WHAT I KNOW ABOUT GARDENING. 27 



to-day but weeds. And besides, while you 

 are waiting, Nature does not wait. Her 

 mind is made up. She knows just what 

 she will raise ; and she has an infinite vari- 

 ety of early and late. The most humiliating 

 thing to me about a garden is the lesson it 

 teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature 

 is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She 

 thrusts up her plants with a vigor and free- 

 dom that I admire ; and the more worthless 

 the plant, the more rapid and splendid its 

 growth. She is at it early and late, and all 

 night ; never tiring, nor showing the least 

 sign of exhaustion. 



"Eternal gardening is the price of liber- 

 ty" is a motto that I should put over the 

 gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And 

 yet it is not wholly true ; for there is no 

 liberty in gardening. The man who under- 

 takes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He 

 felicitates himself that, when he gets it once 

 planted, he will have a season of rest and 

 of enjoyment in the sprouting and growing 

 of his seeds. It is a green anticipation. 



