'1" BL~1 



The Garden Doctor 



H 



Continued from page 348, July number 



Chapter XIII {Continued) 



BUT Aunt Cassandra, as I said, was 

 worried. She thought we lived on 

 the unsatisfactory and insufficient 

 diet to which the babes in the woods 

 were reduced. As a matter of fact, our 

 commissariat department went on charm- 

 ingly. We kept one eye on nutrition, the 

 other on possible dishes. We breakfasted 

 on fruit and prepared cereal, and boiled the 

 eggs in a chafing dish on the table and ate 

 them from the shells. After breakfast, the 

 milk and butter went down cellar while the 

 dishes were shamelessly piled in a pan and 

 covered with water. Clarky would wash the 

 silver — I couldn't corrupt her utterly — 

 but the hot water in the chafing dish suf- 

 ficed for the few knives and spoons, and, 

 as she said, "the operation was simple, 

 almost painless. " 



After breakfast we addressed ourselves 

 to the out-of-doors. We had a variety of 

 enterprises on hand. Clarky was jacking 

 up the woodshed by a cleverly arranged 

 system of levers, ending in a long piece of 

 scantling whereon she would have me sit 

 while she thrust a block in precisely the 

 right spot. This was highly interesting, 

 and under her treatment, the woodshed, 

 which had threatened to divorce itself com- 

 pletely from the house, bid fair to return to 

 an amicable separation, perhaps in time to 

 complete union. 



Clarky also was making a lattice for the 

 roses to climb upon when they were ready 

 to do so; and she had some cans of ready- 

 mixed paint which were the joy of her heart 

 and an unfailing solace on a wet day. 

 She painted the pink-and-drab woodwork 

 that distressed our eyes and made it a dull 

 green; she "sized" the kitchen walls with 

 some stuff that smelt abominably in the 

 process, and then painted them. She said 

 it was extraordinary that people could 

 deliver over these joys to a housepainter 

 and be content to forfeit the feeling of proud 

 achievement. 



For myself, I worked quite steadily at 

 the thinning and transplanting. Thinning 

 is a heart rending occupation; you can't 

 help feeling sorry for the little plants to 

 which you refuse a chance of life. Clarky 

 said it was garden eugenics and scolded 

 me for sentimentality, but I so hated throw- 

 ing away the sorts that won't transplant 

 that I used to try transplanting them, and 



I found I could move even poppies if I 

 went about it properly, taking them when 

 the ground was rather damp and, instead 

 of digging up individual plants, taking a 

 chunk of earth and all that grew thereon. 

 I moved morning glories from one place 

 where they swarmed and put them where 

 they could climb against the house. I 

 moved cornflowers and marigolds into the 

 bed that the cutworms had devastated, dug 

 up plants of sweet alyssum and made an 

 edge of them. Then I watered, thoroughly 

 soaking until they must have been wet to 

 the tips of the roots, and sheltered them 

 with an elaborate arrangement of shutters 

 taken off the house. 



I worked quite creditably every morning 

 and the little chipmunk used to sit on the 

 wall and watch as if he hadn't an earthly 

 thing to do. The fox sparrows didn't watch 

 nor the thrushes; they were too busy. The 

 fox sparrows were building in the big lilac 

 bush, but they would only pause for a 

 second, to see if I were a safe person, or to 

 snatch a bit of packing-moss for their nest. 

 A pair of adorable bluebirds had taken a 

 hole in my apple tree for their residence. 

 ' ' My apple tree, ' ' did I say? "It's our apple 

 tree," they told me plainly every time I 

 went near it. And the woodpecker, who 

 inspected it every morning as carefully as 

 if he were an assiduous landlord, assured 

 both the tenants and myself that it J was 

 his apple tree. I think he not only drilled 

 for the housebreaking worms and borers but 

 listened, as if he could hear them moving 

 under the bark. What ears ! 



It was a busy, energetic, purposeful life 

 upon which I had "intruded," in Stephen 

 McLeod's word. Before I was well awake 

 in the mornings I could hear the bees hum- 

 ming in the apple blossoms and back and 

 forth they went all day, tirelessly. There 

 was fighting, love-making, quarrelling, but 

 no ennui; apparently there was no time for 

 gossip nor for watching one another's 

 affairs. Each was keenly intent on his own 

 business. Truly, I would have felt 

 ashamed had I not been at work. Never 

 did an East Side parent labor harder to 

 feed the little mouths than did the swallows 

 later in the summer; back and forth from 

 the barn flew the fathers and mothers in- 

 cessantly, and always the open mouths 

 awaiting them, none shut but for an in- 

 stant. I thought it would have discour- 

 aged the parents; but it didn't, for the 



18 



next summer there would be another 

 brood. 



There's nothing whatever in the idea the 

 poets give one sometimes, of birds saunter- 

 ing about the sky, floating on idle pinions. 

 They are quite as industrious as Dr. Watt's 

 bees, only they make no noise about their 

 work and are the gladdest things in exis- 

 tence. 



Chapter XTV 



In spite of the admirable example set 

 by our tenants, we weren't always so 

 industrious. Sometimes we would put our 

 dinner (in a more or less embryonic state) 

 into the little cart and go for the day into 

 the pasture across the ravine. We would 

 take potatoes to roast, bacon to broil over 

 the coals, hoe cake to bake in the ashes. 



It was a wonderful pasture, that of mine. 

 Although they seemed so very deep — 

 those woods where the thrushes lived — 

 it was but a narrow strip of forest reaching 

 down from the pines on the hill to shelter 

 the little brook and see it safely to the river. 

 Across the ravine and beyond them, lay 

 the pasture. On my side, the landscape 

 was beautiful, but quiet and gentle and 

 wonderfully friendly; a place of softly modu- 

 lated slopes, of lovely lines melting one into 

 another, a tender and intimate beauty. 

 Here in the pasture, everything was differ- 

 ent. It was rough and strong and massive; 

 great rocks pushed their huge shoulders 

 through the thin pasture sod like uneasy 

 giants, restless in their sleep, impatient of 

 a covering grown cumbersome; the great 

 bulk of the hill rose bare and uncom- 

 promising, its magnificent lines unsoftened 

 by foliage, as if the very bone and sinew 

 of the old earth were exposed. Of the 

 forest with which it had once been clad, 

 only three or four giant pines were left like 

 vanquished Titans that by a miracle had 

 escaped the destruction that had overtaken 

 their fellows! These stood, huddled 

 together, powerless for all their vast 

 strength, raising huge, shattered branches 

 to the sky. And, like a lovely picture, 

 framed by the giant pines on one side and 

 the great oaks and beeches of the ravine on 

 the other, very far below, lay the river 

 and the quiet meadows, curiously peaceful. 



We went so often that we knew it all 

 intimately. We knew each individual 

 Jack-in-the-pulpit that we passed in going 

 down the steep little path to the brook; we 



