62 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
implements where you put them last year. Of 
course you know where that is.” Now, a thing 
or two of that kind turns common gardening 
into a means of grace; for he who being a man, 
master of his own house (as it were) and can 
command himself and keep calm while such 
intimations refresh the air, may calmly survey 
himself in the glass when he has washed the 
honest grime of honest toil in an honest gardening 
effort, and seeing his own anatomy, say, “You 
are a good man, a very good man,” and such a 
conclusion is very heartening to any man I have 
ever met. 
Some good men are deterred from gardening 
because there is an element of uncertainty in it. 
They think so many contingencies arise about 
the progress of events in the nurture of vegetables. 
So many things happen whether the vegetables 
happen or not. This is true but should deter 
no valorous man from the endeavor. There are 
things happen. Bugs, caterpillars, drought, frost, 
incidentals, accidentals, insagacity of seeds, mis- 
direction of effort, hoeing up the things you 
planted, not being acquainted with the real look 
of the thing you designed to grow, and saddest, 
the gardener in his pursuit of vegetation which 
intrudes on his garden purlieus (to wit, weeds), 
setting his pedal extremities on the vegetable 
in process, and many such things. These are all 
likelihoods in gardening. But would a brawny 
man retire from effort because of the uncertainty 
