AN ISLAND GARDEN 31 



is so delicate that it breaks at the slightest touch. 

 It is a most all - pervading weed; it fills every 

 space between the flowers, overruns them like a 

 green mist, and will surely strangle them if left 

 unmolested. Alphonse Karr, who so greatly en- 

 joyed his garden, and wrote of it with so much 

 pleasure, says : " The chickweed is endowed with 

 a fecundity that no other plant possesses. . . . 

 Seven or eight generations of chickweed cover 

 the earth every year. ... It occupies the fields 

 naturally, and invades our gardens ; it is almost 

 impossible to destroy it." 



There is a long procession of weeds to be 

 fought : pigweed, ragweed, smartweed, shepherd's 

 purse, mallow, mustard, sorrel, and many more, 

 which make the first crop. The second consists 

 largely of quitch-grass, the very worst of all, and 

 purslain or pusley, which Charles Dudley War- 

 ner has immortalized in his charming book, " My 

 Summer in a Garden." The roots of quitch- 

 grass are as strong as steel and run rapidly in 

 all directions underneath the surface, sending 

 up tender shoots that break too easily when you 

 touch them. The root must be found, grasped 

 firmly, and followed its whole length to utter ex- 

 termination, or the grass will come up like a giant, 

 and later cannot be dealt with except by pulling 

 up also the flowers among which it inextricably 

 entangles itself. The flat, olive-green leaves and 

 red fleshy stems of the pusley, running over the 

 ground in a mat, next appear ; this is easily dis- 

 posed of, only it continues to come up, fresh 

 plants in endless succession rise from the soil all 



