My Summer in a Garden Part 4

FOURTEENTH WEEK

In these golden latter August days, Nature has come to a serene equilibrium. Having flowered and fruited, she is enjoying herself. I can see how things are going: it is a down-hill business after this; but, for the time being, it is like swinging in a hammock,--such a delicious air, such a graceful repose! I take off my hat as I stroll into the garden and look about; and it does seem as if Nature had sounded a truce. I did n't ask for it. I went out with a hoe; but the serene sweetness disarms me. Thrice is he armed who has a long-handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day I am almost ashamed to appear in such a belligerent fashion, with this terrible mitrailleuse of gardening.

The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to go into a worthless condition,--green. The cuc.u.mbers c.u.mber the ground,--great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared to the crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty to the clean little pig.

The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselves with delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine. I know they are ripe if they come easily off the stem.

Moral Observations.--You can tell when people are ripe by their willingness to let go. Richness and ripeness are not exactly the same.

The rich are apt to hang to the stem with tenacity. I have nothing against the rich. If I were not virtuous, I should like to be rich.

But we cannot have everything, as the man said when he was down with small-pox and cholera, and the yellow fever came into the neighborhood.

Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, called air, begin to turn, mindful of the injunction, "to turn or burn." The cl.u.s.ters under the leaves are getting quite purple, but look better than they taste. I think there is no danger but they will be gathered as soon as they are ripe. One of the blessings of having an open garden is, that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, and let it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible to grow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that should explode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border for the garden,--a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are getting russet and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves one gleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The Flemish Beauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand: they say all kinds of beauty come off by handling.

The garden is peace as much as if it were an empire. Even the man's cow lies down under the tree where the man has tied her, with such an air of contentment, that I have small desire to disturb her. She is chewing my cud as if it were hers. Well, eat on and chew on, melancholy brute. I have not the heart to tell the man to take you away: and it would do no good if I had; he wouldn't do it. The man has not a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature.

The frost will soon come; the gra.s.s will be brown. I will be charitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolences must soon be turned to other and more distant objects,--the amelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education of theological young men in the West, and the like.

I do not know that these appearances are deceitful; but I sufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I have taken it on shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, not to speak of eating them. When I climb the trees, and throw down the dusky fruit, Polly catches it in her ap.r.o.n; nearly always, however, letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in her face; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like having a tooth out, she says.

"If I could n't hold an ap.r.o.n better than that!"

But the sentence is not finished: it is useless to finish that sort of a sentence in this delicious weather. Besides, conversation is dangerous.

As, for instance, towards evening I am preparing a bed for a sowing of turnips,--not that I like turnips in the least; but this is the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and extemporizes her usual seat to "consult me" about matters while I work. I well know that something is coming.

"This is a rotation of crops, is n't it?"

"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect to rotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion."

"Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once? What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want me to help you any more than I am helping?"

"No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this is about?)

"Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"

"By all means, sell anything. We shall no doubt get rich out of this acre."

"Don't be foolish."

And now!

"Don't you think it would be nice to have a?"....

And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quite enough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economical manner. "Would n't that be nice?"

"Oh, yes! And where is the money to come from?"

"I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries."

"Certainly. But I think we would make more money if we sold the plants now."

"Well," said Polly, concluding the whole matter, "I am going to do it." And, having thus "consulted" me, Polly goes away; and I put in the turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell. But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake off the loamy bed. I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone out of the dirt.

That went into the first crop.

In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little taken aback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had just rubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood a faint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a big green-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don't know who called him; I am sure I did not. It was almost ludicrous that he should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposed that my war with the living animals was over. Yet he was, no doubt, predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrived in June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. It beats me--Nature does. I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week, it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for the turnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious "pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill of old age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While all the others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, upon the summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. It accepts no armistice.

FIFTEENTH WEEK

It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but it has a contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or three weeks. I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in this protoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent was over it all, so to speak.

(This is in addition to the actual snakes in it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.) I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and she said she had. I found that all the melons had been seen to, and the early grapes and pears. The green worm had also seen to about half the celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticated chickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot September sun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left. On the whole, the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take a sharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant gra.s.s and weeds.

The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of my absence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners as an Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had gone so far as to bear ripe berries,--long, pear-shaped fruit, hanging like the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not but admire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemed determined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and make sure of immortality in some way. Even the Colfax variety was as ambitious as the others. After having seen the declining letter of Mr. Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, and intended to root it out.

But one can never say what these politicians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after the next election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, and rather sour. If there is any variety of strawberries that really declines to run, and devotes itself to a private life of fruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I may mention here, since we are on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all over the strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strange bedfellows.

But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after all that has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention. But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year after year, shrink from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to the greatest enemy of mankind, "p-sl-y." The ground was carpeted with it. I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; and it was as good as the first.

I see no reason why our northern soil is not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce as many crops in the year. The mistake we make is in trying to force things that are not natural to it. I have no doubt that, if we turn our attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.

I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thrifty plant is feared and hated. Far beyond what I had regarded as the bounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of a fallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, and preceding the footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long ago in the Adirondacks.

We had built a camp for the night, in the heart of the woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy: I can see the lovely spot now. It was on the bank of the crystal, rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which poured into a broad amber basin. Out of this basin we had just taken trout enough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over the fire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity to feel the chill of this deceitful world. We were lying under the hut of spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper. In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could see the top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of the falls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancient woods. It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sin could enter. We were talking with old Phelps, the guide. Old Phelps is at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He knows the woods and streams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as we know all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonely bear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most of the problems of life. As he stands in his wood-gear, he is as grizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice, which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.

We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men are interested,--bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, the tariff, the internal revenue (to wit the injustice of laying such a tax on tobacco, and none on dogs:--"There ain't no dog in the United States,"

says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns his living"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion, the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, where were the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants and flowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remote forest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after a growth of pine has been removed?)--in short, we had pretty nearly reached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimed with uncommon energy,-- "Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"

"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.

"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come to one door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retires in despair.

"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's in my garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me."

About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awe came over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of the stream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can go nowhere that "pusley" will not attend him. Though he camp on the Upper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, and hear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it. It has entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet no church there, and only a feeble school part of the year. Sin travels faster than they that ride in chariots. I take my hoe, and begin; but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take hold on H.

By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compa.s.sed by limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to his individual powers. As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt his ability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspect that there will be much left to do after he has done. I stepped into my garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily master of the weeds. I have simply learned that an inst.i.tution which is at least six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not to be put down in one season.

I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. I planted them in what are called "Early Rose,"--the rows a little less than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close in the drought. Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation, but not poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they are too small (as many of mine are), when it begets a want of grat.i.tude to the bountiful earth. What small potatoes we all are, compared with what we might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing. I shall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough. I think they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamed to come out so small. There is great pleasure in turning out the brown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day, and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil. Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. The picking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.

SIXTEENTH WEEK

I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardening pay?

It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying. There is a popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let it alone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not let a man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does not pay. And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearly as strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popular clamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.

As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I know that a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but it is really one of the most expensive. It is true that we can all have front seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do for the opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed are rather dear. Among them I should name a good suit of clothes, including some trifling ornament,--not including back hair for one s.e.x, or the parting of it in the middle for the other. I should add also a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of a fair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in which sensibility and love of beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a man is hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beauty undeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him: so that it appears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are as costly as anything in our civilization.