SEASON II Spring

"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

D

Daffodils always make me glad. From the moment their strong, blue-green blades pierce the grass, they give one a feeling of strength, vigour, activity and determination to be up and doing, unmindful of wind or weather; in fact, using all for their own purpose, bending circumstances to their own development.

And when the big golden bell bursts its sheath of pale green it does it with fine independence, and then swings on its strong stem, ringing out lustily that the spring is here, the sun is shining, for the sun always seems to shine on the daffodils, they reflect his glory under all clouds, and depression flies before their sturdy assumption of "All's well with the world."

[Pg 72]

And so I felt very hopeful as I saw my circles, my clusters, my rows of daffodils, one by one, flashing up from the delicious blue-green blades. They none of them failed me, none, bless them! So plant daffodils, O friend Ignoramus! the single, the double, and any other of that dear family, the narcissus.

The birds were singing, and oh, so busy making late love, building and even nesting! The trees were bursting, the lilacs had a shimmer of green. The larches had colour almost too dim to be called green, they streaked the woods that still looked brown without looking bare; little catkins hung and danced, the blackthorn looked like forgotten snow, the grass was greener, and here and there a sweet primrose bud peeped up, whispering, "We are coming."

Down under the row of limes bordering the sloping field I found many pretty crumpled primrose leaves, and they gave me the idea to plant more and more, and to have my wild garden here, with snowdrops and cowslips, unseen things in our woods and fields. Ferns, too, of the common kind must be collected, and foxgloves, the seeds of which[Pg 73] must be bought and sown. For the present there were the little wild things that grow on their own account, and are so sparklingly green and spring-like that one hardly likes to rebuke them with the name of weed.

Hope was in the air. Everything is young again once a year.
I

I felt obliged to begin the second division of my year in a hopeful voice, so I opened with my daffodils; but if March be taken as the first month of spring, then indeed I should not have written of that chime of golden bells. March holds February very tightly by the hand, and cannot make up her mind to hurry on with her work of opening the buds and encouraging the flowers. She blows cold winds in their faces, nips them with frosty nights, occasionally wraps them up in snow, then suddenly, repenting her of the evil, she opens up a blue sky and pours a hot sun down on them. A most untrustworthy month.

[Pg 74]

There is plenty of work to do, particularly if February has not been an open month, and for gardening purposes I really think it ought never to be so considered, and still more particularly if much has been neglected in the foregoing November. If you are an Ignoramus, and have a Griggs as gardener, the chances are much will have been neglected.

My attention was called to the subject of roses by the arrival of a rose-grower's catalogue.

Roses! I could only touch the very outer fringe of this magnificent garment, but I felt I must, positively must, have one or two of the cheaper sort of these dazzling beauties; and though they are better moved in the autumn, in early spring it is not impossible. A crimson rambler, the modest price one shilling and sixpence, tempted me to indulge in three. The deep yellow William Allen Richardson, delightful for buttonholes, which Jim assured me no garden should be without; the thought of a red Gloire de Dijon or Reine Marie Hortense was also quite overcoming. Our old yellow Gloire de Dijon was the only rose in my neglected garden that did herself proud,[Pg 75] and she flourished up the front of the house and festooned one of the Others' windows, from which Griggs and his shears had been summarily banished. "Cut where you like, but never dare to come here," had been uttered in a voice that made even Griggs "heed." If her red sister only equalled this "glory" that half-crown would be well expended. Then two standards needed replacing, for one could not have dead sticks down so conspicuous a row; though standards were not my idea of roses, still there they were and I must make the best of them. So off went my modest order. I had indicated the whereabouts of each rose to Griggs, but was unfortunately not present on their arrival. I think even an Ignoramus might have helped Griggs on that occasion—but more of that anon.

The Others could see but little improvement in the garden, this they let me know; they were full of ideas, and I found them as trying as some Greek heroine must have found an unsympathetic chorus. "The verandah was so bare! Was it really any use putting in that silly little twig? Would it ever come to anything?"[Pg 76] This of my new and very bare-looking crimson rambler. And then, "Why had we no violets? Surely violets were not an impossibility? They grew of themselves. Just look at the baskets full in the London streets. Such a bunch for a penny! But it would be nice not to have to go to London for one's bunch of violets!"

I took up the cudgels. They should see how that crimson rambler ramped, yes, I prophesied, positively ramped up the archway. They should be buried in a fragrant bower of ruby-coloured clusters, and they might cut and come again. As to violets, I was giving them my best consideration; the bed down the garden produced but a few—certainly not a pennyworth—of inferior quality, because neither violets nor anything else, save weeds, grew and flourished by the light of Nature alone. The violet roots were choked with weeds, and I must have new suckers and begin all over again; and that was not possible until the violet season was over; then I intended to beg, borrow or steal some good suckers, and buy others if I had any money.

[Pg 77]

"Mary, you speak like a book with pictures; but I hope there will be some result, and that the violets will be ready before they are needed for our funeral wreaths."

I entreated them to find the patience I had thoroughly lost, and hurried out to rage over the thickly weed-wedged violet plants, with here and there a feeble bloom, and to imagine myself in years to come bending over this same bed, picking one long strong stalk after another, and scarcely lessening the store by the big bunch I should carry away. Oh! a lifetime was not enough for all I should or could do in a garden.
T

There is a row of standard roses skirting the lawn on one side, and also a round bed of rose bushes. I had not much idea if they were any good, for roses had been to a great extent spoilt the last two years by very wet weather, still I had noticed the shoots they were sending forth with great[Pg 78] pleasure. Anyhow they were growing right enough. One day, the middle of March, I found Griggs busy down the row with a large knife. What was he doing? Horror! All the long shoots were being ruthlessly sacrificed.

"Griggs, what are you doing?" I gasped, and afterwards I felt very glad I said nothing stronger.

Griggs paid no attention to my tone; he took the words as showing a desire for enlightenment.

"You 'as to cut 'em a bit in spring-time, you know; or p'haps you don't know, missy."

This mode of address was one of Griggs's most unpardonable sins, but I never had the strength of character to tell him not to do it.

"But do you cut off all the new growth?" I said, with an inner conviction that if Griggs were doing it it needs must be wrong.

"Well, you trims 'em round a bit, starts 'em growin' more ways than one, d'ye see."

"But those aren't suckers?" I said, still feebly fighting with my ignorance and incredulity.

[Pg 79]

Then Griggs laughed. He did not like me, and I suppose I ought not to wonder, but he enjoyed laughing at me when he got the chance.

"No-a, they ain't suckers; suckers come from the root, leastways, they start down there, and, bless yer! they be the ol' stock trying to have a look in as you may say. I cuts them off soon as I sees 'em, as they wastes the tree; but you can see suckers as 'as got the upper 'and. That rose front of the 'ouse is all sucker now. 'Twas a beautiful pink rose I mind in old Rector Wood's time."

"That is very instructive," I remarked, feeling no gratitude to Griggs for his information, as he felt no shame for the metamorphosis of the once beautiful pink rose, which was now a wild one. We had wondered how it came to be growing up with the clematis.

"And can't one cut back the suckers and let the pink rose grow again?" I added.

"'Tain't likely," was all I could get out of Griggs.

I bicycled over that very day to the Master's garden, a hot and tiring way of getting information,[Pg 80] but a sure one, I knew, and one to which I often had recourse in desperate moments. The Master was out, but his garden was there, and all his rose trees were clipped. So I breathed again.

I had a little good luck with violets a few weeks later.

A friend who had heard of my gardening efforts sent me several dozen runners of the "Czar," and the Master spared me some others from his frame. I was full of joy, and choosing a shady spot, saw it dug, raked, helped out with a mixture of manure and leaf-mould, planted the violets at six inches apart and liberally watered them. Shade, of course, for the modest violet, I thought, carefully selecting for their home the shelter of an overhanging chestnut. Well, well! one lives to learn, or for some such purpose, I suppose.

The thick branches of that shadowing tree kept out sun as well as rain; and, doubt it not, brother Ignoramus, violets, be they ever so modest, like the sunshine and will only pine without it. So in the autumn another move took place, and again I waited, whilst the Others[Pg 81] bought penny bunches and talked of funeral wreaths in the far future.
T

The long herbaceous border grew more and more interesting. A broad-leafed plant had been sending up tall stems, now it opened out and a big daisy-like blossom of yellow shone in the sun. "Leopard's bane," said old Griggs with decision, and "doronicum," said the Master, both being right, but I know not why it was considered a bane or healing, for the banes among the flowers are surely blessings. But there it was, and very grateful and comforting at this early time of year. As though conscious that a friendly eye had begun to watch over them, the scattered old plants of polyanthus, wallflower, a group or so of tulips and some clumps of London pride brushed up this spring and cheered the eye.

I was studying the shooting green clumps, lilies here and there, golden rod, autumn daisy,[Pg 82] maybe a stray phlox, many, very much too many, evening primroses, seedlings of self-sown foxgloves, and wondering how to rearrange them and make room for the better company I intended introducing, when his Reverence's Young Man came down the path laden with a big brown hamper. He looked quite excited.

"Oh, Mistress Mary, do come and examine the contents. I hope you may find welcome strangers here. I told my mother you needed anything and everything except geraniums. Was that right? So she has sent this hamper with instructions to get them in at once."

The Young Man was cutting away at string and fastenings, and rapidly strewing the path with big clumps of roots in which a careful hand had stuck a label.

I was divided between joy and reproof.

"How kind of her! But you should not have bothered her. How nice to have such big, ready-grown plants! But why did you do it?"

"Mayn't I help the garden to grow? My mother promises more in the autumn; it appears flowers like to move just before winter."

[Pg 83]

"It is kind of you. This border is such a weight on my mind. It needs so much, I think. And what a lot the hamper holds!"

"Let me do the dirty work," cried the Young Man, as I hauled out a big root. "You shall tell me where to plant them."

"The earth isn't dirty, it is beautifully, healthily clean; and don't you love its 'most excellent cordial smell'? Shall I get Griggs and a spade?"

"Oh, why bother Griggs? Won't I do as well? I know nearly as much and am twice as willing."

"Yes, but think of—"

"Don't say parish. There is only old Mrs Gunnet and she will keep. These plants demand immediate attention. My mother was most emphatic about that."

It is very difficult to have a conscience as well as a garden and to keep both in good working order. I could not think Mrs Gunnet and her rheumatism as important as my garden; moreover, I felt I was carrying out the teaching of Tolstoy in bringing man and his Mother Earth into direct contact.

[Pg 84]

"Griggs could not come anyhow, he is digging a grave," I said conclusively. "Let us do it."

So the Young Man fetched a selection of gardening implements and we both set to work, he to dig and I to instruct.

"This is delphinium," I cried joyfully, handing him a big clump, "dark blue, I want it badly." And in answer to an inquiring look, for the Young Man knew less, much less, than I did, "That is larkspur and it is a perennial, and this jolly big root means plenty of spikes."

"Spikes!" he echoed, patting the roots vigorously.

"Those tall spikes of flowers, you know, very blue. One looks so lonely all by itself."

"Ah! that is a way we all have, we poor solitary ones."

"These are penstemons. They are, well, I forget, but I know I want them. Suppose we put them further forward; they don't look like growing so tall. Gaillardias, ah! I know, they are brilliant and effective. I bought some seeds to suit the others. These[Pg 85] will save time. Now, a big hole; this is Tritoma. What on earth is that? I have heard. Grandis means big but Tritoma?"

We both studied the label.

"Must it have another name? Is that the rule? I told my mother the gardener was an Ignoramus. She might have written in the vulgar tongue."

"Did you mean me or Griggs?"

"Griggs, of course."

"Then you were wrong. But I remember now, I was studying its picture this morning in the catalogue. Tritoma stands for red-hot poker. It will look fine at the back."

"Well, you are getting on," said the Young Man, in tones of admiration. "But why won't they say 'poker' and have done with it?"

"I wish they would. It is very trying of them. See what a lot you are learning. This is much more improving for a son of Adam than visiting old women and babies."

"Much! And I like it much better, which shows it is good for me."

"Ah, I don't know about that. Still, it[Pg 86] does strike me as absurd to send a young man fresh from college to visit old women and babies. I can't think what you say to them."

"I say 'Did ums was ums' to the babies. But I am not quite fresh from college, you know. I talk some kind of sense to the mothers; at least, I hope so."

He was making a big hole and I was holding out a big root to fill it.

"This is galega. It is rather tall and so must go at the back. I don't mean you never talk sense, though I consider it insulting to address a baby like that. They look so preternaturally grave that Greek would suit them better. But I mean it isn't a man's work, it is a woman's."

"Galega! that means pok—no, larkspur! You see I am getting quite learned. There, it fits in beautifully."

"Press the roots firmly or they don't take hold," I observed.

"So. I always find your conversation very improving. My mother says the same things to me, I mean about old women."

[Pg 87]

I had walked down the path for another root. He went on when I came back,

"But you know the old women, and young ones too, like a visit from their clergy. The clergyman and doctor are great boons in their lives."

"Poor souls, I know they are very hard up. Even I am considered a boon, especially when I go round with puddings and things."

"Or without!" and he looked up quickly, "I should think so if—but"—and his voice changed—"I do understand what you mean. This is Adam's work, eh? Only the other is the vineyard too, and we, I—I mean, need the experience it gives me. They live at the root of things, touch life so nearly. It is something like coming in touch, actual touch, with the brown earth. Do you see what I am trying to say?"

I looked up at him from my plants, at this tall young man in a bicycling suit of semi-clerical cut, with his keen face and earnest eyes, whom we had fallen into the way of treating in almost brotherly fashion since his Reverence had adopted him as his[Pg 88] Young Man as well as curate. He had broken down in some Midland town from overwork and come to Fairleigh to recruit and study and fill in a convalescent time. As a rule we did not like the curates.

"I think you are right," I said, "but somehow I feel I am right too in a way. One can't be saving souls all the time—one's own or other people's—and here, as you say, is Adam's work, the brown earth."

He laughed. "And here is Eve naming the flowers! I am sure Eve kept Adam to the digging while she picked the fruit."

"How men do love that old allegory! Personally I don't think they come out of it so well that they need quote it so often. However, as it gives them all the backbone, I feel quite absolved when I ask them to use it!"

The Young Man rose up. "Ah! if Eve had had the spirit of her daughters!"

"Here is a very large phlox, please dig that hole bigger," I interrupted, and as we carefully placed it in position, down the path came his Reverence and the Master.

[Pg 89]

"Oh!" I shouted, "come and see all my new arrivals; I am going to cut you out!"

The Master examined our work over his spectacles, and looked up and down the border critically, ending his survey with an unpromising "Humph."

Something was very wrong, evidently. My hopeful spirits sank.

"Have we been doing anything very ignorant? Don't you put plants straight into the earth? Will they all die?"

The Master laughed.

"Let us hope things are not as desperate as all that. I was looking at your border. Oh, what pauper fare! and what a lot of rubbish in it. Licence has reigned here for many a long year."

"For over twenty," I exclaimed savagely. "Griggs has been here quite that time."

"It used to look very well in Mr Wood's time, but that is many years ago, and he devoted himself chiefly to his roses. It is a pity you did not do it in the autumn."

"Oh, don't, Master!" I cried dolefully.[Pg 90] "Nothing is more trying to my temper than to be told of all the things that ought to have been done months and years ago. I can't go back and do them!"

"No more you can. There is a great deal of sound sense in that remark, only—"

"And don't tell me to wait until the autumn again. I can't always be waiting for the other end of the year to do the things I want done now."

"Oh! then let us go forward at once," said the Master.

"What shall I do?" asked the Young Man, with as much energy as though the afternoon were just beginning. "Shall I take out the roots we have put in to begin with?"

The Master again looked up and down, and I could see he was again regretting the autumn.

"If you won't wait it must be done," he said at last. "Have this border thoroughly well turned over, two feet deep at the least, and work in some of that savoury heap I saw in your little yard. You will[Pg 91] find a good deal of root to cut away from those trees; they take the food from this border, but that can't be helped now. Then clear out the weeds and those terrible marigolds I see springing up everywhere, and those poppy seedlings. I think your new friends will have a better chance when that is done."

"And the plants that are to stay, may they be touched?"

"You must touch them, but do a piece at a time, and lift them in and out with a good ball of earth round the roots so as to disturb them as little as possible. Press them well in afterwards and water."

"Should Griggs put some of the savoury heap just round their roots?"

"No, no, let the whole border have a dressing. Later on any special plant may be mulched if it is needed."

"Mulched!" said the Young Man, turning to me. "Do you know what that is?"

I shook an ignorant head.

"Something to do with manure, I believe, but I don't know what."

[Pg 92]

"Griggs will show you," laughed the Master.

"No, he has his own vocabulary. I try the garden book words on him occasionally and he looks quite blank."

"It is giving the plants a little extra food from the surface. So it sinks gradually in or the rain carries it down with it. A gentle process and the roots are not disturbed. The other process may produce indigestion, you see."

Adam and Eve carefully replaced the unplanted roots in the hamper and gave a sigh.

"Oh, dear! All our work. You might as well have gone to see Mrs Gunnet."

"Oh, no," said Adam, "because I have learnt a great deal and can help you another time."

It was a good thing for me and the border that the Master had looked so grave over it, for his Reverence was duly impressed with the necessity of the case, and Griggs and a helpful stranger were hard at work next day and the next, and by the end of that week the border lay smooth and brown and[Pg 93] neat with hopeful green patches at intervals. Jim and I and the Young Man had been very busy arranging those patches, and I hoped the front plants would not grow taller than the back, but a good deal had been left to luck. The evening primroses and marigolds and weeds had disappeared, I hoped for good. Time proved that this was too hopeful a view to take of weeds.

And I will never forget the Master's parting injunction.

"Mind," with raised finger, "you ought never to take a spade near your herbaceous border, only turn it over with a little fork, for the well-established roots should not be disturbed. And good soil and sufficient water ought to be enough as a rule. To-day we have been dealing with an exceptional case, remember that!"

Oh! Master, yes. Mine is an exceptional case; but I guess there are many would-be gardeners as ignorant, and, maybe, many gardens as exceptional.

[Pg 94]
B

But to return to my hopefully-growing seeds. I fear they were being left anyway rather longer than was judicious, for one day about the beginning of April it struck me my wooden boxes were very full and the plantlets growing very leggy.

"Why is that?" I asked Griggs. I hated asking Griggs, but there was no one else to ask. After all it seemed impossible but that Griggs, during the forty odd years he had pretended to be a gardener, should not have gathered together some scraps of information concerning plants and their ways.

"They wants pricking out, that's why they're so spindle-shankey. 'Tain't no good asking me for more boxes, I ain't got no more; and you can't put 'em out in the open neither—leastways, they'll die if you do."

"Of course not," I said with all the knowledge I possessed in my tone. "But we must have boxes. They can be knocked up, can't they?"

"Not without wood, they can't. And just[Pg 95] look at all them seeds wot you've sowed. Why, they wants a sight o' boxes now."

It was a dilemma, but Jim revived my faint spirits.

There were boxes—old winecases—in the cellar, he said. Jim knew every nook and cranny of the house; he would just ferret them out; no one would miss them. Jim never asked leave, for experience had taught him that a demand occasions a curious rise in the value of an article absolutely unknown to the possessor before it was required by someone else. And Griggs knocked them together, for Jim explained we had to let the fellow try his hand occasionally.

We filled the new boxes with a little heavier diet than the baby seeds had enjoyed, good mould from under some shrubbery, and then carefully separated each stem; and carrying out Nature's law of the survival of the fittest, I placed the most promising in the new environment.

I had done one whole box, it looked so neat, the little upright shoots all about[Pg 96] three inches apart, when Jim and the Young Man came round.

He had been away for a few days and was quite anxious to know how my garden grew.

He had altered the old rhyme with which, of course, his Reverence and the Others were always pestering me; but I don't think his version was very original either—

"How does the garden so contrairy
Get on with its new Mistress Mary?"

I was seated on the corner of the one frame and the boxes were precariously placed on the edge.

The Young Man's face beamed. "I have been learning to prick out; now, let me see."

And to my horror he began to pull up my neat little plants.

"There, that's wrong, and that and that. No, that stands; but see, all these are wrong."

I gasped, "What are you doing? Do you call that pricking out? I don't."

"By Jove! you'll catch it now, my dear fellow," said Jim.

[Pg 97]

"Oh! don't you see it's all right to do that, because it shows you you have done them all wrong."

"I think you have misunderstood the idea of 'pricking out,'" I said coldly.

The Young Man was so full of information he paid no attention to my offended dignity or Jim's mirth.

"I learnt it on purpose to show you. I planted a box full at home and the gardener came round and did that to my plants. I nearly whacked him on the head."

"You're a parson," interrupted Jim, "you've got to think of that."

"I know, Jim. I managed to bottle my feelings nearly as well as Mistress Mary did just now. I know what she is feeling."

But I was still dignified.

"Now will you tell me," I began.

"Oh, it's a first-rate dodge! You see, if they are firmly put in they will stand that little pull, and if not it shows you ought to have wedged them in better."

"Why," said Jim, "I bet I could tug out any you could wedge in."

[Pg 98]

"That's the art; you must wedge right and tug just enough."

"And why," I asked again, "why this tugging and this wedging?"

"Oh, because otherwise they don't catch hold properly and make themselves at home. I didn't mean to spoil your neat box," he continued penitently. "May I help you?"

"Why, of course you must," I said, brightening up. "Look at all that has to be done. Jim, dear, fill those boxes nicely with mould, a judicious mixture of looseness and compression."

"I've other fish to fry this afternoon. If his Reverence's Young Man will do some beastly algebra for me I will stay and mess about with you; if not, he has got to do the messing."

And so Jim deserted us, and we planted and pulled at each other's boxes, and I certainly tried to get some of his out. And then the fresh difficulty faced us where to put all these new boxes, for they had to be protected from the still frosty nights, and also from any too heavy rains which[Pg 99] might, perchance, drown them. I wanted much more room than the one frame afforded, even could I turn out all the scraggy geraniums.

"They must be protected somehow," I said despondingly, "and we can't carry them in and out of doors, and oh! how heavy even these little boxes are. There's the verandah, but the Others will never let me crowd them out with these boxes. It is just getting sunny out there. What can we do?"

The Young Man looked round and thought, and thought, and then it came, an idea worth patenting.

"You don't want heat for them?"

"Oh, no, they ought to be hardened, you see."

"And it's only at night, or against heavy rains, that they want protecting?"

"That's all."

"Well, then, I have it!" And he had it, the germ of the brilliant idea that, with Jim's assistance and mine, and Griggs's for actual manual labour, gradually evolved[Pg 100] into an impromptu frame and saved us even the making of new boxes.

This was the plan of action.

We cleared a space in the little yard where the frame lived, and the manure heap in one corner, and one sunny border which held lettuce and I intended should hold my plantlets later on. We made first a bed of cinders (this for drainage), then a layer of manure (this for heat), then good mould, and all were enclosed with four strong planks, and in this protected spot we pricked out our nurslings. At night they were covered with a plank or two and some sacking, and this also protected them during any very heavy rains, until they grew strong enough to weather them. The boxes already pricked out we protected in like manner, only making no special bed for them.

It became truly a delight to see how day by day those tiny sprigs of green grew and prospered, and to watch the development of the various leaves. The pretty crinkly little round leaves of the polyanthus,[Pg 101] the neat spiky twig of the marigold and tagetes, the sturdy, even-growing antirrhinum with pale green stalks for white, and yellow and rich brown for the red variety, and the trim, three-cornered leaves of the nasturtium, each after its kind, very wonderful when we realise all that potentiality enclosed in a pin's point of a seed, and needing no difference of treatment to produce either zinnia or lobelia.

I made all the Others, and everyone else too, walk round my nursery and dilated on the promising appearance of my children.

"Wonderfully neat! but how tiny they all are. Do you mean to say you expect those little things to flower this year? Why, it is like asking a baby of six months old to ride a bicycle!" said one of the Others.

"But they are annuals! In comparison they are now twenty years old! Of course they will flower this year, and be old and done for by October."

"Well, you are very hopeful, but I don't expect much result this year."

"You will see!"

[Pg 102]

"Well, we have not seen much yet, have we?"
T

The packets containing my biennial seeds, which, of course, means such seeds as sown one year furnish plants for the next year's flowering and then go the way of all "grass," instructed me to sow in the open from March or April to June.

From what I have so far learned I would certainly advise sowing as early as possible and not taking June into consideration at all. The little plants get forward before the really hot weather begins, and usually the clouds supply sufficient water at that time; but if not, on no account must they go thirsty. I found watering a great necessity, for my ground is as porous as a sieve; a substratum of nice cool tenacious clay must be a great boon to those who happily have it. I suppose it may have some drawbacks, but my imagination is not[Pg 103] lively enough to suggest any. Being light and poor, I usually doctored the soil before sowing the seeds. I believe it ought not to be really necessary; but a little manure mixed with leaf mould and some earth from a convenient shrubbery or background place, and all dug well in, was approved of by the plantlets. If by any chance you can lay aside, from hedgerows, corners of field or other prigable parts, some rolls of turf and let it stand aside until it rots, it makes most helpful dressing, particularly for rose roots.

After the ground is ready make little straight trenches about one inch deep, and thinly, because they are certain anyway to be too close, scatter in your seeds. There for the present your work ends, and Mother Earth commences her never-ending miracle of death and resurrection. "Thou sowest not that body which shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other grain," and "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die," when, "God giveth it a body, to every seed his own body."

[Pg 104]

Those little brown pin points, of which you hold hundreds in a pinch on your palm, each one has its "celestial" body ready to spring into life through the dark gateway of death. Surely St Paul must have had his garden as a little boy, and sown his seeds, and marvelled, even as Jim and I did, with eyes opening to the wonder of it all. A wonder that is passed over in the matter-of-course way of the daily round, but that startles one, almost as a revelation, when one's own hand holds the seed, sows it, and then watches for the result.

To say it is just "life" or the "force of nature" or "the energy that is behind all things," these are but words, the marvel remains. Irresistibly the thought arises, "With what body shall we come?" Not with the old earth body for sure, if my seeds are to teach me anything.

So I sowed first the forget-me-nots, as this year they must come from seed. Another year I will take the little shoots that are round the old plant and, separating them, will prick them out in a nursery spot, and so[Pg 105] shall my plants for the following year be more mature, stronger, and therefore better flowering; a first year's forget-me-nots are apt to be straggling. Then the sweet-Williams, the wallflowers, red and gold, Canterbury bells, silene, the little bright pink edging that with forget-me-nots makes a border so gay in spring time, these were my first year's venture in biennials; for though some of them may be considered perennials, the best results may be hoped for from a continuously fresh store.

The big sunflower seeds I placed just where I wanted them to come up, sometimes a single one, so that the plant should have all its own way, and wear as big a head as it knew how, and others in groups of four or five.

Nasturtiums also I placed as a border to a lonely shrubbery. Some of the seeds had been got forward in the impromptu frame, but those were for my tree stumps and for creeping up the verandah. Canariensis the same; the convolvulus also were planted freely to cover up deficiencies wherever a creeping thing could grow.

[Pg 106]

It is wise to sow your perennial seeds early; they get settled in life before they are called upon to face their first winter. So in another spot, judiciously cribbed from cabbage-room—crib I had to for my nursery ground—I sowed in like fashion the perennials, those which had not already begun their career in wooden boxes and frame. There were the big Oriental poppies, red and orange, for my impatience had so far succumbed to the gardening spirit that I could bear to contemplate sowing seeds with the hope of no immediate return, Brompton stocks, penstemons, foxgloves and gaillardias; campanulas, too, short and tall, white and blue; and those already started in boxes, the polyanthus and columbines, nice sturdy little plants by now, were moved to this division a little later, when frosty nights were a thing of the past.

These for my first batch of perennials; others would surely follow with succeeding years. The thought of their permanence delighted me. Dear, nice things! they would not need sowing year by year, but would[Pg 107] yearly grow more and more "in favour with God and man." So I hoped, even as a mother hopes it for her children.

That long herbaceous border should one day be full of good stuff, one day blooming with a succession of flowers; but face the fact, one day is not to-morrow. The plants must grow; so, patience, patience, though mine was threadbare.
M

My other nursery of annuals sown in early March were growing apace and the sweet peas needed sticking. It certainly spoils their appearance for a time but is very necessary. I noticed all my seedlings growing in bits of kitchen garden filched from his Reverence's province grew with greater vigour than those down my own borders.

I suspected that amongst much neglect the vegetable ground had suffered least, and so, in spite of his Reverence's outcry that I was[Pg 108] robbing him of at least a sack of potatoes, I continued to make little inroads on his property. And thus I was brought in contact with the fruit-trees bordering the pathways. They had been renewed, many of them, when first his Reverence came to Fairleigh. They looked healthy enough, but very few blossoms and no fruit ever accounted for their existence. I pointed this out to his Reverence, and, full of newly-acquired knowledge, asked him if he had heard of tap-roots. "Griggs planted them, so you may depend that is what is the matter with them, and in the autumn we will have them up."

"You are poaching," said his Reverence.

"You ought to be full of gratitude, but I can't take them in hand myself, I only give you some of my overflowing knowledge. And we should all like to eat our own apples and pears!"

Jim was much interested in tap-roots; he promised himself quite a good time hacking away at them in the autumn. He wondered if the barren fig-tree had a tap-root, but I could not enlighten him.

[Pg 109]

Everything was growing, we had had some good rain. I can feel for the farmers now; I know what it is to want rain. One of the Others said she wished we would keep quiet, all we gardeners and farmers who hankered after rain. She thought perhaps if we ceased the weather might get a little settled and the sun shine week in week out. To her mind that was far better than fields of corn or beds of even luxuriant flowers. There were sure to be some corn and some flowers anyhow, "so do let other people enjoy the sunshine in peace." Certainly if the English climate is the result of conflicting desires, it would be a good thing to have a national creed on the subject and make it obligatory.

After the rain, however, in that particular month of April, came the sun, and things grew apace.

Though not only my seeds and flowers. The enemy, who for many a long year had sown, or allowed to be sown, weeds in my garden, had his crop likewise.

"They're overmastering us agin," said Griggs, who had his friendly moments; and[Pg 110] sometimes, if we were working hard, quite enjoyed standing near and pretending to help us.

"It's your fault that, you know," said Jim, who minced matters with nobody. He was doubled up over the border surrounded with all kinds of implements, for Jim liked everything handy. There was a big clasp knife and a spade and rake, a trowel and little fork, and then he generally used his hands. He was now "tracking home," as he said, that evil-minded weed called, I believe, the ground-elder, and pointed out with some heat, quite excusable under the circumstances, that Griggs, who had just calmly and coolly cut off the head of the plant, had done not a "blooming bit of good."

If you should ever want a really good back-aching job, take a trowel or a little hand fork and begin a fight with those innocent-looking, many-fingered leaves growing in and out in so friendly a fashion with your flowers. You turn up the root, but its hold is still on the earth; you pull a[Pg 111] bit and find it belongs to that other cluster of leaves some little distance off. You attack that, very careful not to lose your underground connection, it also has sent long stringy branches in all directions. Then you pull and tear and say "Oh, bother!" and "What a brute of a weed!" Jim and I are careful not to say anything stronger, though he has been known to indulge in "hang," but I feel sure Griggs gives us the character of using "most horful languidge you never heard." Still it goes on, and quite a heap of potato-like roots will be out and yet its hold is not slackened. Finally it lands you in an iris or lily root; it is not particular, but I find it prefers a solid root, and there you get sadly mixed as to what is root and what is weed. But if the job is to be done finally, these roots must be all taken up and carefully disentangled, for all are twined together. This radical measure is best, or rather least injurious to lilies and irises, when their flowering time is over—July and August—and moving or dividing does not disturb them.

[Pg 112]

Never in all old Griggs's reign of twenty years had he tracked a ground-elder weed home; but I now know the look of those potato-like roots better than any other in my garden.

I cannot say I like doing it. Boys are more invertebrate and do not get so red in the face; and this I pointed out to Jim, suggesting a division of labour.

"You do get jolly red," said Jim, "but really, you know, I expect it's your stays."

"Jim!"

"Well, you needn't get up the steam. I only know when I was dressed up for those theatricals as a beastly, I mean, as a girl, the fellows got hold of some stays, I suppose they bagged their sister's, a precious tight pair, too! and I just tell you, in confidence, they made me absolutely sick. I had to retire looking like an unripe lemon. My! never again!"

"You squeezed too much, Jim."

"That girl must have squeezed more; and you all do, that's my private opinion."

[Pg 113]

In consideration, therefore, of the infirmities to which a rigorous convention condemns my sex, Jim said he would do the thinning out for me.

My promising annuals, designed for grand duty in the cutting line, godetias and larkspurs and chrysanthemums and Shirley poppies, were all most flourishing, but coming much too thick. They ought to have been thinned out sooner, of course, but we had been too busy, so Jim devoted his early morning hours to them, before the five minutes' rush on his bicycle which took him to the station for Gatley, where he and some other fellows were being crammed to pass the examination for the Royal Navy.

Jim's days were always filled. He never neglected cricket, nor, in its good time, football and hockey; but he was going to see me through with my garden for the first year, he said, and his help and ideas were never-failing.

On the thinning-out mornings Jim got up early; very early it seemed to me when he bounced into my room and sent a flood of[Pg 114] light full on my face, or placed a damp sponge there.

"Now I am going to thin, and I can't do it with any satisfaction if you are asleep. What you have to do is to think out any blooming thoughts for this blooming essay on courage. Why the blooming idiot gives us such rotten subjects I can't think. But you must jot down some headings and be ready with them when I come back."

"Jim, what a worn-out old subject. I shall go to sleep over it."

"This won't do," and Jim strode to the washing stand and plunged the sponge in water.

"Oh, don't, Jim, I am awake! There was 'the boy who stood on the burning deck,'" I shouted hurriedly.

Jim came back and stood over me.

"Open your eyes then wide, so. You see you are wasting precious time with your sluggishness."

I thought of those thickly-sown seedlings growing up so leggy, and I roused myself.

[Pg 115]

"Well, 'the boy' will do, then; he is a good old stager."

"Yes, so he mustn't be left out. All the other fellows will have him in for sure, and if I don't, 'old Joe' will think I don't know about him. They don't want any originality, these chaps; they want you just to stick on and learn what they learnt, then you see you can't put them in a corner. So just rout out good old standing dishes."

Jim turned to go.

"All right; but, Jim, remember to leave the strongest plant."

"'Survival of the fittest,' yes, I've heard that before."

"And don't forget about eight inches apart."

"I prefer six; you turn your thoughts to courage."

"Primitive instinct, difference between man and woman, one has more of the physical variety and the other of the moral," I shouted after him.

"No twaddle," said Jim, striding back. "Think of what I should be likely to say.[Pg 116] Of course we all may pick up ideas outside as we have to write the blooming thing in form, but it must sound like me, not you."

"It will, Jim, after it has been through your mill, never fear. And I think eight inches produces strongest plants."

And then Jim slid down the bannisters and I heard him whistling in the garden; but that soon ceased, for you can't whistle when you are bent double.

I must say the row looked very nice when I reviewed it after breakfast. Jim had selected with great care! but the heaps of rejected plantlets lying on the gravel path caused my motherly heart a pang. What a shocking waste! Every tiny seed had come up and ten were growing where but one could find sufficient support for full development, so out must come the nine. Nature is wasteful, and so is human nature, but we can't weed out the overcrowded families; and do the fittest there always survive? Truly it would need courage to tackle that problem.

[Pg 117]
A

A little later, in May, I found an employment in which I tried to interest the Others, but it was no good. The only one I brought up to the scratch, or rather the rose tree, fled with horror when I showed her what was needed, and vowed she would rather never smell a rose again than do such disgusting work. But his Reverence took quite kindly to the job, I am glad to say, and it was a good sight in my eyes when I saw his wideawake carefully bent over the standard roses, and then a certain look of victory rose over his spectacles as he spotted the enemy. This new enemy is a very vile-looking little green grub; one variety is brown and fat, and then indeed I have felt inclined to flee myself. I suppose his mamma lands him in an invisible stage on the tender young rose leaves and he curls them round him for a cradle. Then in some mysterious way, which I heartily wish Dame Nature had never taught him, he rocks his cradle to the side of a juicy young bud, glues himself[Pg 118] to it and enjoys it. Not much bud is left. So his Reverence unfolds the green cradle and carefully ejects the baby. I simply cannot do that, I pick off the leaf; but in either case the end is rapid and final.

And how prolific is that abominable butterfly! You may, in fact, you must, visit your rose trees daily if you would hope to see a goodly show.

At least, so it is in my garden. I can but speak from a limited experience. I have often thought others may be more blessed than I am, but you may not be one of them, friend Ignoramus.

Then there is the green fly, thickly swarming all over banksia or cluster roses, at least, more especially favouring them. Jim would have little to say to the green grub, though occasionally even he and the Young Man had their steps gently led in that direction; and seeing his Reverence's absorption, they too began and then somehow went on. A kind of fatal fascination, I suppose, "Just one more!" The Others would never give the spell a chance, but[Pg 119] Jim grew to take the greatest interest in green fly.

The Young Man suggested smoke for their destruction, but his cigarettes did not seem to effect much, though he blew round a bush for quite a long time while I picked the cradle leaves off another, and of course my work was the most effectual. Jim was very keen on trying this remedy too. I said the effect would be worse than his experience with the stays, at which he asked me with dignity if I supposed he was as green as all that! However, Griggs came out with an old syringe, and Jim said that was the work for him. Soapy water and a good shove, and the Young Man was simply deluged.

All Jim said was, "What a mercy it was only you. Think if it had been his Reverence! Winkie! what a shine there would have been."

I thought the young man behaved beautifully, for a man, though he did catch Jim and hold him upside down until he was gurgling.

[Pg 120]

But when the green fly got the douche very strongly given they too objected, and vacated their position.

Afterwards I obtained a recipe for a douche which had even more effectual results.

Take two ounces of quassia chips (you get them from a chemist for a very small sum) and one ounce of soft soap, and pour on them about a pint of boiling water. Leave it till cold and then add water to the amount of two gallons. With this concoction syringe your green fly, and its extreme bitterness will make them lose all fancy for your rosebuds.
T

The lilacs were out, and the white guelder rose and the ash tree; may and syringa and laburnum were soon to follow. Truly even a poor neglected little garden has its happy moments!

I would rest some days looking around and enjoying the green so new and fresh[Pg 121] everywhere, and trying to shut the reformer's eye. But it was growing too strong for me; the only way to shut it was to reform. The shrubberies were terrible. Laurel was rampant everywhere. A nasty greedy thing, it cannot live and let live, for it takes the nourishment needed by its better brethren. I would have no laurel in my garden, none, but that is a dream for the future. The elder tree too has no manners, it shares this failing with its namesake weed; it shoves and pushes all more gentle growth to the wall. It must be cut back hard. And the syringas also, they need the judicious knife to prune out the old wood and so give strength to the young shoots. And so does the yellow Japanese rose, more learnedly called Kerria Japonica, which in late March and April had given but a poor little show of bloom. I guessed that its treatment had been that of the yellow jasmine. It had been clipped in the autumn on the hedging and ditching principle, and the young shoots with the promise of buds had disappeared beneath[Pg 122] Griggs's shears. Better for the plant to have razed it to the ground after flowering, said the Master, for the vigorous young shoots would soon have appeared; so following his instruction I this spring cut the old stems right away, leaving only the new green ones springing from the ground. I am hoping here, too, for next year.

It seems a gardener must always be living in the future, "possessing their souls in patience," and "hoping all things." Truly it is a liberal education, and I hope may prove very valuable to Jim and the Young Man—and other persons.

It has done no good to Griggs.
S

Spring slipped into summer. The sun shone longer and melted the iciness in the wind's breath; the tender green of the trees gave place to "leafy June" and the shade was grateful.

[Pg 123]

Jim found a waistcoat superfluous, and the head gardener donned a shady hat and tried to wear gloves.

Yes, the spring was gone, and even with summer's glories to come one turns a regretful glance back to the months when "Behold, He maketh all things new."