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING 41
has written down the names of the bulbs we shall plant the coming autumn so that next spring the Six Spruces will appear less desolate.
For the last day or two, our attention has been given to the w'ood-border facing the triangle on its long east side; and there this morning we had a surprise. Joseph found some flowers blooming as gaily as those on Miss Wiseman’s lawn. They were hepaticas standing up jauntily among their rusty-looking leaves, having taken the precaution to cover their stems thickly with silky fuzz that they might keep warm despite the variable moods of March. These stems are as yet, however, very short. On one plant the little unfolded flowers were all lavender, while on another they were white. Joseph found none that were pink. Indeed it had been rather hard to find these flowers in the woods. They cannot be seen plainly as can the crocuses and snowdrops and squills. But when they were found and looked at closely they appeared just as sweet. The unfolded ones were in the sunny spots of the woods. It seemed as if they had just jumped into the passing footprints of Jack Frost.
At once, Joseph had the idea to transplant some of them to the very edge of the wood-border, where they might be seen from the path separating it from the triangle. He remembered all that Timothy had told him about having once forced some hepat- icas to bloom when his son was ill. Little Joseph therefore set about this work very methodically.
42 JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING
He first staked out fifteen places where the wood- border slopes slightly towards the path. There was no regularity in the design he made, although he set his stakes to cover a space greater in length than in width. Then he dug fifteen holes, picking out the stones and rough clumps of earth. After- wards, Joseph took his spade and shoved it into the earth to its full depth at the four sides of each plant, and lifted it up so carefully that it did not realise it was being moved from its home. One by one he slipped them from the spade into the holes, fill- ing up any remaining space with earth. At length, when fifteen of the lustiest ones he could find had been transplanted, he watered them freely.
When Joseph told me what he was about to do, I felt sorry. My imagination connected hepaticas with the woods. I thought they would surely lose their wild charm if placed near a garden where poppies and pansies bloomed. But when he showed me where he had set them along the wood-border, and that they were still under the protection of the great trees, I changed my mind and was delighted with his work. Like the snowdrops, these little flowers are not afraid of March.
“Even after their blossoms are gone,” Joseph said, “their leaves will look pretty here. See how they lean upon the earth.”
I told him that these leaves had not come up with the spring, but were those of last year which had remained strong and green throughout the winter.
JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING 43
“Later,” I said, “this year’s leaves will unfold.”
More than ever, then, was Joseph pleased with the thought that he had set out fifteen plants which bear flowers as early as the snowdrops, and whose foliage keeps green even when the earth itself ap- pears dead.
We were both a little disturbed later in the day when Mr. Hayden of Nestly Heights came to see us and said he remembered having heard his son, Percy, explain that those particular little wild flow- ers should be transplanted in August in order to establish a permanent colony which would continue from year to year. Little Joseph hastened to tell him that he had transplanted them with such large blocks of earth that they could not have felt being moved at all. Mr. Hayden himself saw that they were set in the same kind of soil, and amid the sur- roundings of their original home.
“Well,” Mr. Hayden said, “see how the plan works. This is your first year at gardening and is the time for experimenting. Over at the Heights, our gardeners are so experienced, and have such cut- and-dried rules about everything, that I seldom venture to pick off a dried leaf, fearing I may do it out of season. My son, Percy, however, has dabbled in wild gardening and, when he comes home for his Easter holiday, he will tell you more things than you will be able to jot down in twenty note-books.” It was Little Joseph’s note-book that had amused Mr. Hayden so greatly.
44 JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING
Mr. Hayden is a very large man, and his way of speaking reminds me of the blowing of the wind. There appears to be always a strong current of air about him, although Joseph has noticed that he is never cold. We have heard that Mr. Hayden is very proud of his eldest son, who will soon be home from college. He says that Ben and Harry are both fat and lazy, and that he will have to send them out West as cowboys to get some sense knocked into their heads. But even Joseph has learned not to take Mr. Hayden quite seriously.
We both know, however, that the boys at Nestly Heights seldom go into the gardens and that, when they do, the gardeners invariably complain about them. The boys think gardening stupid and have been amazed at Joseph’s interest in his seeds and planting.
“We never sow or plant here,” Ben told him. “Our flowers come up by themselves.”
Joseph concluded that he must be sadly ignorant about flowers, and ceased to talk with him on the subject.
While Mr. Hayden was walking with us at the Six Spruces, and Joseph was telling him some of his ideas about the vines he intended to plant along the wall which separates our place from his own, Timothy came with a straggly, unattractive shrub which he wished to set out. It was a present from himself. Of course, Joseph and I knew it must be the “queer one” he had told us would
JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING 45
bloom in October and November. As it lay on the wheelbarrow it looked to be five feet tall. There was no vivid colour showing in its bark, and as it was bare of leaves I wondered how the sun and the summer would transform it.
“It is the native witch-hazel,” Timothy said, “and the best way to learn about it is to set it out here and let it grow until near winter-time, when it will begin to flower.”
Mr. Hayden said he had no witch-hazel on his place, although the shrub had been a favourite of his as a boy w^hen he had lived farther north. He thought in fact that witch-hazel needed to grow in a colder climate than that of Nestly.
“They may not come around here much of them- selves,” Timothy replied, “but, when they are planted, they thrive almost like weeds, only a bit more slowly.” He had bought the one he gave us from a nurseryman on the outskirts of the town. It was in truth through his interest and that of Miss Wiseman that the Six Spruces would be likely to have a shrub in bloom every month from April un- til November.
Timothy planted the witch-hazel at the edge of the wood, not very far from the dogwood, but more snuggled in among the trees.
“It will not bloom,” he told Joseph, “until these trees have had their flowers and leaves and fruits, and dropped them all to the earth.”
“This coppice creeping down near your triangle
46 JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING
gives an excellent opportunity for planting wild flowers and ferns,” said Mr. Hayden.
“And that point where the triangle is so moist is for marsh plants,” Joseph explained. “And the wall separating the Six Spruces from Nestly Heights is for climbers.”
“My boy will be one of them when he comes home. Eh!”
Mr. Hayden then winked at me and gave one of his great laughs that seemed enough like the wind to make the bare twigs tremble.
“At the Heights to-day the men are planting hardy roses,” Mr. Hayden continued. “We pride ourselves on our roses. I declare we do.”
Then he told Joseph to go with him and see if his men had not a few to send over to the Spruces.
“Perhaps you don’t think so, my boy,” he said to Joseph, “but I know your sister believes there is no flower so beautiful as the rose.”
Joseph followed Mr. Hayden, and for a while I wandered about the Six Spruces by myself. March was nearly over, but summer and its radiant flowers still seemed a long way off. I wondered a little if Aunt Amanda would have been pleased at our doings in her old home. She had been a severely minded woman, and had disliked Mr. Hayden be- cause he invariably referred to the place as the Spruces, instead of the Six Spruces. I wondered about Mr. Hayden’s son who knew wild flowers and ferns, and would join the vines in climbing the
JOSEPH DOES TRANSPLANTING 47
wall. Indeed, I was thinking about many things when I noticed that one of the bluebirds that had perhaps been watching my movements flew into the house with a worm in his mouth.
“It is the male bird,” I thought, “taking food to his mate. The nest must be finished. Perhaps she has laid an egg and is now snuggling it under her wing.” Shortly the male bird flew out of the house and darted away. I remained quite still, and, in about three minutes, he returned with an- other morsel in his mouth. Then I felt convinced that at least one egg had been laid, and that the lit- tle wife was having her evening meal.
CHAPTER VII
MAKING THE SEED AND FLOWER BEDS
NOW that the farmers have begun to plough, and the neighbours and Timothy have de- cided that the frost has disappeared, Little Joseph is making ready tO' sow the seeds he has bought. This making ready seems to play a very large part in gardening. First of all, with Timothy’s help, he has made what he calls a seed-bed. This is some distance from the garden, and is only a place where seeds are to be sown and allowed to grow for a little while. For just as soon as the plants have become the right size, they are taken away from the seed-bed and transplanted into the real garden. From Miss Wiseman, Joseph learned that a seed-bed is a very wise thing for every boy and girl to have who thinks of making a garden.
In this bed, seeds can be planted in April which later will send up more plants, perhaps, than we shall need in the garden. Half the number would have cost considerable if we had had to buy them from the nurserymen.
Joseph has chosen for his seed-bed the place
48
MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS 49
where Aunt Amanda used to keep her chickens. The soil there is very rich, and Timothy, who has turned it over to about the depth of a foot, has found it fine and free from stones. In the morn- ing there is usually sun over this place, while later in the day the shade covers it completely. For these reasons it ought to suit flowers of different kinds. If Joseph had not been so lucky as to have this strip of rich earth at the Six Spruces, he would have been obliged to make it rich through artificial means.
Before Joseph and I came to live here and have a garden of our own, we never used the word manure. We did not regard it as a polite word. But we find that all gardeners talk about manure and the wonderful effect it has in making flowers grow, quite as freely as they speak of the flowers themselves. Arrangements have to be made for securing manure before flower-beds can be properly made. This year Miss Wiseman has sent us sev- eral wheelbarrows full from her pile back of the stable. Mr. Hayden also said to Joseph: “You just carry away from my place anything you wish, from the manure pile to the peaches growing under glass, only do it, my boy, when those gardeners of mine are asleep.”
Now it would be very difficult for Joseph to catch Mr. Hayden’s gardeners asleep. Their eyes are too sharp, too accustomed to spying out the pranks of Ben and Harry. For that reason, he
50 MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS
has not ventured to go over there for manure. Miss Wiseman, however, thinks of everything long in advance, and often sends things she knows it would be difficult for us to get this first year.
Not very much manure was needed to prepare the soil of the seed-bed, the earth there being so rich; but it is astonishing to see the quantity that Timothy is now using since he has begun making the flower-beds.
As I have said before, the triangle was our great- aunt’s favourite bit of lawn, also that this year it has been rolled and reseeded by Timothy. Even now, it has begun to look like a large, green carpet. We have decided to have no paths through it, but to make the flower-beds just where we wish and later walk to them over the grass. We both think it will look prettier if it has no gravel walks. Jo- seph expects to sow his seeds and set his plants so thickly that very little of the brown earth of the beds will be seen, and we hope to make the flowers look as if they grew right up in the grass.
I wish I could describe exactly the places where the beds are being made. As the flowers come up and show their colours, I shall know more about them. There is one bed in which I am especially interested. It is near the point of the triangle, just above where the soil is moist, and, although it partly follows the outline of the point, it is more curved. It is almost the shape of the moon in its first quarter. This bed, the outline of which was
MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS 51
designed by Miss Wiseman, makes one forget the sharpness of the point and appears to give the whole triangle a better shape for a garden.
She first drove pointed stakes in the ground in the exact shape she wished the bed to be, and then she and Timothy, with Joseph’s help, passed a line around the stakes, so that when Timothy began to take out the sods there would be no mistake about where he should put his spade. Miss Wiseman said it made her feel young again to drive stakes in the ground and to pass the line around them. When I tried it, it gave me such a pain in my back that I felt very old.
After Miss Wiseman had finished her work, she said that, as far as the eye was concerned, we had changed the shape of the triangle as satisfactor- ily as that of the Piazza of Venice had been changed by the Campanile. Neither Joseph nor I knew what she was talking about, so she explained that, before the old bell tower of Venice fell, very few people had noticed that the wonderful cathedral of St. Mark’s stood on the bias, since the position of the tower had been such as to make the piazza appear a perfect rectangle. When the tower fell, alas, no one could help seeing that the piazza was not a perfect rectangle, and that the beautiful cathe- dral stood painfully out of line. Miss Wiseman loves Venice. If it were not an impossible place for a large garden, she would live there.
From her telling us this story about the bell
52 MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS
tower, and from the way the triangle appears to have lost its point by means of the new flower-bed, Little Joseph and I have learned that another im- portant matter in gardening is the outline of things.
After Timothy had lifted out the sods of the curved bed, he dug down and threw out the earth to the depth of two feet. He then filled the whole bed half way up with manure, after which he alter- nated a layer of earth with one of manure, until it was filled level with the ground. Even after all this was done, he went to the woods and brought back a quantity of rich, black earth to put on as a top-dressing. This made the bed higher than the grass of the triangle, which, however, did not mat- ter, since it would sink as the manure packed down.
I suppose all our other flower-beds will be made in this same way. Miss Wiseman has told Joseph over and over again that it is useless to try and grow fine flowers unless the soil is properly pre- pared. Perhaps some of his seeds would come up if he had just planted them in the unenriched soil, and perhaps they would also bear flowers; but it is not likely that these flowers would be large and strong and do themselves justice. Miss Wiseman says that no boy or girl would try to raise a kitten or a puppy without giving it proper care and food. Flowers, too, must be cared for and fed. Their diet, we have now found, is rich soil, water and sunshine, and it is the duty of gardeners to provide the first two of these. The good sunshine visits
PLATE VI. — A BORDER OF NARCISSUS POETICUS
MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS 53
them without coaxing. Since I have heard Miss Wiseman talk so much about feeding plants, it would make me sad to feel I had sown seeds in poor soil. I should think I was starving the flowers.
A little way In front of the wall where the vines are to be planted, we are to have a long, narrow bed for tall flowers; and a number of smaller beds are to be made on the side of the triangle near the south veranda. Already, Joseph and Timothy have spent two days talking about and making these beds, and so I have not yet staked out the place for my roses. Joseph is to have nothing to do with the roses. They are to be under my care alone.
Just as soon as this work of making the seed-bed and those of the triangle Is finished, Joseph will sow his seeds, for at last the spring really seems to be here.
At our neighbours’ places beautiful tulips, daf- fodils and narcissi are now in bloom Instead of the snowdrops, the Siberian squills and the crocuses that came in March. Miss Wiseman has a border of narcissus poeticus which appears to me most lovely. Whenever Joseph sees them, his sorrow Is renewed that we have no spring flowers from bulbs at the Six Spruces. He does not intend to be without them another spring, and therefore Is now saving some of his garden money to buy bulbs this coming autumn.
He has found out that gardeners must know how to take time by the forelock. Following their
54. MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS
methods, he has bought and planted many bulbs of Japanese anemones. These bulbs are often set out in the spring, and by the time September is here they come into bloom, lasting until frost. No doubt we shall then find them very lovely, since by that time flowers will be growing scarce in all gardens. Joseph has planted these bulbs somewhat at random about the triangle. The greater number, however, follow in groups the irregular line of the wood- border. Indeed, we are told that these Japanese anemones have a look not unlike some wild flowers. They were not difficult to plant in the soft loam of the wood-border. With a stick Joseph made a hole about six inches deep, dropped in and covered each one over with earth. He did this shortly after a rain.
We are much pleased at seeing our yellow bells so generously in bloom. They are something of a solace to Joseph’s disappointment at having no spring flowers. In the woods also, just back of the fifteen hepaticas, windflowers, bloodroots and Dutchman’s-breeches are in bloom. These latter are high up in the woods among rocks.
Nothing seems to disturb these little wild flowers. They live quite by themselves in the woods and manage things in their own way. No' gardener makes their beds; no one feeds them with manure and fertilising powders. From year to year they come up in the same places, wearing the same deli- cate and timid look of spring. Sometimes I have
MAKING SEED AND FLOWER BEDS 55
wondered if in the woods there was not a sprite who listened, for the footsteps of spring and who slipped about and whispered to the buds to hasten and open their petals.
CHAPTER VIII
PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED LL Joseph’s work at gardening is not out-of
doors. He has to do a great deal of study- ing in, “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden,” read many catalogues and talk with our neighbours and Tim- othy before starting actual labour in the open. Then there is Mrs. Keith, who likes to know just what Joseph is about. Not that she ever wishes to hinder him ; sometimes she gives him ideas that are important; but usually she tells him whether our great-aunt would have approved of his plans. Little Queenie Perth laughs at Joseph when he talks about his flowers. She says the butterflies in her garden look prettier than his seed packages. He is delighted to hear and learn whatever ex- perienced gardeners will tell him; for Joseph is not likely to be over-wise this first year of garden-build- ing.
This week Joseph has learned to divide flowers into three classes: annuals, perennials, and bien- nials. He tells me that now he understands their
PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED 57
differences perfectly, although formerly he thought that in their way of growth they were all alike.
Annual flowers are those that come up from the seed and bloom the first year; they last for that year only. Their seeds, in fact, have to be sown every season so long as they are desired. Sweet alyssum, mignonette and nasturtiums are among the annuals. Perennial plants are those that, once hav- ing had their seeds sown, last from year to^ year. Usually they begin to bloom in their second season, after which, when they have ripened their seeds, they die down to the ground. Their roots, how- ever, still live in the earth and are ready the next spring to send up new plants. Often they reseed themselves, so that groups of such plants gradually increase in size. Perennials are hardy individuals, and for this reason Joseph, thinks he will have many of them in his garden, as he likes tO' see the same flowers year after year in the same place. He would soon grow to expect them, and, if they did not disappoint him after the long winter, he would have the same pleasure in seeing them that he would if a friend had returned from a long journey. They would, he thinks, be more like the wild flowers in the woods, keeping to their own places and bloom- ing at the same time each year. When once they have become established, it is not necessary tO' keep sowing them over and over again. On the whole, I can see that Joseph has already a strong partiality for perennials.
58 PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED
The biennial plants have ways of growing differ- ent from either the annuals or the perennials. Like the perennials^ they do not bloom until the second year, but, having once formed and ripened their seeds, they die completely. Although they must be watered and cared for during two seasons, they bloom but once, after which it is as if they had never been.
Joseph thinks that since we have no^ gardener but Timothy, the biennials would be a great deal of trouble for him to look after, with the reward of their blooming but once in two years, and so it is not likely that he will plant many of them.
Happily, it is now time to* sow seeds. Joseph is busy putting perennials and some annuals in the seed-bed. There they will start and grow into lit- tle plants, which later he can set in their permanent places in the garden. This morning is warm, and the rain which lasted until breakfast-time has put the soil in good condition for planting, so he has taken out of the closet some of his precious seed packages. The perennials that he is sowing to-day are hollyhocks, columbines and oriental poppies. He wishes to have these in abundance and knows definitely where to place them. Of course he will have other perennials, and some perhaps that will bloom this year. In fact, it was Miss Wiseman who advised him to sow only these three.
A great many young plants are growing at her place that she cannot use, so later she will give a
PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED 59
number of them to Little Joseph. She says that it is sometimes wiser for beginners in gardening to buy a few plants from nurserymen rather than to raise all they require from seeds.
Among the annuals in his basket of seed pack- ages, Joseph has to-day mignonette, sweet alyssum, nasturtiums, candytuft, Shirley poppies and phlox Drummondi. The phlox, however, is the only one that he will put in the seed-bed. The others will all be sown at once on the triangle, since they like to stay where they are first planted.
Joseph had hardly started towards the seed-bed before Queenie Perth came flitting across the front lawn, asking very loudly for Master Joseph,
“I want Master Joseph this minute,” she said.
I told her that he had gone to the seed-bed, where he was probably very busy.
“Then I will go there, too,” she replied.
Queenie appeared to have something in one of her hands which she kept closed tightly. I went out with her to the seed-bed, since she did not know the way, and there was Little Joseph making fur- rows in the earth with a pointed stick.
“I have something,” Queenie said. “Guess!”
Joseph went right on making the furrows. “A doll,” he answered after a while.
“Something harder to get than a doll,” Queenie told him.
Joseph still went on making the furrows.
60 PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED
“Stop that and guess,” Queenie exclaimed, stamping her tiny foot.
“You have caught a butterfly,” Joseph said, no- ticing her closed hand.
“I have a bird’s egg,” she told him in great triumph, showing it to us in the palm of her hand.
Joseph then stopped making the furrows and looked at the egg. It was small and of delicate cream colour, flecked all over with brown.
“Where did you get it?” Joseph asked.
“I took it,” she answered, “from a little house by Auntie’s barn. It was full of sticks, but I pulled them all out, and then I put my hand in and got the egg.”
“I believe it is a wren’s egg,” Joseph said sol- emnly, remembering how these birds in our own house had barricaded the door with sticks. “You should not have taken it.”
“Oh, birds are everywhere,” Queenie replied. “They are in the air and in the trees, and some are in the shutters of my window. They wake me up every morning chirping so loudly. I never took a butterfly’s egg,” she said further.
“Butterflies come out from a chrysalis,” Joseph said reprovingly, and then he went on making fur- rows for the columbine seeds.
Just as soon as he tore open the packages of seeds, Queenie wished to help him drop them in the earth, and, after some coaxing, Joseph gave her a few, showing her how to hold them. He went
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PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED
61
along just behind her, drawing the earth over those she had planted. Queenie’s fingers are so slight and delicate that she handled the seeds even better than Joseph. She was careful, besides, not to waste them as she took them from the package, and not to drop them in the wrong places. Joseph had several colours of columbines and planted each in a furrow by itself. When this was done he placed labels at the ends of the furrows telling all about the seeds. When transplanting time came they would be of great help to him.
The seeds of the hollyhocks were larger than those of the columbines, but even these Queenie handled with the utmost care. She helped Joseph so skilfully that he had almost forgiven her for taking the wren’s egg, when he suddenly remem- bered to ask her what she was going to do with it.
“Nothing,” she said, and threw it on the ground.
It broke, of course, and inside there was a tiny bird, an ugly-looking object.
“You ought to be ashamed,” exclaimed Joseph. But Queenie did not mind at all, as long as he let her help him with the seeds.
Just then Mrs. Keith came to the seed-bed, and, when we told her that Queenie had taken the egg and then broken it for fun, she was shocked.
“It is a wren’s egg,” she said. “I have seen them many times.”
“How could you if you did not steal them?” Queenie asked.
62 PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED
“I have seen wren’s eggs that were stolen by bad boys,” Mrs. Keith answered, “but this is the first one I ever saw taken by a little girl.”
Then she took Queenie away with her to the house to tell her how very wrong it was to steal birds’ eggs and to beg her never to do it again as long as she lived. Mrs. Keith always keeps a jar full of cookies in the pantry. Queenie is very fond of her.
Joseph went on sowing. He next put in the oriental poppies and then the phloxes. These phlox Drummondi are annuals. I watched Joseph plant them, and saw that the furrow he had made was not more than an eighth of an inch deep.
After planting these seeds, Joseph concluded he would do no more until the morrow. He had still to water them thoroughly with the rose-sprayer. Water falling on them heavily as from a hose would have greatly disturbed their position in the earth. It was growing late in the afternoon, and we were both eager to know what Queenie and Mrs. Keith were doing; so, after the watering was attended to, we went back to the house.
We found Queenie sitting on the back veranda between Timothy and Mrs. Keith. She was listen- ing to a story that they were together telling her, and of which she said she did not believe a word. But Joseph knew it was a true story and very beau- tiful.
It was of a caterpillar that spun about itself a
PLANTING IN THE SEED-BED 63
little house, or silken chrysalis, and lay coiled in- side, resting during the whole winter. It neither saw its friends nor ate nor drank such food as Queenie knew about. Many people might have believed this crawler of the earth was quite dead. After a while the door of the chrysalis opened, and out of it appeared not the caterpillar, but a beauti- ful butterfly whose name was painted beauty. Per- haps the butterfly had been given this name on ac- count of the exquisite rose colour on the* hind part of its fore wings and the dark, eye-like spots on its posterior wings. The upper surface of the butter- fly’s wings is nearly black, with marks of orange and white, and it has long feelers which appear to point the direction in which it shall fly. It is a butterfly that does no harm in the world, but just flitters around, loving and caressing the flowers. In the autumn, it seems to like the* purple asters very much and sometimes carries the golden dust from one flower to another. The painted beauty, Mrs. Keith said, was always beautiful and good.
“Perhaps it will come to our garden this sum- mer,” Joseph said.
“I will catch it, then,” Queenie told him, and in- deed we both knew that at home she had a butterfly- net.
CHAPTER IX
JOSEPH CONTINUES SOWING SEEDS HE weather has lately favoured Joseph’s gar-
1 den greatly. Although he was disappointed that he could not sow more seeds the day Queenie Perth came with the wren’s egg, the morrow proved equally fine for such work. There was a mist in the air, which kept the soil moist; yet rain, which might have washed the seeds from the ground, held steadily oft. Again Joseph started from the house with his basket of seed packages, this time in the direction of the triangle.
He took out first his packages of nasturtium seeds. These were annuals, and he had two kinds of them, climbing and dwarf nasturtiums. He soon decided to sow the first kind in the very nar- row bed by the wall, where the vines were to be planted. Here these seeds took up but little room. Joseph put them about an inch deep in the ground. In this spot the sun could find them easily, and the sun and nasturtiums are very fond of each other.
It was with more difficulty that he made up his mind where to sow the dwarf nasturtiums; but,
64
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
65
after a while, he had a happy thought about them. They like sun as well as the climbing ones, and they also like rocks. So he brought several stones from the woods and placed them on the ground in front of the wall, very near where he had planted the other nasturtiums.
“They can grow here,” he said to me, “and it will look better to have the two kinds together than to have them in different places about the triangle.” The dwarf ones, he had learned, would begin to bloom earlier than the others; but, as they grew at the base of the climbing ones, it would appear as if all had begun to flower at once. Gardeners, Joseph had read in “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden,” have often to play little games of deception with their plants.
Since the nasturtiums were planted at the end of the wall that comes up near the house, it will be easy for me to step out and gather their flowers whenever I choose. I like to see these bright flowers arranged in green glass dishes for the din- ing-room. There is something very clean and cheery about their look. They are among the flowers that appear as if they were always smiling. Besides, Mrs. Keith says that the leaves of the dwarf nasturtiums make a spicy salad.
In our mind’s eye, we could both see just how these plants would look when they were in full bloom, yet on this April day the wall, the ground and the stones appeared scarcely different after the
66
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
seeds were planted. There were only the small label-sticks in the ground to let a stranger know about the gay beauties we were expecting later.
The sweet alyssum and the mignonette Joseph sowed in several places. He used them wherever he wished flowers to form borders for beds. The alyssum seeds he put in furrows about half an inch deep, while the mignonette was not planted as far down.
I felt pleased that we were to have these two flowers in plenty in our garden. They are both fragrant, and I think that a sweet-smelling flower is better than one with no scent. They are also both attractive in bouquets. Often I tell Joseph that I shall work hardest in the garden when pick- ing tim.e comes.
Next Joseph sowed the candytuft, putting it in the ground to about the same depth that he did the mignonette. He had only white candytuft, and, while in several places he planted it for edgings to the borders of beds, in another spot he sowed so much that it will form a fine mass by itself. Never- theless, he did not use all of the seed that he had, for, in order to have it stay with us until frost, he would have to keep on sowing it about every two weeks.
“Dear me,” I said, “will you have to do that with all the seed that you have planted?”
“Oh, no,” he answered, “the mignonette and
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
67
candytuft are the only ones so far that will have to be sown in succession.”
Joseph’s knowledge about seeds shows how often he has read “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden.”
Finally Joseph planted the Shirley poppies. It seemed to me that he had more of their seeds than of all the others put together. He sowed them rather thinly and only sprinkled the earth over them. He has learned that they would not wish to push themselves up from the bottom of a fur- row, no matter how shallow. He planted them in many places, but especially in the circular bed that cuts off the point of the triangle. The soil in this bed is not at all boggy, as one might suppose from being so near the moist corner. As I have already said, it was prepared in the regular way by Tim- othy, and its soil is fine and light.
I shall love these poppies when they bloom. Once I saw them last year, and they seemed to me like cups made by fairies out of tissue paper. But truly we shall have to wait a long time for them to bloom.
The mist that has hung over the garden has gradually cleared and the day has suddenly turned as chilly as if it were early October instead of April. I hardly like to mention such a disagreeable word as frost to Little Joseph. He perhaps has thought about it himself, for he told Mrs. Keith that, when he had time, he would make a cheese-cloth cover for his seed-bed; but that to-night he intended to
68
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
spread newspapers over it if Mrs. Keith thought there was danger of frost. Mrs. Keith is more weather-wise than any one else at Nestly.
Poor Joseph j I hardly see when he is to find time to make a cheese-cloth cover for his seed-bed, let alone covering the many seeds he has planted in the triangle. At this season of the year there is something to do every day in the garden, and, if he works all the time, I am afraid he will grow dull, like Jack who had no play. But Joseph could never be really dull. He is the kind of boy that likes to be busy every minute. It is only the ‘^sand- man’’ who makes him forget there are things to be done.
After seed-planting, all gardeners must be on the watch against burning sun, heavy rains and high winds which are likely to harm the tender sprout- ing plants. Even if Joseph cannot find time this year to make the cheese-cloth cover, it is something that can be done in the house next winter. With its aid, he would have a better chance of success and might even start his seeds earlier out-of-doors.
At Nestly Heights and at Miss Wiseman’s, many seeds are started each season under glass, and not until all danger of frost is past are the young, well-grown plants set out-of-doors. Since Joseph never expects to have glass houses at the Six Spruces, he must contrive in other ways to give his seeds an early start But then he is more ambitious even than the boy of his book. He hears of few
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
69
things that he thinks will not be possible for him to do after a while. In gardening, there is a great deal of “after a while,” especially during the first season.
Mr. Hayden likes to come and walk about the Six Spruces with us, and we have both become so keen in observing his ways that we can tell whether it is the northeast wind or the west wind that is blowing about him. Naturally we care for him most when he is like the west wind. When he is in one of his northeasters, as Joseph says, he finds fault with everything that we have done and talks a great deal about Aunt Amanda, and how she would have disliked seeing the triangle cut up with flower-beds.
Little Joseph had sown the last of the poppy seeds when Mr. Hayden came to-day. I was. then urging him to come into the house and rest, for he really looked tired, although that is something, he says, which boys do not talk about as much as girls. We noticed at once that the west wind was blow- ing about Mr. Hayden even if in the garden it was northeast.
“Planting seeds?” he asked, “or blue roses? Well, you beat my man at the flower show this year and I will give you a hundred-dollar bill.”
Then he slapped Joseph on the back so hard that he felt as if the wind had turned to a hurricane. Mr. Hayden came to tell us that he had punished both Ben and Harry for the sake of discipline ; and
70
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
to remind us that he had another son away at col- lege who was a remarkably fine lad.
^‘He is a blue rose,” said Mr. Hayden, “and no mistake. How about pansies ?” he next asked. “Have you any about the Spruces?”
We told him that we had never thought of pansies.
“Well, they are my favourite flowers,” he said; “you had better get some plants from my gar- deners. I never feel comfortable in a garden with- out pansies. They make me understand the na- ture of all the other plants. They not only have petals, you know,” he went on, “they have faces. I have seen ever so many pansies that looked like old ladies, and old men, too, for that matter, although usually they look more like hickory nuts. Once I saw a white pansy with pink tips that looked like a young girl. Not your sister,” he said to Joseph with another hurricane slap, “she is like a rose.”
I saw Joseph look at me very critically; but I hardlv think brothers ever notice that their sisters look like roses.
Lately I had read about carpeting rose-beds with pansies, and I had seen them so planted at a beau- tiful place where we had visited. But I did not like the idea. Pansies have such a different look and character from roses that the two seem to me out of harm.ony. I should never choose them as a
JOSEPH SOWING SEEDS
71
carpet for my rose-bed, I would rather see the bare earth.
Mr. Hayden was as merry as a little wind that makes the leaves dance, and often called me White Rose. He said that he had a great secret up his sleeve which, however, he had no intention of tell- ing. Joseph, of course, thought that he was going to send us a number of pansy plants, while I thought it more likely he would send a white rose, one of the kind that would climb over the wall. But neither of us ventured to ask him to change his mind and to tell us what the secret might be.
Before he went home, he said that one of the sorrows of his life was that he could not have a talk with Aunt Amanda. This made Joseph and me wonder if the wind had changed.
CHAPTER X
FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT
For three days in succession now, we have been on long tramps in the woods. This is because Mr. Hayden’s son Percy is home for the Easter hol- idays and seems to find more pleasure walking about the woods than he does in his father’s gardens. The fact that he was coming shortly is the great secret Mr. Hayden had up his sleeve. Joseph and I call this son “Mr. Percy,” for when we say “Mr. Hayden” we mean the father. He has taken a great fancy to Little Joseph, but insists that I go with them on their tramps. He knows a great deal about ferns and flowers, but not in an impor- tant, book-like way. Some people always speak about flowers as if they were reading in a cata- logue.
“Why, here are fiddleheads,” he said the first day we went into the woods together.
We looked, and saw a number of green, stick- like things with curled-over ends standing up in a clump together. They were covered with a thick white wool that probably kept them warm in these
PLATE VIII. — FIDDLEHEADS
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FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT 7S
uncertain spring days. Hepaticas were: close by and bloodroots and dog’s-tooth violets were not far away.
“Why not transplant a few of them in the moist point of your triangle?” Mr. Percy asked. “They will unfold into tall, strong fernSj and if we take them now they are almost sure to live. I have found the early spring a better time for transplant- ing ferns than the autumn. Their fronds are not unfolded now, so there is no danger of their break- mg.
This seemed a splendid idea, as we were much in need of tall, green plants at the moist corner. Mr. Percy and Joseph then set to work to take up the fiddleheads. I had a basket with me, a trowel and a newspaper, as I thought I might find some wild flowers for transplanting. The trowel proved very light for taking up the firm, interwoven roots of the fiddleheads, which I thought must have been making roots in this spot for a great many years.
Mr. Percy told us that, as the days grew warm, the woolly covering of the fiddleheads would turn a brownish yellow and gradually fall away. He showed us also its “heart of Osmond,” which is really the buds for years to come, and lies at the crown of the brush-like root-stock. This part of the fern, he said, tasted very much like raw cab- bage. But to gather it, the plant itself would have to be destroyed, and neither Joseph nor I care enough ■ about eating raw cabbage to make us do
74 FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT
such a thing. It is only the young crosiers, or un- folding fronds, that Mr. Percy called fiddleheads. He said the plant itself was a brake — the cinnamon- fern. In talking to himself, however, he called it Osmiinda cinnamomea.
I do not remember all that Mr. Percy said, be- cause I was so eager to see if he and Joseph would succeed in getting its large root-stock up from the ground without hurting the fiddleheads. The curi- ous look that these latter have in the woods I shall never forget, and, now that we are to plant them in the garden, I shall be able to watch them unfold and to learn for myself about their fronds. In speaking of ferns, Mr. Percy said, we must say fronds instead of leaves.
He and Joseph had a hard time getting the two ferns they chose to transplant loosened from the earth. They dug around them in square blocks with the trowel, and then gradually worked them free from the rest of the root-stock, which was altogether too large to carry away. Their work would have been easier if they had had a spade. When at length they were in my basket, Mr. Percy carried it. It was indeed quite heavy.
Before we had gone much farther, we found the maidenhair fern. This fern was well known to both Joseph and me, but neither of us would have recognised it as we saw it then, had it not been for Mr. Percy. Its crosiers were beginning tO' uncoil in their curious way, and parts of them were cov-
PLATE IX. — WINDFLOWERS
FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT 75
ered with a bluish bloom, such as we see on grapes. The little parts that would later open out and be green were then dull red. Neither of us doubted that Mr. Percy was right, and that some day this strange little bunch of sprigs would turn, into our own beautiful maidenhair fern. It then looked much less like it than a baby looks like a man.
Joseph thought it very wonderful that Mr. Percy should be able to tell what all the little sprigs and tiny green things were going to be when once they were full grown. We thought he must have wan- dered many times in the woods and observed sharply the things he saw. He quickly set himself about taking up the maidenhairs, since he said they also would thrive in our home garden. Their root- stocks were not as hard to handle as those of the fiddleheads. They were more slender and wiry, and stayed nearer the surface of the earth. Soon we had five of them in the basket.
“They will make a showing this year,’’ Mr. Percy said, “and, every year after, the clumps will grow larger and more beautiful.”
There were hepaticas and windflowers where these maidenhair ferns were uncoiling. The wind- flowers were now in full bloom in our own wood- border, not far from the place where Joseph had planted the hepaticas. They looked so frail and delicate that I felt quite afraid to walk among them.
“This year,” Mr. Percy said, “the season is back- ward. It is now the twenty-fourth of April, and I
76 FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT
have often found these ferns as well grown ten or twelve days earlier.”
I was thinking it time to go home, when Mr. Percy said that, as long as we were out for ferns to-day, we might try to find the lady-fern and take it along with us. There was still room in the bas- ket, although its heaviness had increased.
“The lady-fern.!” I exclaimed. “Is it one that ladies like especially?”
“Well, perhaps not the ladies of to-day,” Mr. Percy answered, “because they have learned to like so many kinds of ferns. The truth is that the fern itself is a lady. In ancient times, it was called female fern, which has not so poetic a sound. The folk of long ago believed that the seeds it bore could make people invisible. Imagine,” Mr. Percy continued, “how amusing it would be if I should put some of this mystic seed in my shoes, or in my pockets. You would still hear me walking about and talking, but you would not be able to see me. I might drop in at the Six Spruces at any time of the day and find out all your secrets.”
“That, of course, is a fairy tale,” said Joseph, who is something of an authority about sprites and witches.
“It may be that now,” Mr. Percy answered, “but truly, in the days when it was called female fern, it was believed to have this and many other curious powers.”
“I hope we are going to find it,” I said.
FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT
we are sure to do that if we keep our eyes open,” Mr. Percy replied, “It grows in most places about here that are moist and shady. Here it is now 1”
I thought it less interesting than the fiddleheads —perhaps because it was not covered with a warm wool. Its stalks were deep wine colour, and the uncoiling fronds were light, yellowish green. They grew up from the root-stock in tufts that were large and circular. I could imagine better how they would look when unfolded than I could the fiddle- heads.
“You will both think this is an old acquaintance when you see it uncoiled in your garden,” Mr. Percy told us. “In fact, you must have seen the lady-fern again and again before now. Sometimes it wanders out from the woodlands, or swamps to live along the roadways. I have even found it in our stony back-pasture. This year, however, you will really become its friend.”
All the time that Mr. Percy was talking, he was working steadily to get its large root-stock up from the ground. I began to think that ferns had a much stronger way of fastening themselves in the earth than was known to either wild or cultivated flowers. When he had taken up several lady-ferns, we turned in the direction of home, Mr. Percy say- ing that later he would take us where fronds un- coiled beside some lovely wake-robins. Once only we stopped on the way to watch a red-headed wood-
78 FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT
pecker going up the side of a tree. Every second or two he stuck his long bill into its bark to get some insect ; and he must have had a feast if, every time he pecked, he secured prey. He hopped along at a lively pace, appearing not to notice that we were watching him. What he did at other times I had no idea, but, unlike the wrens and the robins, he was not carrying his finds home to a little mate on the nest. Everything he found, he ate him- self.
The spring air and the long walk had tired me by the time we reached the Six Spruces. This was not so, however, with Joseph, who was as enthusias- tic as when we first started, and had now, he said, to plant the ferns. Mr. Percy advised him to put the maidenhairs on the slight slope of the coppice where it is shady, yet somewhat open, and where they might be seen from the triangle. The fiddle- heads they planted near the point of the moist corner, and the lady-ferns they placed in a group at the side.
“All of these ferns do splendidly under cultiva- tion,” Mr. Percy said. “But they will now require a daily watering, especially if the earth should become dry.”
We felt it very encouraging that something we had planted would now grow and unfold at the Six Spruces as soon as it would in the woods.
After Mr. Percy had gone back to Nestly Heights, Joseph and I wondered how it was that
PLATE X. — ""fronds UNCOILED BESIDE SOME LOVELY WAKE-ROBINS""
FINDING FERNS TO TRANSPLANT 79
he cared so much to go out into the woods with us for fqrns and help transplant them, when at his place there were such beautiful and rare ferns in one of the glass houses. We thought it must be because he liked to tell us all the interesting things he knew about the wild plants of the woods.
“We should not have known the plants were ferns if it had not been for him,” I said.
“Nor should we have seen that woodpecker,” Jo- seph replied.
Then we both wondered why it was that he did not act a day older than ourselves, and if he would come again.
CHAPTER XI
MY ROSARIUM
S yet I have said nothing about my rose gar-
ix den, except that in it I intend expending most of my energy, and, incidentally, my money. Of the former, I have as much as most girls, while of the latter my bank holds but twenty-five dollars. Yet, with the roses that have been given me by Mr. Hayden, and with all that I shall learn later about budding and striking cuttings, I may perhaps, in two or three seasons, have a beautiful rosarium. There are no flowers I love as much as roses. I love them enough to have always a thought for them, never tire of watching them, and even regard as nothing the trouble I shall probably have in keep- ing their insect pests away. It is because I love them so dearly that I feel I can make them grow.
For some time Joseph and I could not decide where the rosarium should be placed. Then sud- denly a thought occurred to me. It should be near the middle of the triangle, over by the side that borders the wood; and the various beds for the roses should spread out from the rustic seat that
8o
MY ROSARIUM
81
is placed there, as if they were the sticks In a fan. Imagine how delightful it will be to rest on this seat, and to feast our eyes on the whole rose garden. Besides, if I have it in this place, it will not inter- fere with Joseph’s hardy-flower beds. The roses will be quite by themselves, a condition they greatly desire. Over this spot the air circulates freely, another point about which roses are particular. An abundance of sunshine will there visit them, and yet they will be shut off from too much wind by the wood-border. A better spot for growing roses, Miss Wiseman says, could hardly be found ready made; for in this way she invariably speaks of the triangle and the bordering coppice. She had to plant many trees and flowering shrubs about her own rose garden, to act as wind-breaks, since roses do not like rough breezes.
The long and narrow beds, arranged like the sticks of a fan, have already been prepared by Tim- othy, in exactly the same way as the other beds were made. From time to time, however, the roses will need more fertilising than Joseph’s hardy flowers. Mr. Hayden says they are the most greedy feeders of all plants, which seems an ugly expression in con- nection with roses, although quite true. I have noticed that, whenever Miss Wiseman and her gardener, Mr. Bradley, talk about the roses they expect to send to the flower show this year, the conversation begins and ends with a criticism of various kinds of fertilisers.
t
MY ROSARIUM
Joseph has started a manure heap, not far from the seed-bed behind Aunt Amanda’s old chicken- house. It cannot be seen from any part of the triangle, although we have become such garden enthusiasts that its ugliness would be condoned, in view of the beauty and strength our flowers are likely to receive.
The neighbours have said quite generally that it is too bad I could not have planted the hybrid perpetual and hardy roses that Mr. Hayden has given me in the late autumn, instead of in the mid- dle of April. Still they were moved and trans- planted with so much care that I am hoping they will know nothing about it. It was surprising so many agreed that the season was excellent for plant- ing monthly roses ; for, when one starts a garden in spring, it seems as if the greater number of things should have been attended to in the autumn.
Those who have watched roses know that the so-called hybrid perpetual and hardy roses bloom with the great army of roses in June and July, send- ing out occasionally a few flowers in the autumn. The monthly or ever-blooming roses continue open- ing their flowers throughout the growing season, sometimes until overcome by frost. When plant- ing, it is best to keep these two classes separate, as in the late autumn the monthlies require much heavier winter covering than those which are hardy.
Had I chosen roses exclusively from the cata- logues and from what I remember about them, I
PLATE XI. — A ROSE FANTASY
MY ROSARIUM
83
think I should have had in my rosarium only monthlies of either white or red. I can imagine that a rose fan made of these two colours might be very beautiful from June until October. But there might have been unexpected disappointments which I am spared by having had so many hardy roses given tO' me.
Those that Mr. Hayden contributed to the fan, all of which, he said, were roses of the highest char- acter, were red, pink, and white, with one yellow rose called Soleil d^Or. This name was very ap- pealing. Among the red roses were Ulrich Brun- ner, Marshall P. Wilder, Prince Camille de Rohan, and Victor Verdier. The pink ones were named Mrs. R. G. S. Crawford, Mrs. John Laing, Baron- ess Rothschild, Clio, Madame Gabriel Luiget, and Paul Neyron.
The one white rose was called Frau Karl Druschki, a name I thought given it by a very stupid gardener, although Joseph said it was more likely the flower received its name from a very clever individual, since it had become celebrated for its beauty. In “An Ambitious Boy’s Garden,” there is not a word about roses, so I suppose Joseph heard this either at Miss Wiseman’s or at Nestly Heights.
I decided to plant the red roses in the middle beds of the fan, keeping each kind by itself. The white were in the beds on either side, then came
84
MY ROSARIUM
single beds of yellow, while the end beds on each side of the fan were left for pink roses.
Near where they all taper down into a semi- circle, another bed following this outline was made for the monthly roses on which I had spent my money. Among them I had but three kinds, the Killarney, the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria and the Perle des Jardins. Their colours were pink, white and light yellow.
This was the arrangement I had intended for my rosarium. But for this year, at least, it was beset by a difficulty. The labels marking the roses that Mr. Hayden gave me read merely red, pink, white, or yellow. Now there are ever so many shades of red, some of which look well with pink, while others do not. Perhaps if I had consulted one of Joseph’s catalogues, or a book on roses, I might have found out more about their particular shades, and then have planted them accordingly. But it happened that the roses came late in the afternoon, while Timothy was at the Six Spruces, and the best thing to do was to get them planted as soon as possible. They had not a very inspiring look. Evidently, they had been clipped back by the gardener at Nestly Heights, and, not having begun to send out their new leaves, were just sticks and thorns.
Still, it was a great thing to see so many little rose-bushes actually planted in a formal, pretty de- sign, and to feel that it was indeed my own rosa-
MY ROSARIUM
85
rium. As the roses begin opening, I can watch them carefully and learn all the particular little points which make each one different from another. Some of them also may die, and then I shall have to find out the cause; others may grow too high, over-reaching their neighbours, and I shall thus learn where best to transplant them in the autumn. After studying and caring many years for them, I may become a Rosarian, or an authority on roses. Once Joseph heard of a great lady in England whose chief pride was that of being a Rosarian.
Besides the monthly roses, I bought three crimson ramblers for Joseph, and two other climb- ers, which are called Wichuraianas. The ramblers he has planted by the wall dividing us from Nestly Heights; the Wichuraianas, on the contrary, have been set out by the moist corner of the triangle, where the ground rises in a little bank. These lat- ter bear small, sweetly-scented, white roses, and their foliage is vividly green and glossy. They will either climb over arches that Joseph may make some day, or run along on the ground. They be- gin to bloom after the crimson ramblers have faded.
In buying the monthly roses for the base of the fan garden and the climbers for Joseph, I have spent nearly all of my twenty-five dollars. But there are nearly forty roses in the bed, large, strong plants. Miss Wiseman says there is no* economy in buying poor stock. I, at least, am content. As soon as the roses begin to bloom, they will give me
86
MY ROSARIUM
more pleasure than the money could have done if otherwise expended. Even now, I like to watch the bushes, although they are only bare sticks stand- ing above the bare earth.
If ever I write a story. It will be about a rose. The rose is so romantic. It has had its petals sprinkled over the dishes at feasts of Caesars, and has been worn near the hearts of queens. Its fatherland is said to be in the northwestern part of Asia. At least the rose from which the first perfume was made grew there, and its sweet scent has held sway with kings. I can never quite like people who are indifferent to roses. There is such a grace about them, and yet a sprightly air, as if they wished to speak. Roses never nod their heads. They hold them high. They are themselves queens.
All this time that I have been telling about my rose garden, Joseph has been away playing with Queenie Perth. It sounds odd to speak of Joseph playing with a little girl, as usually he is so grave, and spends his time working In the garden. But he likes Queenie, although he knows she Is spoiled and often naughty. She can make him quite forget his seriousness when she herself is in one of her funny moods.
I see Joseph now returning by the circle in front of the house. No doubt he has been reminded by the twilight that It is the poetical time of the day which we give to changing clothes. But no, he has
PLATE XII. — I MAY BECOME A ROSARIAN
MY ROSARIUM
87
not come on by the circle. He has crossed over and gone in among the six spruces. I will join him there before Mrs. Keith catches sight of either of us. I must tell him that Mr. Percy has been here again, and he probably wishes to tell me about Queenie Perth.
CHAPTER XII
PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL
During this plantmg-time Joseph has not neglected to provide decorations for our wall, in spite of the many other things that have needed attention. Some fine day, he tells me, this wall of ours will be entirely covered with foliage, owing to the little, straggly things he has lately set out by its side. Besides the climbing nasturtiums and the crimson ramblers, he has planted a number of Virginia creepers, two honeysuckles and a clematis paniculata. With the exception of the nasturtiums, these are all perennial vines which will keep on living from year to year. There are, of course, such beautiful annual vines as the Japa- nese morning-glory, the moonflower, Japanese gourd, passion-flower, and others, which Joseph might have sown, and which perhaps would have astonished us by their abundant growth during this one season. He crossed them off from his list, however, thinking it best to have vines that need not be renewed every year, even if they make him wait longer before he sees them well grown.
88
PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL 89
As far as he can, Joseph Is making his garden of plants that know pretty well how to take care of themselves. He wishes them, as I have already said, to be like the wild flowers In the woods, which return each year in definite seasons.
It was not for their flowers that Joseph planted so many Virginia creepers along the wall, since these are insignificant, but for the leaves of the vines, which, from the time they unfold in the spring until they turn a brilliant crimson in the au- tumn, are always beautiful. These Virginia creep- ers, therefore, will form the foliage of the wall, while the nasturtiums, the clematis and the honey- suckles will give it flowers.
Mr. Percy advised Joseph to plant the native Virginia creepers, and together they found the vines by the edge of a near-by wood. Afterwards, Timothy went with wheelbarrow and spade and took them up. Had we bought them at the nur- sery, we could have had no better specimens than these which were found growing wild. Joseph had often seen poison-ivy In the woods before he came to the Six Spruces to live, and he thought he was being urged to transplant It to our wall; but Mr. Percy, by opening a miniature leaf, soon showed him that, though the two vines resembled each other, the Virginia creeper has five leaflets, while the poison-ivy has but three.
We were discussing this point of difference be- tween the two vines, when Queenie Perth surprised
90 PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL
us by saying : “I know poison-ivy has three leaflets because ivy has three letters in its name. It can never poison me or Rosamond. We stay too far away from it.”
Rosamond is Queenle’s doll. In some ways Queenie is wiser than one would expect, while in others she is more babyish than she should be for a girl nearly nine years old. What she had said this time about the three leaflets of poison-ivy had quite fixed the fact in my mind. As yet, I have never gone through a season in the country without being severely poisoned.
As our vines grow old and sturdy, Joseph plans to put up poles by the side of the wall, on which they may twine skyward. These, I think, he especially wishes for the clematis paniculata, with its masses of sweet-smelling, white flowers. The idea seems attractive to me also, as the stupid straight line of the wall will then be broken. But this is one of the unfinished things in our imagined garden when all the seeds and plants that we have set out are grown.
Mr. Percy knows quite as much about vines as he does about ferns. He was delighted to see that the creepers he had suggested transplanting so soon showed signs of having taken good root. He said the form of the rose garden was an inspiration. It suited the triangle better, he thought, than if it had been circular, square or even long and narrow. Perhaps it is because he has no sisters that he did
PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL 91
not know until we told him that it was in the shape of a fan. He then said: “Why, yes, to be sure.” That very evening he sent me a little fan from Japan covered with pink and red blossoms. They are not roses. Perhaps they are peach blossoms. The fan is unusually pretty, and I really think my rose garden will have somewhat the same appear- ance.
We are sorry that the Easter holiday is over, for Mr. Percy has gone back to college. When he next returns, however, it will be for the long sum- mer, when he will be of great help to us in beauti- fying the Six Spruces. He never speaks as his father does about our Aunt Amanda. We are sure he wishes us to make the old house look as if it peeped up among flowers. He is not content that we should have a garden only about the tri- angle. He wishes us to make wide borders across the front and along the sides of the house and to plant them mostly with scarlet geraniums. As the house is painted buff, he would especially like the effect of these flowers against it. Perhaps we shall try to carry out his wishes next year; but already we have planned to do quite as much as it will be possible for one small boy to take care of. Later Timothy will be coming only once or twice a week. The rose garden I shall look after myself.
The work of gardening, we find, is not all over when the planting is completed. There are then
92 PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL
worms, spiders and beetles to be overcome, and watering to attend to during dry weather.
We are learning to have a respect for even toads and garter-snakes, since they eat many of the harm- ful insects which make their way into gardens. Formerly I shuddered at the sight of these crea- tures, and even now I cannot regard them with much peace of mind. But, after all, the great de- sire when one has a garden is for perfect flowers, and, in order tO' secure them, such disagreeable things as snakes, toads and manure piles must be encouraged.
The wrens that live in one of the bird-houses have become so accustomed to seeing Joseph and me about the Six Spruces that they no longer mind our presence. They also are friendly with Mrs. Keith. In the morning, evening, and many times during the day the male bird passes swiftly across our back veranda, perches himself on a bit of cornice near its roof, and, lifting his head high in the air, sings us his sudden and spirited song. It is a song that I cannot imitate. Yet the bird gives me every chance to learn his lay, repeating it over and over again. A most happy creature he seems, not letting the thought that he will soon be the father of five or six hungry fledglings weigh heav- ily upon his soft brown shoulders.
The grackles, on the contrary, which made their nest in the old pine tree near the moist point of the triangle, never come near the house, and sing only
PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL 93
in squeaky voices. Joseph has found out they are likely to eat a great many grubs that might do harm to the flowers; and that on occasions they eat the eggs of other birds. This is a trait not to be re- spected in the grackles. Yet I like to watch the male birds in their metallic-looking black coats. I have noticed that they are often iridescent like coals and of a remarkable shiningness. Timothy has warned us strongly against these birds, saying that they do no good to the farmers’ corn. Still, there are so few farms near us in Nestly that Joseph may some time have to give the grackles some grains in payment for the grubs they destroy.
We have found that, even with the best inten- tions, there come moments of real discouragement in gardening. Except for the general air of tidi- ness about the Six Spruces and the triangle, and the fine symmetry of the flower-beds, there is really, so far, little to be seen for all the work that has been done. Were it not for the fact that Hope whispers to us, and we believe the seeds are sprout- ing and the little plants growing, we should hardly have the courage to go on. The cold, wet days that come after the middle of spring especially dampen the spirits.
When this discouragement falls upon me, I tell Little Joseph it is time for us to go to the woods and see what is blossoming there in Nature’s world of wild flowers. Somehow, I cannot think the flowers that live in a garden and have to be sown
94 PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL
and watered are as real as those that come up with- out any assistance from man.
In our woods, the leaves are now well unfolded. The hepatlcas, bloodroots and anemones have ceased blooming, and even the few little yellow violets that we found are making their seeds. Two spring orchids are aglow with their enchanting flowers. They grow in a secluded, deep part of the wood near where we hear a whippoorwill. This bird often lives in the hidden haunts of orchids, and seekers of these flowers sometimes find them by following his melancholy notes, in much the same way that men hunting tigers locate them by the cry of the peacock.
This year for the first time we saw wild ginger. Mr. Percy showed it to us the day before he went back to college. Its leaves are rounded and appear like velvet. They cover the ground in great mats. But the flower of wild ginger does not like to be seen. It prefers to hide its head in the earth, and lies under the leaves closely hidden in its dress of green marked with purple. Joseph and I should have missed seeing it altogether had not Mr. Percy slipped his hand under the plant and lifted the flower up to our sight.
He said that wild ginger would be a delightful plant for our wood-border, since it likes the shade so well. As soon as its seeds were sown, we deter- mined to have Timothy take it up in large blocks and transplant it for us, just behind the hepaticas
PLATE XIII. — WILD GINGER
(
PLANTING BEFORE THE WALL 95
and higher on the slope. Some day the woods may have a thick, green carpet of its soft leaves from early spring until late in the autumn. We hardly could expect to find another ground cover for the coppice, which, like the brave, sturdy hepat- icas, holds its green leaves throughout the winter.
Whenever we transplant wild flowers, Mr. Percy says we must be sure to take enough of them to establish what he calls a “permanent colony.’’ Just one or two wildlings set in or near a garden have a frightened, not-at-home look, while numbers of one kind together usually retain their wild charm.
Mr. Percy told us, moreover, that transplanting wild flowers was something he had long wished to do himself; but that there was little opportunity for experimenting at such a formal place as Nestly Heights. Naturally, Little Joseph and I were glad to let him do whatever he wished In our wood- border. In fact, we grew quite used to his help, and now miss him sadly since he has gone away. In the rose garden, however, I shall manage things quite after my own mind. There not even Little Joseph is to be allowed to pull a weed.
CHAPTER XIII
JOSEPH COMPLETES THE PLANTING OF THE
GARDEN
NOW that May has been here for a fortnight, I recall how busy Joseph has been setting out numbers of perennials that he bought from the nursery of Nestly, and others which were given him by Miss Wiseman and Mr. Hayden, who have been dividing some of their old, well-grown plants. He has made an effort to complete the planting of his garden, with which, however, he seems never to be quite finished.
Almost every day Joseph hears that some seeds that he has already sown should be planted again now, and also later on, in order that throughout the season he may have their flowers in succession. He knew, before starting his garden, that farmers did this with peas and other vegetables, but he did not realise that the same thing was to be done with flowers. Here is another difference between wild flowers and those in a garden. When the former have bloomed and sown their seeds, their work is over for the entire season. Mother Nature allows
96
JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN 97
them then tO' rest snugly. But gardeners have learned to sow and resow the seeds of cultivated flowersj that they may not pass out of sight with their natural season of blooming.
Joseph hears that there are little tricks of nip- ping off flowers before they form seeds^ and, by so doing, keeping the plants blooming longer than their natural season, for, above all, a plant desires to make seeds. The flower which is seen and be- loved by people is really only a means of making the more important seeds, which then, the plant con- trives to sow in order that its existence may be con- tinued from year to year. It seems a little melan- choly to me to keep the plants longing to make and sow their seed until, perhaps, they are caught by the frost without their object in life having been ac- complished. Still, a garden whose flowers had early ceased to bloom would not be pretty. In fact, it is gardeners now who attend to the reappearance of plants year after year, by sowing the seed, and Joseph finds he must follow their ways, although at times he may think them unnatural and heart- less.
The most important perennials that Joseph bought, or had given to him, were phloxes, golden glow, larkspurs, irises, and chrysanthemums. In addition to those he already had, and with his an- nuals, the garden will be started very well.
I cannot describe every place in the triangle that he has planted. He has placed each plant where
98 JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN
he thought it was likely to appear to the best ad- vantage. This is something which every one who starts a garden must think out for himself. The important points that Joseph has tried to remember have been the colours of the flowers, the heights to which the plants were apt to grow, and the neces- sity to set them in places that gave them the right exposure. Some plants are sun-loving, others de- light in shade; many have a bold, brilliant look, while others are shy and modest. When planting, therefore, Joseph has thought of the character and habit of the plants rather than the appearance of the little green things themselves when he set them in the soil.
It is too bad that we have no peonies in our gar- den this season. They, however, start with the first warm breath of spring, and so do be:st when planted in the early autumn. As soon as that time comes we shall get roots of large plants, which then perhaps will give us great, toppling blooms the fol- lowing spring. I hope to persuade Joseph to buy only white peonies, although I know the dark crim- son ones open earlier, and the double pink ones are very beautiful. Still, the white ones are my favour- ites.
In a garden near our old home, Joseph and I used to go early each spring to see the peony buds after they had worked their way up through the earth. They always had the round, shining look of little balls, until later when they burst into great white
PLATE XIV. — TWO SPRING ORCHIDS
JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN 99
flowers. In that old garden, I remember the plants had not been disturbed for years, but had grown very large, reappearing regularly with the spring.
Over at Miss Wiseman’s, the peonies are planted at the ends of several borders. I wish ours to be set in a bed by themselves, not far from the wall, near the point of the triangle. This year, how- ever, we will use it for annuals or other plants that can be easily transplanted when the time comes for putting in the peony roots.
Both Miss Wiseman and Mr. Hayden have given us columbines which will soon begin to bloom. Those that Joseph sowed in the seed-bed will not bloom until next year, since they are perennials. We shall save a space for them near the others, be- cause, as with peonies, I think they look best when kept by themselves. But Miss Wiseman has them in the same border as her peonies, poppies, phloxes and other kinds of flowers.
Perhaps I am wrong in some of the ideas I put into Joseph’s head. I do, however, much prefer to see flowers of the same kind kept closely together to having them scattered about among those of a different air. Near them, flowers that bloom earlier or later can be grown. At least, we intend to plant our garden after this idea. If it then turns out a failure, we will give in and follow our neighbours. Mr. Hayden thinks we are very bold, and, perhaps, a little ungrateful, not to allow his' landscape gardener to keep us, as he says, in the
100 JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN
straight and narrow path; but, if we did so, the fun of making our own garden would be spoiled for Joseph and me.
At Nestly Heights, not one of the family ever sows a seed or ventures to pick a flower; even the birds are shy about building their nests there.
About the triangle, these gay creatures appear more at home every day. The wrens, the blue- birds and the grackles, which came first of all, have now been joined by m.any friends, while robins, song-sparrows and chippies have come in great numbers. Almost every day we find a nest not seen before. Naturally, the builders make a great fuss and appear to be in actual terror as we draw near to examine their work; but, when they see that we go away, leaving everything undisturbed as soon as our interest is satisfied, they settle down quietly again. The next time we visit them, they appear less frightened.
On all sides we have heard that no garden should be without phloxes. Joseph, therefore, bought three dozen plants before he knew that others were to be given him. They are very easily cultivated, and, as they can be separated at the end of three years into three times the original number, we think them a good investment. Phloxes come into full bloom about the beginning or middle of July, when many other flowers have had their day and are busy making seed. Miss Wiseman says her garden at this time is fairly aglow with them. In
PLATE XV,
BLUE FLOWERS THAT SHOULD BLOOM FOR US SOON
JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN 101
fact, phloxes have been very much cultivated of late, and many new varieties of them have become known. It is quite bewildering to read all their colours on Joseph’s labels. I rather think we shall have them in every shade and combination of colour except yellow. As yet I have not heard of a yellow phlox. The prospect of such a medley of colours is bewildering, and the only suggestion I was able to give Joseph about them was to put them in ground where there would be nothing else to flower while they monopolised attention.
As I look at them set here and there about the triangle, I think that their stiff stalks and prim lit- tle leaves are decidedly ugly. Surely, they should bear beautiful heads of bloom to make up for this defect.
Our ideas about the larkspurs were more definite. I especially love these flowers. Joseph bought only plants that would bear blue flowers, and he planted them in among the meadow-rues which he and Mr. Percy took from the woods. The flower of the meadow-rue is so insignificant as scarcely to be seen by people who are not botanists, while its foliage is exquisitely shaped and of a bright, beau- tiful green. The larkspurs raising their spikes of fantastic blue flowers among it will be most lovely. Mr. Percy helped Joseph transplant the meadow- rue ; and, so far, not one of the number has shown the slightest sign of dying. The work was much
102 JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN
the same as that of bringing the ferns to the moist point.
I love blue flowers, and invariably urge Joseph to buy them to the exclusion of red and pink ones. I cannot tell why this should be so. Roses are my greatest favourites, and they are never blue.
The first blue flowers to bloom for us will be the irises. Joseph bought German and Japanese varieties, since both bear beautiful flowers, and the Japanese begin to bloom just as the Germans are fading. We chose them also because they are hardy, needing neither care nor winter covering, nor was an especial bed prepared for them. Joseph simply put their long roots deeply in the turf at the moist point of the triangle. They are plants that dislike dry weather and dry soil. We did not have many this spring; but irises increase very rapidly, and in September, which really is the best time for planting them, he will add to the number.
Once, when driving along a road in May, Joseph and I stopped beside a moist meadow completely covered with wild blue flags. The dusk was gath- ering. Among the tall leaves Joseph imagined that he saw a little gnome blowing out his cheeks to keep the moths away. The coat he wore was made* of leaves, although not those of the irises. I could not see the little fellow myself, even though Joseph pointed him out walking through the meadow, and showed me the butterflies circling
PLATE XVI. — BLOWING OUT HIS CHEEKS AND BREATH TO KEEP THE
MOTHS away’"
'
‘I .
V/*,
JOSEPH PLANTING THE GARDEN 103
about his head. Often we have both been re- minded of that meadow.
The cultivated irises will bear larger flowers, and have a more complex form than the wild blue flags. If they make the moist point of the triangle half as pretty as the meadow, perhaps Joseph’s gnome will find them out.
The golden glow was set in front of the wall at the very end ; farther down, in fact, than the holly- hocks. The former grow so high, and are so viv- idly yellow, that I think they should be looked at from a distance.
Then there are the little plants of hardy chrys- anthemums that Joseph has set out. These are most important, since they give us flowers last of all. During the summer, they will appear as foliage plants, because we will keep their buds nipped off to prevent their blooming early. The leaves of chrysanthemums are a soft, ashen green, and there- fore look well as a background for other flowers.
The number of plants that Joseph has already set out about the triangle is wonderful to me. I feel sure his back must ache. But, in spite of all the work that he has done, I have thought of other flowers for which I am pining. Heliotrope is one of them ; but as yet I have said nothing about it to Little Joseph.
CHAPTER XIV,
MAY TIME
For the last few days Joseph and I have done little in the garden. We have been medi- tating and watching things grow. Besides^ we have seen a great deal of our neighbours and their gar- dens.
May in the country is surely as lovely as June. The roses have not yet bloomed; but a wealth of other flowers have let out their petals. At Miss Wiseman’s, the hardy border is a lively sight with irises, columbines, azaleas, rhododendrons, and the prettiest little phlox Drummondi edging it all about. It is the early crop of this phlox that shows in May: the main one will not come on until July. As we see it at Miss Wiseman’s, lying a mass of bloom on the ground, its colour is a clear and bril- liant magenta. It has bewitched Joseph, who tells me he intends to have a quantity of it next year about the borders at the Six Spruces. It not only comes up readily from seed, but resows itself abun- dantly. Indeed, it is not at all difficult to grow.
104
MAY TIME
105
We already have a small quantity of phlox Drummond!, it being one of the annuals Joseph sowed In the seed-bed. The plants that we have raised, however, are very meagre In comparison to those at Miss Wiseman’s. Yet I am glad our plants are white or yellow, instead of magenta.
Since Joseph and I have learned a little about raising flowers, we have developed a gift for crit- icising gardens that are old and highly cultivated. Already I have whispered tO' Joseph that I do not think Miss Wiseman Is very sensitive concerning the colours in her garden. I should never be con- tent to have the magenta phlox Drummond! border- ing beds of pink azaleas, nor should I plant it in front of red columbines. In fact, there are not many places In a garden where bright magenta would please me at all.
I notice but few border plants of yellow In our friends’ gardens, and, therefore, if our seedlings of yellow phlox Drummondl turn out a success, I shall urge Joseph to keep to that colour to the exclusion of white, magenta or dark red. At Nestly Heights this phlox Is showing magenta the same as at Miss Wiseman’s. No doubt fashionable gardeners like the brilliancy of this colour.
Mr. Percy has been home for over Sunday. I was telling him how beautifully I thought this little annual phlox spread itself about the garden beds like bands of ribbon.
106
MAY TIME
“But you would prefer blue ribbon?” he com- mented.
I replied that this phlox did not come in that colour.
“Then have quaker-ladies,” said Mr. Percy. “Even now, it is perhaps not too late to secure them.”
He urged us to go with him tO' a moist meadow some distance back of the Six Spruces, where great patches of the ground were turned blue by tiny flowers with yellow eyes, their small leaves clinging as closely to the ground as moss.
“These are quaker-ladies, or bluets,” said Mr. Percy. “Can you not see what a lovely band of blue they would make about your flower-beds ?”
“But would they live,” Joseph asked, “if we transplanted them now, when in flower?”
“If we did it cleverly enough,” Mr. Percy an- swered.
Later in the day, we returned to the place with Timothy and all necessary implements. We then moved the quaker-ladies in long, narrow blocks of earth. Their roots did not extend very far down, and I felt sure that the little ladies knew nothing at all about this being their moving day. Fortunately, Joseph had made no plans for a border-plant about the bed near the point of the triangle ; so there we set the blocks of quaker- ladies, which formed a band of soft blue about the whole. We gave them a long, gentle spraying,
MAY TIME
107
and, as they never once drooped their heads, we concluded that they at least would live throughout the season. Timothy had to return again to the meadow before we had enough plants to complete the border.
Next year, perhaps early in May, Mr. Percy says, they will reappear in their sprightly fashion in the border. This season is slightly backward. Joseph and I felt that we had done a good day^s work to secure a permanent and beautiful blue plant for the crescent-shaped bed.
“It is a border,” Joseph reminded me, “that they have neither at Miss Wiseman’s nor at Nestly Heights.” This thought pleased him immensely.
Mr. Percy never seems to be afraid to handle or to discuss wild flowers. He takes less interest in the cultivated ones. One day he told us some^- thing interesting about trailing arbutus, which has vanished from this neighbourhood because people have picked it so ruthlessly. “Many books and magazines,” he said, “state that it is very difficult to transplant this flower and that a permanent col- ony of it has nowhere been found in cultivation. I wish the people who hold this opinion might see the wild-flower garden of a friend of mine who' has a large and important colony of trailing arbutus transplanted from the open country. It showed not the slightest reluctance to live, because it was taken up in large blocks of considerable depth.
108
MAY TIME
Wild flowers,” Mr. Percy continued, “are truly eager to grow’.”
He then told us about two Jacks-in-the-pulpit which he himself had taken up from the woods in May, not very carefully, and which later he planted in a poor and clayey soil, quite different from that of the rich, loamy wood. He had transplanted them in defiance of all recognised conditions.
“Yet they are still living,” he said, “and the lady Jack has borne fruit every year.”
Naturally, Mr. Percy had transplanted a lord and a lady Jack, as the green-striped and the purple- striped Jacks are respectively called. If he had transplanted two lords, or two ladies, then there would have been no fruit, since fertilisation could not have taken place.
After this conversation, Joseph thought that it would be a good idea for him to transplant a num- ber of lords and ladies to our wood-border, where the soil and the shade would suit them exactly. But he planned to do it late in the autumn, since for him they might not be willing to go against all their traditions as they had for Mr. Percy. I think the spirit of the w’oodlands is really in Jacks-in-the- pulpit.
Before this spring, I had never realised how exquisitely lovely were daffodils and jonquils and also narcissi. They have all passed bloom now, but at our neighbours’ there has been, until lately, a wonderful showing of them. The especial names
PLATE XVIII. — THE WILD BLUE FLAG
MAY TIME
109
of these bulbs are all now jotted down In Joseph’s note-book, to be again deeply considered when It comes time for autumn planting.
Among other things that Joseph has attended to recently has been the setting out in the garden of the little plants that he raised In the boxes under the camera plates. The baby’s breath has now be- come neat-looking little plants, which have been thinned out and set In the soil twelve Inches apart. I have never seen this plant In bloom, so I shall still have to wait a while to know much more about It. In the catalogue we read that Its flowers would be white, or rosy, and that the plants would be nearly covered with them.
The ten-weeks stocks are now also' set out In the garden, looking slim and dignified with a space of twelve Inches between them. We expect these flowers to be w^hlte, pink and purple. The white ones should bear double blossoms. I feel sure we shall be satisfied with these stocks, for they already have a vigorous look, and I like the soft shade of their foliage. As their name implies, they will last In bloom a long time.
The cardinal-flowers have been slower In start- ing than the others, and even now are not large enough to transplant.
It has proved quite a success sowing these seeds In the boxes indoors, for the plants are surely now better grown than if we had waited until May to put them In open ground. The experiment was
110
MAY TIME
also fun for Little Joseph. In fact, I think he cares more for these plants than for any others in the garden. He feels they are more his own, since he has taken care of them so long and watched their leaves forming from the time they first ap- peared above the earth. In observing them, he has learned something about the building of a plant, and found out some of the ways of the plant world more accurately even than by reading “An Am- bitious Boy’s Garden.”
We have no Weigelia shrubs at the Six Spruces; but at nearly all the other places about, the pink varieties are coming Into bloom, appearing like heavy, coloured clouds. Especially at Miss Wise- man’s, I think they will be very beautiful, because there the shrubs are all old and large. Nestly Heights Is a new place.
At the edge of our wood-border the dogwood Is in bloom, giving the appearance of gay company. And to our surprise one of the wild dogwood trees Is sending out flowers of salmon, pink. They are not merely pinkish from fading, as many white blos- soms become, but are really pink and have been so since the day they unfolded. Timothy tells us that our Aunt Amanda took an interest in this tree and felt proud of It, because It was the only one of the kind she had seen or heard about in this part of the country.
Our three lilac bushes are also in bloom. When Mr. Hayden came to see us on Sunday, he said, not
PLATE XIX. — PINK DeCWOOD
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MAY TIME
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in the way of a spring zephyr, but like the wind before a squall :
“Now I know where I am. The scent of those three lilacs makes me feel the presence of your Aunt Amanda. Take me into the parlour, please, and let me sit on the haircloth sofa.”
We took him into the parlour, where he was surprised to find the favourite sofa covered up with brocade.
“Dear me,” he said, “there is nothing in this world so sure as change ! Are you not afraid the light streaming in at those windows will fade the carpet?”
I answered that the carpet was already faded, and that we liked the air and sunshine.
“What about flies?” he asked. “Your Aunt Amanda never let one come within her walls.”
I did notice then that there were a number of flies about, and felt it was perhaps a sign of poor housekeeping.
Afterwards, Mrs. Keith brought in tea, of which Mr. Hayden drank two cups, saying it was excel- lent. He still continued to tease us about the changes we had made at the Six Spruces.
I asked him if he had heard Joseph play his vio- lin; for this is something my brother can do even better than plant a garden. Mr. Hayden an- swered :
“Dear me, music in this house on Sunday!”
Then Joseph played as he does on Sunday after-
11^
MAY TIME
noons, when he chooses only pieces which fit the mood of the day. Mr. Hayden was less brusque while Joseph played than I had ever seen him. He praised him heartily, saying that long ago when he was a boy he used to play the cornet ; but that finance and the strenuous life had made him forget the way of It.
He loved music, he said, almost as much as he loved flowers..
CHAPTER XV
ABOUT WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS
ONE of the fortunate things about garden flow- ers is that when once they have unfolded, they last long enough for us to know them well. The cultivated flowers make considerably longer visits than the wild ones from which they are de- veloped. Our irises, that is, the German ones, are still in bloom, looking finer every day ; but the wild blue flags which they so much resemble are now quite faded.
This also I have noticed with columbines. It was about the first of May when we began to find the wild ones deep in the shadow of the woods and nodding over high rocks. A little later those which Miss Wiseman gave us began to bloom in the triangle. Now the wild ones are making seeds, but those of the garden are astonishing us every day by the added flowers they unfold, and by their lovely colours and their fantastic shapes. It seems to me that these cultivated columbines have learned every trick of variety. I can scarcely think of a colour in which they do not appear. There is a
114 WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS
double white one tinged with pink, like the inside of a shell; another is blue, with a paler, almost white centre. This one is flatter in shape and larger around than most of the others. I can hardly tell which of these columbines I like best, they are all so pretty.
Hybridization, a long word at the tip of gar- deners’ tongues, which means the crossing of plants and production of new varieties, has had a great triumph with columbines. In gardens they have become vigorous plants, standing up straight to a height of three or four feet. No doubt, in pro- ducing so many forms and colours of columbines, gardeners have thought that they were greatly out- stripping those that dwell in the woods. But as I recall the wild one with its red and yellow bell nod- ding from its wire-like stalk, I love it best of all. Still, it would not be as showy in a garden as the cultivated varieties. It does not like the full blast of the sun and the mixed company of the great world. It prefers to stay in the peaceful, shady woods, where the ruby-throated humming-bird may find it and sip of its nectar.
Some time ago Mr. Percy and Little Joseph transplanted a number of wild columbines, or rock- bells, as Queenie calls them, to our wood-border. Mr. Percy recognised them long before they had opened their leaves, when to Joseph and me they looked as if they might turn out to be ferns. He then chose small, young plants for taking up, as
PLATE XX. — COLUMBINES
WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS 11 o
the older ones have long, thick roots, which make the success of transplanting them somewhat doubt- ful. That day they brought about twenty colum- bines to the wood-border. If next year we get twenty more, and those that we have sow a few seeds, we shall have a colony as enchanting as the one Mr. Percy told us about. The columbines there have not been disturbed for years, he says, and they are now a sight for a king.
Another wild flower that we have transplanted is called false Solomon’s-seal, or wild spikenard. It blooms in the woods at the same time as the colum- bine. Its stalk is long, with large leaves coming out from it on either side, and at the very end there is a great, pointed bunch holding myriads of fine, sweet-smelling white flowers. The stalk of false Solomon’s-seal always leans over a little, instead of standing up straight.
We have planted it where the wood-border slopes slightly, so that it now appears as though leaning over towards the bank. Here, Mr. Percy says, it will be very beautiful when once it is well estab- lished. It will, moreover, need no further care.
This reminds me of another difference between wild and cultivated flowers which neither Joseph nor I can understand. The wild ones are visited by bugs and beetles and insects of many kinds, which harm them but slightly. In a garden, how- ever, these insects become pests, biting and molest- ing the plants, and greatly interfering with the hap-
116 WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS
piness of a gardener. Joseph has engaged in a war with insects which wdll keep him from idling the whole summer. No matter how persistently he labours, however, there is no surety that he will come off the victor. Bugs and worms have most horrid ways. They gnaw" under the skin of young plants and greedily eat and stuff themselves with the sweet sap. Sometimes no one knows they are there until the leaves begin to turn yellow and grad- ually fall to the ground.
This yellow colour of the leaves of a plant dying from the effect of insects is to me one of the un- sightly things in a garden. Perhaps I feel so about it because it indicates sickness. Every day I look over my rose-bushes for the little green crawlers that think they evade me by being just the colour of the leaves. That they might not find life too merry in the rosarium, Timothy sprayed the bushes very early in the season wdth a solution of whale-oil soap.
We w"elcome lady-bugs in our garden, since they go about eating many harmful mites. But between us we have only seen four lady-bugs this season, and, although Joseph may have them as well as the toads and garter-snakes for aides-de-camp, I hardly think they will be able to keep the insect army at bay. The spraying that Timothy gave them about the fifteenth of this month with a kero- sene emulsion may prove the greatest hindrance to their advance.
WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS 117
Since coming to live at the Six Spruces, I have learned to face wasps and bees boldly. They do not, it seems, like people who are afraid of them, and wreak their anger by leaving a painful sting. This fact, Mr. Percy told us, was first taught by an American naturalist. Nevertheless, it took me some time to wear a smiling face in front of bees ; and only because I was sure that Mr. Percy knew the truth, was I able to do it at all. But now I have quite ceased to fear them, and do not in the least mind their buzzing around me. Now I can, without screaming, let a bee or a wasp walk over my bare hand.
Yesterday at Nestly Heights we were standing by a large bed of azalea mollis. It was in full bloom, and surrounded by bees. I stooped to find the label of these shrubs, running my hand in under them and over the ground, until the telltale stick was found. I neither minded the buzzing bees, nor did they me, although I fancy they were some- what disgusted that the flowers on my hat were without nectar. They soon learned their mistake, however, and forsook the artificial ones, my hands and shoulders as well, for the more hospitable golden funnels of the azalea.
Until this year Joseph and I had never seen azalea mollis. It is a Japanese azalea bearing astonishingly brilliant flowers. They are lemon yellow, bright, vivid scarlet, deep orange and every colour that can be seen in a soaring flame. At
118 WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS
Nestly Heights, many of these shrubs are set in a large bed near the gateway. Nothing, I think, could be more effective, now that they are several years old and have grown tall and stocky.
When autumn comes, the best time for trans- planting azaleas, Joseph and I intend to buy a few to set out at the Six Spruces. In fact, Joseph has in his note-book that he will then buy azaleas, mountain-laurel and rhododendrons.
The mountain-laurel, the small laurel called lambkill and the wild azalea we shall probably set in or near the wood-border; but we shall use the rhododendrons as ornamental shrubs. Mr. Percy tells us that we can get many of these plants from the woods and hillsides about here. They occur in hidden and out-of-the-way places, but not too far for us to drive to. The wild pink azalea is as lovely as any that grows, and no rhododen- dron, Mr. Percy thinks, could be more beautiful than our wild native one.
But the Japanese azalea mollis must have a place by itself at the Six Spruces, as it has at Nestly Heights. “Must we send to Japan for it,’^ I asked Mr. Percy, “or to the nursery?” Then he laughed.
“Over our southern mountains,” he said, “there is an azalea growing that is very like azalea mollis. The natives call it the flame azalea, although its botanical name is azalea lutea. 'A botanist named Bartram, who was searching the Appalachian mountains for rare flowers, first saw it when it was
WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS 119
In full bloom, and said it appeared as If the moun- tain sides were on fire. “You and I cannot go to the south to get It,^’ Mr. Percy continued; “its haunt is too far away; but I have often wondered that American nurserymen did not know more about this native beauty.”
Joseph listened to Mr. Percy as if he wore tell- ing a fairy story. He later asked him many ques- tions about the botanist Bartram. He said he knew that many great men had set out to find new land or the north pole, but that he had never heard before of their making explorations after rare flowers.
“Then, when we have time,” Mr. Percy replied, “I shall have to tell you about a number that have done that very thing, even to risking their lives.”
I was pleased for a double reason to think that some day we should have rhododendrons and laurels at the Six Spruces. I love their flowers and their glossy, evergreen leaves. As winter ap- proaches, Joseph and I shall not leave Nestly, as do most of our neighbours. The Six Spruces is our home for all the year. Therefore, I tell him, we must pay attention to the plants that do not shed their leaves in the winter. Happily, the spruce trees are alv/ays green. If we could keep glossy, green leaves about us in the winter it would not seem so dreary. I do not mean that the coun- try is dreary when there is snow on the ground, and glistening icicles hang from the boughs of trees.
1^0 WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS
Then the outside world is like Jack Frost’s home. But days come in winter when there is no' snow on the ground, or only sad little patches of it slowly melting, and then the bare earth and the dead leaves appear most melancholy. It Is for such times that we must try to grow shrubs and plants that cling to their leaves. As well as I can remember, we have now only the six spruces and the hepaticas snuggling In the wood-border to look green throughout the year. There Is, besides, the old pine near the point of the triangle. In which the grackles built their nest.
Still, It Is difficult to plan for, or even to think of, winter In this month of May. Many of the plants that have not bloomed are getting ready to bloom. Although no buds may be In sight, one can tell their intention by their lively. Important look. Joseph’s seedlings have grown apace this month, and he Is much Interested in them. On my roses I also see many small green buds.
The white dogwood blossoms In the wood-border have turned to brownish pink. They are dying. All over the country now, the leaves are fully un- folded, having lost the delicate, crinkled look they had In late April. We are no longer able to see the framework of the trees and the landscape In the distance. The foliage Is growing dense, shutting out inquiring eyes. Still, the leaves have not been here long enough to become weather-worn or have their freshness soiled by dust.
WILD AND CULTIVATED FLOWERS 121
Our Aunt Amanda’s three lilacs have bloomed, shed their sweetness, and now are showing rust on their flowers. To me this is a distressing sight. I wish they would hurry and die completely. But I notice this rust also on the lilac blossoms at Miss Wiseman’s and at Nestly Heights, so I have con- cluded that to turn rusty when dying must be their habit.
CHAPTER XVI
THE LAST MAY DAYS
HERE Is a time in the late afternoon, just when
i It Is passing Into the twilight, that Joseph and I especially love to walk In the garden. Then It seems as If we could see things more clearly than In the sunshine. The fragrance of the garden at this time Is also very sweet. We can look about sharply at the plants that we have tried to make grow, and wonder If they have done quite as well for us as they would have done In another garden. The failures do not always discourage us, because we will know better how to grapple with them an- other year. Apple blossoms and the pink dog- wood of the wood-border have begun to drop their petals, and In many ways we are reminded that these are the last days of May.
In one thing we have been most fortunate. The season has been exceptionally fine for growing things. There has been too much humidity for the comfort of human beings ; but this is something that particularly suits the plant world. Even the weeds have seized the opportunity to grow as never
122
PLATE XXI. — "apple BLOSSOMS HAVE BEGUN TO DROP THEIR PETALS’"
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THE LAST MAY DAYS
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before. Had we allowed them the privilege, the dandelions would have taken possession of the triangle, and now, should they catch us napping, they would come back in full force.
“Cut them down before they have gone to seed,” Mr. Hayden tells us.
But who can know, Joseph asks, when a dande- lion is going to seed ? They are very quick in their movements, and make their balls of fluff-tipped seeds while one is thinking about getting a scythe. Joseph goes about, however, with a broad-bladed knife, and stoops and cuts them out of the turf as he passes along. He does this very much as the Italian women do who gather them in early spring. When we began to combat dandelions, I thought we had right on our side. Joseph and Timothy said they w^ere weeds to be banished in spite of the backaches which I believe still visit Joseph, although he denies the imputation stoutly. I then for the first time began to take notice of these downtrodden plants. I saw they were truly beau- tiful, either in bloom or in fruit; and that they were more cheery and dainty than some of our garden flowers. Dandelions are roguish, besides, sticking their yellow heads up unexpectedly in the pathways. Still, authority says they are weeds, and correct gardening demands that we clear them away from the triangle, even if w^e had not another flower there to take their places.
Besides the dandelions, the tiny flowers of point-
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THE LAST MAY DAYS
ed blue-eyed grass are now seen in abundance. At first I thought they faded and died on being picked, a habit different from that of quaker-ladies, which remain fresh in the house for a long time. Now, however, I have found out that while pointed blue- eyed grass closes its petals with the first shock of being picked and placed in water, it is likely toi open them again the next day at about noon.
At Miss Wiseman’s and at Nestly Heights the dark crimson peonies are now in full bloom, while the double pink ones have colour showing about their buds. As yet the white ones about here have not opened. I wonder if Joseph and I are quite wise in choosing only white peonies for our autumn planting. The bursting pink ones at Miss Wise- man’s are surely lovely. If they had fragrance one might almost imagine them a race of giant roses. Perhaps this autumn we can buy a few pink ones, as well as the white, and put them in the long, border-like bed somewhere behind the columbines-
Next autumn, next year! Joseph and I contin- ually talk about these coming times. It seems as if we thought little of the things we have done so far, because we expect the plants to be so' much larger and finer later on, and because there is always more planting in the wind.
Nevertheless, during these last days of May the triangle looks very pretty. The grass is kept so closely cropped by Timothy that it has lost its
PLATE XXII. — POINTED BLUE-EYED GRASS
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THE LAST MAY DAYS
125
coarse, ragged appearance, and begins to look like the velvet swaths at Nestly Heights. The colum- bines, the annual phlox, the irises, and the wild flowers of the wood-border, with the shrubs and the swelling rosebuds, keep us in a state of expectancy. Everything that we have planted has the notion of blooming well fixed in its head. The little quaker- ladies have, it is true, lost their blue blossoms, but their small leaves still cling like moss about the crescent bed. Mr. Percy was right in thinking that we could transplant them successfully.
So far, I have said very little about the moist point of the triangle, except that the grackles held carnival there ; and that it was there we had planted the irises through the grass. This is one of the places from which we have great expectations.
The seeds of the cardinal-flowers that Joseph sowed early in the window-boxes, and which were so slow in showing themselves that we thought they were dead, have now this last of May been trans- planted to this moist bit of ground. After they once started in the boxes, they grew well. Finally, Joseph had nearly fifty seedlings. He planted them wherever he chose in the point of the triangle, about six inches apart. It will be August before they can be expected to bloom, so we shall have another long spell of waiting for them. So far, I do not think their green stalks inspiring. They have a weedy look as they lift themselves up through the grass. Still, I must wait and see their flowers be-
126
THE LAST MAY DAYS
fore condemning their stalks. As Joseph says, in a garden there is always something for which one must wait.
We have planned to have quantities of forget- me-nots near the cardinal-flowers. In the wild- flower world, these two always bloom at the same time, and seem to like being together, in moist, even swampy places. We are hoping that we have placed them where it will be wet enough for their taste.
For some time now we have had no rain, and our neighbours are beginning to talk about a drought. Should one really come, the work of gardening will be more arduous, since considerable watering will have to be done. We are fortunate in having in the moist corner by themselves most of the plants that love water. There Timothy can give the irises, the brakes, the cardinal seedlings and the forget-me-nots a good soaking, all at the same time. Not but what the other plants would all have to be watered, should a hard drought set- tle upon us, but they would not require it as often.
This is another thing that wild flowers seem to know how to manage better than those in a garden. They hold up their heads wonderfully in times either of drought or too much rain. No elves or sprites go through the woods and marshes with hose and watering cans, yet unmindful of adverse conditions, they bloom and bloom until they are ready to make their seeds. This and the fact that
THE LAST MAY DAYS
12*7
they are not so dependent on manure as garden flowers make me in a way partial to them. A little leaf-mould stirred in about their base is all they require while being transplanted.
Over at Nestly Heights, Joseph and I have no- ticed that no attention is paid to wild-flower gar- dening, and very little even to hardy garden flow- ers. The gardeners there like what they call bedding-out plants, interspersed with palms and ferns which have a sub-tropical air, and which have been kept over the winter in a glass house built especially for them. Early this spring Nestly Heights had a wonderful show of large, green plants and many intertwining beds of pansies and cyclamen. Some of the pansy beds'^ were all yel- low, others were all purple. Many of the cyclamen were solidly white, and again there were hundreds of clear magenta. These beds of cyclamen were nearly all bordered with a stiff-looking little plant, which reminded me of the old-fashioned hen-and- chickens. Whenever a leaf turned yellow or one of the plants became sickly, it was taken out by a gardener and another was set in its place. The supply of them seemed to be inexhaustible. And truly they were planted in a way to give the grounds a royal appearance.
Gladioli, cannas and dahlias, so-called bedding- out plants, are very popular and appear now in many gardens. This year Joseph and I have none of them. We hear that their roots have to be
128
THE LAST MAY DAYS
lifted in the autumn and taken care of over the winter. If we were not just beginning our garden at the Six Spruces, I should advise Joseph to have a few gladioli, for in August they are among the loveliest of garden flowers. In fact, it is a great disappointment to me not to have them. The cannas are very decorative, especially about a for- mal place like Nestly Heights. But it is their great leaves that I like to see waving with the breezes.
I have never especially liked dahlias, although Mr. Hayden and Miss Wiseman regard this as an instance of bad taste. Over their dahlias and the new varieties of gladioli they have more rivalry than about almost any other flowers. When Mr. Hayden urged us to plant dahlias, cannas and gladioli, I reminded him that the triangle was really a child’s garden, with Little Joseph as its head gardener; and that, for this year, we wished to plant only hardy flowers which would grow freely.
He answered that, for a child’s garden, my rose fan had quite a grown-up look. But then I begin to feel grown up, and have to be careful some days not to let Joseph know how much of a child he seems to me. Between thirteen and seventeen there is a very great difference. Joseph, however, is not at all like many boys. When he goes to school next winter, he will, perhaps, grow more like Ben and Harry.
Little Joseph is very thoughtful. Mrs. Keith
THE LAST MAY DAYS
129
says lie is like our mother, and that it is because of her he can play the violin so well. Lately, how- ever, he has sadly neglected his music. There has been so much to do in the garden that he has been tired when evening came, and scarcely able to keep his eyes open through dinner. Like all gardeners, he awakes early in the morning, and often has done considerable weeding before breakfast. The weeds sleep less than Joseph, and no place is sacred to them. If unwatched for a day or twO', I believe they would grow up and choke our flowers.
When Timothy prepared the soil for the flower- beds, making it light and rich, we little thought how well it would suit the weeds. It is a mystery where they come from. No seeds of them have been sown, yet they crop up more lustily than did the seeds in Jo-seplfs window-boxes which he watered and urged so strongly tO' grow.
Timothy still believes, however, that weeds are the spice of a garden: that without them all else there would be tame and tasteless. Perhaps it is flattering that our garden has the desire to be so highly spiced. In any case, I have found it neces- sary to buy a pair of rubber gloves that I may help Joseph with weeding. Mrs. Keith, who' adheres to the ways of old England, where she was born, has bought me, besides, some frocks of blue:-jean. They may be useful now that June is near, when I shall be struggling to become a Rosarian.
CHAPTER XVII
THE OPENING DAY FOR ROSES 0-DAY three roses are open. The calendar
1 shows us that June is here. Indeed, the sum- mer has begun, with its heat, its sultriness, and its flowers. Behind us is the young month of May, and the time of our sowing and planting.
We fear somewhat that the dry weather will continue, and that dust and a dreary look will settle on the trees and flowers. Naturally, the drought will not be allowed to touch my rose fan, which happily can be supplied with water artificially. There, at least, I can defy any mischievousness of the season.
The three roses that are open in the fan to-day are Frau Karl Druschki, Clio, and Marshall P. Wilder. They are in advance of many others merely by a day, or even a few hours. The rosarium, indeed, shows a profusion of buds burst- ing and partly ready to show themselves as full- bloom flowers.
The Frau Karl Druschki is a rose such as I have never even dreamed of before. It is pure white,