ABOUT FKUITS, FLOWEUS AND FARMING. 199 



FARMER'S GARDENS. 



FARSfERs are apt to have very inferior gardens. The 

 plea is, that in the spring they have no time ; the farm crops 

 are of more importance. In consequence of such a decision, 

 no garden will be had unless the housewife is willing to be 

 gardenwife too. At her importunity at length one horse is 

 put to the plow and the garden is broken up — say four 

 inches deep. Possibly the boy is allowed to throw up the 

 beds, but very often even this is left to woman's hand. She 

 has to hunt up seed ; peppers are pulled off from the ceiling 

 and eviscerated ; drawers are ransacked for the bag of ra- 

 dish seed or the paper of lettuce seed ; the old broken 

 pitcher is taken from its long seclusion on the top of the 

 cupboard and emptied of its beans and peas ; withal a few 

 flower seeds are added to grace the stock — four o'clocks^ 

 poppies, marigolds, and touch-me-nots. Our gardenwife is 

 not so admirable for lily hands or fair face, or fairy form. 

 She cannot walk over dewy flowers without crushing them, 

 as can a true heroine ; for her specific gravity gives evidence 

 of a good constitution, health and habits. 



Her praise is, that in a new countiy where woman unques- 

 tionably suffers the most of hardships, she is cheerful, con- 

 tented, industrious, enterprising, and, like women the world 

 over, seeks to draw around herself objects of taste and 

 beauty to decorate and cheer her husband's and her child- 

 ren's home ; and, if necessary, to do it by the field-labor of 

 her own hands. We could not forbear saying so much of 

 the meritorious gardener of more than half the rural gar- 

 dens in the West. 



The seeds all mustered, she may be seen, after the break- 

 fast things are all done up, busy with spade and hoe, hiding 

 her treasures. And thus she does it. First a liberal suit 

 of onion beds — savory vegetables to the tongue and most 

 unsavory to the nose — making it almost impossible for these 

 respectable neighbors to live together in peace, one or 



