Chronicles from an Amateur's Garden — By Sherman R. Duffy, 



THE ETERNAL STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE GARDENER AND THE HUNDRED AND ONE PESTS 

 THAT THE GARDEN IS HEIR TO IS NOT WITHOUT ITS OWN PLEASURES AND EXCITEMENTS 



HOW is it possible to love thy neighbor 

 as thyself when thy neighbor owns a 

 dog with horticultural obsessions? 



It is interesting and inspiring to read of 

 grand successes in growing some difficult 

 plant. It is pleasing to dream of the time 

 when, perhaps, you might plant a woodland 

 of daffodils — personally my main desire is 

 a whole acre of primroses. But did you ever 

 have a good-for-nothing hybrid dog destroy 

 twenty-five hybrid larkspurs that you had 

 raised from seed ? 



Did your neighbors' Plymouth Rock 

 chickens ever scratch up your pet pansy bed ? 

 Did you ever have your crocus buds furnish 

 the first green food of the year for the same 

 fowls? Did you ever wish that every leaf 

 and flower in your garden was such deadly 

 poison that if a dog, cat, or chicken even 

 looked at the plant closely it would be imme- 

 diately destroyed? 



Did you ever have a litany spring up in 

 your soul something like this: 



From my neighbors' dogs, 

 From my neighbors' cats, 

 From my neighbors' chickens, 

 From cut worms and aphides, 

 From rose slugs and aster beetles, 

 From moles and currant worms, 

 Good Lord deliver us! 



I have fought the fowl of the air, the beast 

 of the field, and the beast that works under 

 the earth, lice, bugs, worms, and human 

 beings to whom I can't feed slug shot or 

 Paris green, although I have felt in the mood 

 to do so for years, to have a garden. I'd 

 be lonely without some of them, and wouldn't 

 properly prize a garden, but I could spare 

 one dog that has obsessions. 



One of my neighbors owns this dog. 

 Her name is Mamie. Mamie is a hybrid 

 of many crosses. She is squat of figure, 

 of an uncertain color that would probably 

 go as mauve were she a flower; of villainous 

 temper, voraciously omniverous, and of most 

 astonishing fecundity. Mamie and her viva- 

 cious progeny, five in number, have just 

 destroyed a bed of larkspurs in bud and for 

 the second year broken down Aconitum 

 Wilsoni. I heaved a brickbat at the Mamie 

 family, but it was too late. 



Mamie must have a flower garden in which 

 to disport with her offspring. Mine is 

 the nearest, and Mamie appreciates the 

 choicest plants only. 



I think there are hoodoos on some plants 

 in my garden. I have six big yuccas. Yet 

 in ten years they have never succeeded in 

 blooming. Something breaks them down, 

 eats them off, or other mishap occurs 

 and no yucca blooms adorn my garden. 

 Across the street magnificent yuccas flourish 

 and each year throw up great stalks of 

 snowy bloom. There are five stalks now 

 in flower. Mine started, and Mamie and 

 progeny had a party. 



Mamie won't touch poison. She has an 



uncanny intelligence. I thought I saw 

 her have a stalk of Aconitum Wilsoni in 

 her mouth and felt hopeful; but if she had 

 she spit it out in time. 



When I was a small boy I fell among 

 evil companions and I remember that the 

 proudest day of our young lives was when we 

 discovered that we could command swear 

 words in five languages. I'm glad I remem- 

 ber most of them when it comes to the mole 

 proposition. I can wage war on dogs, cats, 

 chickens, plant lice and slugs, but' I throw 

 up my hands when it comes to moles and cut 

 worms. They never are discovered until 

 the damage is done, and then it is too late. 



To be sure, there are many sure death 

 devices for moles on the market and many 

 sage instructions about placing sugar plums 

 for cut worms on the shady side of shingles, 

 near where the cut worm is working. Now, 

 how is anybody to know where the cut worm 

 is working until he has worked? It seems 

 to me if anybody knew where the pest was 

 working he would stop him at once by simply 

 digging him up and stepping on him. I 

 certainly should. 



I have lost six young phlox by cut worms 

 this year. The roots probably are safe, but 

 the blossoms are gone for this year. 



The mole — like death, taxes, and the 

 poor — is always with us. I can't get rid 

 of them. One mole can uproot more plants 

 and do more damage and make a bed more 

 unsightly than any beast I know of. This 

 year, following an unusually dry season, 

 there seem to be thousands of these pests. 

 In dry years, the wiseacres tell us, the moles 

 flourish exceedingly because the young are 

 never drowned by heavy rains. They did 

 frightful damage to bulb beds in the early 

 spring and each day when the bed was 

 inspected there was a new ridge of tulips 

 lifted up. Some few blossomed, but many 

 others died down, the roots being torn from 

 the bulbs. 



Carbon bisulphide, so far as I can discover, 

 smells like attar of roses to the moles in this 

 section. It does not seem to decimate their 

 number materially. Traps are a failure 

 and only the family cat that will tear up a 

 flower bed in jig time to capture a mole will 

 really do any good. 



I once had a man working for me with 

 more ingenuity than principle. He adver- 

 tised in a number of agricultural papers and 

 country weeklies a "Sure Death for Potato 

 Bugs." The price was one quarter. He 

 took in twenty-two dollars before the postal 

 authorities reached out and saved the lives 

 of the potato bugs. Each purchaser received 

 two nice neat blocks of wood with the fol- 

 lowing directions: "First catch your potato 

 bug. Place him squarely in the centre of 

 one of the blocks either upon his back or 

 upon his feet. Then strike him a sharp 

 blow with the other block and he will surely 

 .59 



die. If after following these directions care- 

 fully the bug is not dead, we will refund your 

 money." 



A lot of these mole killers and death on 

 bugs remind me very much of the above 

 potato bug death. They will kill things, but 

 you must capture your victim alive first. 



The Mamie dog and the moles evidently 

 belong to the Kneipp cult. They must 

 turn out at sun-up when the dew is on the 

 grass. Then Mamie's floral obsession is at 

 its fiercest, and many a time I have heard 

 her yaps and charged forth in my pajamas 

 at four o'clock to rescue some treasure. 

 I've tried to shoot her, but succeeded only 

 in getting a horrified crowd, who thought 

 somebody was being murdered, and a warn- 

 ing from the village constabulary abom 

 shooting firearms in the city limits. 



Finally I made a cat, dog. chicken ana 

 human proof device that enables me to raist- 

 plants to a size where they are not too easiF 

 destroyed. It is a great saver to any out' 

 troubled with neighbors. The materials con . 

 sist of four sixteen-foot planks, four bundle-; 

 of laths, and a few nails. I placed two 

 planks parallel, a lath length apart, and 

 covered the top with the lath about an 

 inch apart. Under this protection I have 

 a whole perennial border growing finely, 

 safe from Mamie and her family, and no 

 Felis domesti-cuss has yet broken in. It is 

 not proof against moles and cut worms, 

 but they haven't troubled. 



Having built this seed bed, I am positive 

 that the jackass will never become extinct. 

 Did you ever try some new device and have 

 some ancient mariner of the neighborhood 

 come cruising your way, disgorge a shower 

 of tobacco juice and go ambling home to 

 tell the sharer of his joys and sorrows that 

 "that thar feller across the way is goin' 

 nuttier every day. He's buildin' a chicken 

 coop to plant seeds in. Hee-haw!" This 

 old fellow still plants his "peas and taters 

 in the moon." 



I wonder if anybody ever had the same 

 trouble trying to raise pentstemon Sensation 

 that I have. I consider this pentstemon 

 one of the handsomest garden plants I know 

 of but it has so upset my Celtic temper 

 I have given up trying. Just as the plants 

 have grown about a foot or more high some 

 little worm eats out the top, burrows into the 

 stem, and the blossom stalk is ruined. If 

 the plant gets into flower, the same little 

 caterpillars make an entrance into the stalk 

 anywhere that seems most convenient and 

 after following the stem some fine day you 

 will find a blossom stalk broken over and the 

 plant ruined until it can make fresh growth 

 from the root. This is the most tantalizing 

 pest I ever fought — Mamie, the mauve 

 destroyer, always excepted. The trouble is 

 that I have never been able to discover the 

 invader until after it has made its way into 



