Daddy Takes Us to the Garden Part 16

"Sammie goin' to have a 'mato store," he said when the two Blake children had sold all their things, and were moving their empty boxes and door into the barn. "Me goin' to sell 'matoes."

"I wonder what he will do?" said Mab.

"Maybe he'll take a lot of things from his father's garden," suggested Hal. "We better tell him not to."

"Well, Mr. Porter is working among his potatoes so I guess Sammie can't do much harm," Mab said.

A little later she and Hal happened to look out in front and they saw a queer sight. Sammie was drawing along the sidewalk his little express wagon, in which he had piled some tomatoes. They were large, ripe ones, and he must have picked them from his father's vines, since he could not get through the fence into the Blake gardens.

"Oh, Sammie!" cried Mab, running out to him, "What are you doing with those tomatoes?"

"Sammie goin' have a 'mato store an' sell 'em like you an' Hal. You want come my 'mato store?" he asked, looking up and smiling.

"No, I guess we have all the tomatoes we want," laughed Hal.

Sammie did not seem to worry about this. Maybe he thought some one else would buy his vegetables. He wheeled his cart up near his own front fence, on the gra.s.s and sat down beside it.

"'Mato store all ready," he said. "People come an' buy now."

But though several persons pa.s.sed they did not ask Sammie how much his tomatoes were. They may have thought he was only playing, and that his tomatoes were not good ones, though they really were nice and fresh.

"We'd better go tell his father or mother," suggested Mab to her brother.

"I don't believe they know he's here."

"Guess they don't," Hal agreed. "Come on; he might get hurt out there all alone."

Brother and sister started into the Porter yard. They did not see Sammie's mother, but his father was down in the back end of his lot, weeding an onion bed.

"h.e.l.lo, children!" called Mr. Porter. "Did you come over to see how my garden is growing?"

"We came to tell you about Sammie," said Mab. "He's out--"

"h.e.l.lo! Where IS that little tyke?" cried Mr. Porter suddenly. "He was here a little while ago, making believe hoe the weeds out of the potatoes.

I don't see him," he added, straightening up and looking among the rows of vegetables.

"He's out in front trying to sell tomatoes," said Hal.

"Oh my!" cried Sammie's father. "I told him not to pick anything, but you simply can't watch him all the while."

He ran out toward the front of the house, Hal and Mab following. They saw Sammie seated on the ground near his express wagon, and he was squeezing a big red tomato, the juice and seeds running all over him.

"Sammie boy! What in the world are doing?" cried his father.

"Sammie plantin' 'mato," was the answer. "n.o.body come to my store like Hal's an' Mab's, so plant my 'matos."

Then they saw where he had dug a hole in the ground with a stick, into this he was letting some of the tomato juice and seeds run, as he squeezed them between his chubby fingers.

"Oh, but you are a sight!" said Mr. Porter with a shake of his head. "What your mother will say I don't dare guess! Here! Drop that tomato, Sammie!

You've got more all over you than you have in the hole. What are you trying to do?"

"Make a 'mato garden," was Sammie's answer as his father picked him up. "I put seeds in ground and make more 'matoes grow."

"But you musn't do it out here," said Mr. Porter, trying not to laugh, though Sammie was a queer sight. "Besides, I told you not to pick my tomatoes. You have wasted nearly a quart. Now come in and your mother will wash you."

Into the house he carried the tomato-besmirched little boy, while Hal and Mab pulled in the express wagon with what were left of the vegetables.

Sammie had squeezed three of the big, ripe tomatoes into a soft pulp letting the juice and seeds run all over.

"And a tomato has lots of juice and seeds," said Mab as she and Hal told Daddy and Mother Blake, afterward, what had happened.

"Yes, nearly all vegetables have plenty of seeds," said their father.

"Mother Nature provides them so there may never be any lack. If each tomato, squash or pumpkin or if each bean or pea pod only had one seed in, that one might not be a good one. That is it might not have inside it that strange germ of life, which starts it growing after it is planted.

"So, instead of one seed there are hundreds, as in a watermelon or muskmelon. And nearly all of them are fertile, or good, so that other melons may be raised from them.

"You see I only bought a small package of tomato seeds, and yet from them we will have hundreds of tomatoes, and each tomato may have a hundred seeds or more, and each of those seeds may be grown into a vine that will have hundreds of tomatoes on, each with a hundred seeds in it and each of these seeds--"

"Oh, Daddy! Please stop!" begged Mab with a laugh. "It's like the story of the rats and the grains of corn!"

"Yes, there is no end to the increase that Mother Nature gives to us,"

said Daddy Blake. "The earth is a wonderful place. It is like a big arithmetic table--it multiplies one seed into many."

The long Summer vacation was now at hand. Hal and Mab did not have to go to school, and they could spend more time in the garden with their mother, with Uncle Pennywait or Aunt Lolly, while Daddy Blake, every chance he had, used the hoe often to keep down the weeds.

"There is nothing like hoeing to make your garden, a success," he told the children.

"Do they hoe on big farms?" asked Hal.

"Well, on some, yes. I'll take you children to a farm, perhaps before the Summer is over, and you can see how they do it. Instead of hoeing, though, where there is a big field of corn or potatoes, the farmer runs a cultivator through the rows. The cultivator is like a lot of hoes joined together, and it loosens the dirt, cuts down the weeds and piles the soft, brown soil around the roots of the plants just where it is most needed.

But our garden is too small for a horse cultivator--that is one drawn by a horse. The one I shove along by hand is enough for me."

Of course Hal and Mab did not spend all their time in the garden. They sometimes wanted to play with their boy and girl chums. For though it was fun to watch the things growing, to help them by hoeing, by keeping away the weeds and the bugs and worms, yet there was work in all this. And Daddy Blake believed, as do many fathers, that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." So Hal and Mab had their play times.

One day Mrs. Blake asked Hal and Mab to pick as many of the ripe tomatoes they could find on the vines.

"Are we going to have another store and sell them?" asked Hal.

"No, I am going to can some, and make chili sauce of the others," answered his mother. "In that way we will have tomatoes to eat next Winter."

It was more fun for Hal and Mab to pick the ripe tomatoes than it was to hoe in the garden, and soon, with the help of Uncle Pennywait, they had gathered several baskets full of the red vegetables. Then Aunt Lolly and Mother Blake made themselves busy in the kitchen. They boiled and stewed and cooked on the stove and there floated out of the door and windows a sweet, spicy smell.

"Oh, isn't that good!" cried Mab.

"It will taste good next Winter!" laughed their uncle.

"And to think it comes out of our garden--the tomato part, I mean," spoke Mab.

"Come on!" called Hal, after a while, when they had picked all the tomatoes Mother Blake needed.

"Where you going?" asked Mab.