A Pocket Sanctuary 



By FAYE RANDLE. Portland. Ore. 



A GARDEN is a lovesome thing," as the old song tells us truly, and 

 though the owner of that formal garden, "Rose plot, fringed pool, 

 ferned grot," might deny the title to the one we had, there was never 

 a more lovesome thing nor one better loved. 



A garden of weeds in a ravine does not require seasons of labor nor a knowl- 

 edge of landscape gardening. The procedure is simple. First, buy or rent your 

 ravine. That is the most difficult task, as it must be a proper ravine, with the 

 brook that made it still flowing through the bottom of it. The one we rented, 

 along with an acre or so of pine woodland and a small brown bungalow, boasted 

 a brook that was all of 3 feet wide, in the widest places, at certain times. The 

 next indispensable thing is a fence to keep out cattle and horses. Our ravine 

 had been pastured for years, and showed it. Barbed wire was cheap, effective, 

 and prompt, so we used it; but if I were getting what I wanted, and hoped to 

 keep, I would choose rail-fences. After you have got your ravine and fenced it 

 off, take a big basket and go gleaning. You will fill it many times with papers, 

 rags, wire, bottles, broken dishes, tin cans, leaky kettles, bottomless pans, and 

 spoutless coffee-pots. Eleven people out of every dozen look upon a ravine, 

 or any sort of hollow in the ground, simply as a most convenient dumping-spot. 

 Break the dead limbs out of the bushes and small trees. Rake the accumulated 

 trash out of the bed of the brook. Tidy the place up a little, but not too much; 

 and then watch it and love it. You will see marvelous things. 



Even by June 2, our wild garden, set in the midst of the closely cultivated 

 and pastured Palouse lands, was beautiful to see. By June 3, it was a climbing, 

 sprawling, riotous, pink tangle of wild roses, wild geraniums, and wild peas. 

 A closer look showed that the prevailing pink was underlaid and streaked with 

 gold. There were more than a dozen kinds of yellow flowers in June alone. 

 The sweetest of these golden blossoms, the fragrant buttercups, came in March, 

 and the latest arrivals, the goldenrod, lingered in damp, shady spots until 

 October. There were spring violets and autumn asters, the white radiance of 

 the service-berry blooms, the delicate lavender of the tiny flowers of the brook 

 mint, the dusky blue of larkspur. If this were a story of the flowers of our wild 

 garden I could tell you more — much more. 



Out of the buck brush on the slope pops a frowsy Fox Sparrow. He looks 

 as if he had just crawled out of bed; his hair is so tousled, his clothes so mussed. 

 The small frogs sit in the edges of the upper spring and sing lustily. Tiny blue 

 moths flutter above the cowslips. A cotton-tail races up the hill and dives into 

 a brush-pile. A chipmunk runs along his highway through the tops of the 

 smaller pines. Later on, when the service-berries are ripe, he will share them 

 with the Catbirds. If there are a great plenty, we may even get some of the 

 berries ourselves. 



(21Q) 



