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THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



October, 1913 



and she told me afterward that "ef he'd 

 give Mis' Pritchard a good account of his 

 prospects 'twould be more to the p'int." 

 Also, she held that a young clergyman 

 shouldn't gallivant. 



It did not seem to me that working in 

 my garden could be described as gallivant- 

 ing and Richard really did put in some 

 work. He cut saplings from the beech- 

 woods and helped Clarky set up poles for 

 the bean, which were fairly clamoring for 

 assistance and stretching out frantically, 

 with long swaying shoots, to find something 

 to help them skyward. After the poles 

 were set, he cut other saplings, made cross- 

 poles of them, lashing them in place with 

 string, and constructed a rude pergola, "to 

 carry out your William Morris effect," said 

 he. One rainy day he and Clarky had a 

 beautiful time in the woodshed at the work- 

 bench making frames for starting perennials. 



Clarky is really a surgical nurse, which 

 is why she so loves a saw and hammer, I 

 suppose. She and the Rev. Richard did the 

 work, and they did it with joy and energy. 



I sat on the doorstep and watched and 

 offered suggestions. There's nothing more 

 delightful than to witness other people 

 working for your garden when you have 

 the pleasing assurance that the work is 

 being properly done. So I sat and watched 

 them hammering and sawing and looked 

 out of the wide door toward the distant 

 hemlocks and watched the gusts of mist 

 and rain hurrying by the trees and up the 

 hill, like a ghostly silent army in flight. 



The frames were interesting. Richard 

 had brought down from the barn a motley 

 array of old boards that he and Clarky 

 had found in the attic — old window sashes 

 from which every pane of glass had long 

 been absent. They made the frames to 

 fit the window sashes — that is, to fit two 

 sashes set together, making a frame the 

 size of a window. The height of the frame 

 at the back was a foot and a half, and at 

 the front a foot, s'o that the sash had the 

 proper professional slope. They tacked 

 cheese cloth over the sashes. 



"The florists use lath," said Richard, 

 "but this will serve. All you need is a 

 little shade. Young perennials, in a state 

 of nature, come up slightly under the 

 shadow of their parent's leaves, and we have 

 to simulate the natural environment." 



He told me how, in the autumn, I could 

 set glass in the sashes and have a sure- 

 enough coldframe. He said he thought 

 the farmers in our part of the world were 

 mildly insane not to use their storm 

 windows as a sash for coldframes from 

 March until Christmas time and sell forced 

 vegetables to summer residents. 



"Not insanity," said Clarky, "merely 

 arrested development, Mr. Protheroe." 



Next day the frames were properly set 

 east of the woodshed, where they had a 

 little shelter from the north and west. 

 The soil was made light and smooth, and 

 then I did the planting: sweet William, 

 Canterbury bells and larkspur and holly- 

 hocks, monkshood, China pinks. The 



larkspurs were a dark blue "hybridum" and 

 a pale blue Ccelestinum; the hollyhocks 

 were all single varieties. Richard said 

 they were less liable to disease and also 

 more decorative. Pansies I had too, and 

 platycodon and little English daisies. 



It was Richard who insisted on the hardy 

 plants. He said annuals were very well, 

 but they were to a garden as summer 

 boarders to a town — useful, but by no 

 means taking the place of year round 

 residents. He said he couldn't for the 

 life of him see why green gardeners always 

 began operations with roses and annuals 

 which were like starting chicken raising 

 with incubator chickens, when one might 

 have the maternal services of a worthy 

 hen and be spared much anxiety and 

 responsibility. He said that bulbs and 

 perennials and shrubs were infinitely easier 

 to manage, but never did a green gardener 

 try them. He told me that my little 

 perennials that I was starting in July 

 would be ready to go to their permanent 

 homes in late September; that they would 

 then be on hand in the spring with but 

 little further care from me. I could have 

 sown lots more, but I didn't know what I 

 would do with them. 



"You'll have abundance to give away, 

 as it is," said the Rev. Richard. "That's 

 half the fun of gardening. Wait till you 

 see the garden I have! I'm going to make 

 an Elizabethan 'Flowery Orchard' of 

 that old orchard beyond the church and 

 the children will come from miles around 

 to beg for the flowers." 



" You haven't had your ' call ' yet," said I. 



"I shall have it, my dear Caroline," said 

 he. "If the people will not give me the 

 usual five hundred, I shall offer to come for 

 four hundred and eighty-eight. I shall 

 have tea-parties in my garden, and the 

 nice old ladies who come will get the habit 

 and make a pretty bit of garden themselves 

 for the same purpose. They will come to 

 me for slips and cuttings and young plants." 



"But the time," I said, "how can you 

 possibly do it?" 



"Judicious management and autumn 

 planting," said he. "Gardening consists 

 not so much in a wild frenzy of industry 

 in the spring as in doing odd bits of work 

 at the proper time — here a little and there 

 a little. In doing things, not so much when 

 others sleep, as when they do not think 

 about it. The difficulty in which the 

 Foolish Virgins found themselves was not 

 that the oil for the lamps was impossible 

 to obtain; it would have been a most 

 simple matter had they done the work at 

 the proper time. But most people garden 

 after the manner of the Foolish Virgins 

 and rush frantically about the work when 

 the season has already begun. Such, I 

 believe was your method." 



"Besides," he continued, "I may bring 

 two or three Juvenile Delinquents to assist." 



"But how could you possibly look after 

 two or three young imps besides the gar- 

 den?" 



"That will be the interesting part, my 



dear Caroline. If I can show a creditable 

 and a profitable garden and yet have a 

 little leisure, and if I can show young 

 sinners fairer and fatter and of better be- 

 havior than the more properly pedigreed 

 children of the neighborhood, then I shall 

 be in a position to express an opinion on the 

 community problems. And if I cannot do 

 the trick, why exhort?" 



Chapter XIX 



WE MISSED Richard, after he went 

 back to civilization, more than I had 

 supposed we should. Especially did Clarky 

 miss him. He was terribly energetic like her- 

 self. Beside the coldframes and the bean- 

 pole pergola, they made a bridge 

 of fallen logs across the little brook, cut 

 the dead wood from some of the trees in the 

 old orchard and made one of the darling 

 old things spruce with a Spartan severity 

 — as sanitary as a hospital. 



I am not sure it really liked the change. 

 I have always had a notion that, however 

 bad it is for their bodies, these old trees 

 must find their spirits enlivened by the 

 multitudinous fife around and about and 

 over them; that the pines must take an 

 interest in the squirrels that make their 

 houses under the roots, in the high-hole 

 woodpeckers that carve abodes for them- 

 selves far aloft; and that the apple trees 

 must rather like the visits of the wood- 

 peckers who tap them over as assiduously 

 as an osteopath looking for a defect — 

 and if there were no borers or other insects 

 to reward them — but this is rank heresy, 

 I know! I suppose it comes from watching 

 the woodpeckers until one gets their view- 

 point. Certainly when insects worried 

 my garden, their aspect changed. 



But my garden wasn't suffering. For 

 almost the first time I could survey it 

 without seeing forty things that I ought to 

 do and hadn't done. I began to feel as 

 the barn swallows must have felt when their 

 brood had got past the gaping mouth stage 

 and the clamor for incessant attention, and 

 the parents could watch with more or less 

 calmness and criticize the flying process. 

 Hitherto, I had been able to do nothing 

 but try, rather frantically, to keep the 

 plants from being killed by something or 

 crowded into ill health. Now I could look 

 about with a bit of detachment and con- 

 sider the garden as an artistic creation, 

 something in the way I had fondly regarded 

 it when I lay on my back and planned, 

 with the catalogues to help and no dis- 

 tressing realities to worry. I could con- 

 sider now, with some degree of placidity, 

 whether hollyhocks would look better here, 

 or there; for the young plants were grow- 

 ing contentedly in the frames and might 

 stay there all winter without injury — a 

 very different matter from deciding where 

 to put them when the May sun is beating 

 down perilously hot and the young things 

 are lying in a packing-box, roots out of the 

 ground, as clamorous for their native 

 element as a fish out of water. 

 (To be continued) 



