November, 1909 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



177 



overdid the feeding of liquid manure. 

 The first flowers were 4^ inches across. 

 Major Bonnaffon, too, we blighted by 

 over-feeding. 



Tioga was beautiful with its abundance 

 of delicate, loosely formed flowers, \\ or 5 



inches across. Not desirable for cut flowers 

 but pretty on the plant. 



The Mrs. Harry Emmerton is fine for its 

 long season of bloom and its lasting qualities, 

 and it produced flowers 5^ inches in diameter. 



some unusual attempt in gardening; and 

 our large chrysanthemum plants with their 

 abundance of really nice flowers were re- 

 markably attractive. Chrysanthemum cul- 

 ture is a success here as elsewhere, and 



There is a satisfaction in succeeding in quite easy. 



Optimism in the Gardens of Hope— By Ida M. H. Starr, 



Mary- 

 land 



WONDERFUL as is the memory of 

 my first two years in our gardens, 

 there have been days which are not associated 

 with the true radiance of Hope. 



As I sit here while Clarence prepares the 

 ground for the oncoming fall plantings — 

 for nothing is now admitted to the gardens 

 but under my own personal direction — and 

 as I watch old Copper working patiently 

 among the young baby box planted exper- 

 imentally last May, I realize what this year 

 has meant to me. 



The box looks as brown as if hopelessly 

 dead, but it is not dead. As Isaac says, 

 "Dat's all livin' — yessum." And it is. 

 I find especially in box that there are many 

 shades of brown possible to living but dor- 

 mant plants. 



Only recently I was being commiserated 

 because of the many rows of dying box slips 

 in my small nursery. Last year the sight of 

 those brown clumps would have caused me 

 a daily pang; this year the baby box tucked 

 away under their little brown sun-bonnets 

 with the intervening rows carpeted by mats 

 of straw — all this I pass with as light a 

 heart as would a mother the cradle of a 

 softly sleeping child. 



These first years have brought, above all 

 things, faith in one's efforts, even the smallest, 

 to give growing things a chance. I realize 

 now for the first time the quick responsive- 

 ness of plants, their recuperative power, 

 their elasticity of habit and most of all their 

 normally forgiving nature. Time and again 

 people say to me, "It is too bad you did this; 

 most unfortunate you did that; mistaken 

 judgment to plant peas so early, they'll rot; 

 your iris will never thrive on so high a piece 

 of land; your tulips are dangerously near 

 the mole runs, the bulbs will be eaten up." 

 But my faith in the affinity between plants 

 and their lover, the enthusiast, bids me turn 

 neither to the right nor to the left. I plant 

 garden peas so early that my fingers tingle 

 as I measure out the seeds; the iris is planted 

 high in the garden walk and low down by 

 the lily tangle and they rival each other in 

 splendor. The tulips bloom in long blazing 

 troops down the path and the mole burrows 

 stealthily by on the other side. This faith 

 which has come these first two years has 

 made me pessimist-proof. This latter peril 

 once having been overcome, the amateur 

 gardener need be appalled at nothing. Of 

 course there have been sickening blunders, 

 but the promises of Nature are optimism 

 itself. There is no insect pest — no blight 

 so disastrous to a garden as is the wet-blanket 

 of a pessimist. 



So shut your eyes and close your ears 

 when the pessimist walks in your garden, be 

 he lord or lady ; give no easy ear to his voice 

 nor eye to his disapproval. I say to my 

 plants, "We two are playing a new game 

 with our enemies, let's see which side will 

 win." So the early frosty plantings of peas 

 huddle together and get warm, and the first 

 thing you know I call out, "Oh Mr. Pessi- 

 mist, dine with me on spring lamb and the 

 earliest, sweetest peas in the county." 



And yet this faith in an "all's well" 

 mental attitude has come limping through a 

 year of some stiff plowing. This was the 

 time when I waited all the summer for my 

 foxglove to bloom from seed planted the same 

 spring; it was the season when the few 

 flowers I had were scorched brown by the 

 long bitter drought, and this was the year of 

 my first acknowledged garden tragedy. 



It might all have happened in the same 

 way had I been in the gardens — no one can 

 tell. A thousand miles separated me from 

 the onrushing spring in Maryland, and know- 

 ing that it might be May before I reached the 

 "Eastern Shore," I sent my bundle of seeds 



1 We planted it in rows and in clumps, on the east 

 half of the garden border " 



to Copper with explicit directions, emphasiz- 

 ing the necessity of carefully labeling all 

 the different rows of early seeding. I also 

 sent an order for an ample supply of small 

 two and three inch flower pots. I felt within 

 me somewhere that yearning toward pro- 

 fessionalism. A stack of flower pots cer- 

 tainly would lend that air. One always 

 sees them conspicuously present about florists 

 and big gardens. 



We arrived late in April. I ran to the hot- 

 beds, Copper following respectfully, rubbing 

 his great hands together. 



" My ! but the things have grown. They're 

 all labeled correctly, Copper, are they?" 



"Yess'um, Mrs. Starr, 'urn. Dey's 

 marked in de full conjunct." 



"Did you get those little flower pots I 

 ordered?" 



"Yess'um, yess'um, we got 'em; mos' 

 a wagon-load, fine ones dey is, 'um." 



Then I inspected the flower pots! Six 

 to eight inch pots — a whole "single team 

 load" of ihem — with fancy rims! I dis- 

 creetly told Copper to store them out of sight 

 in the hay loft, not wishing the critical 

 members of the family to know the true 

 enormity of Copper's purchase; one or 

 two down by the hotbed would be quite 

 enough in sight at one time. It has always 

 been a sort of grim comfort to me to blame 

 the whole subsequent disaster to those great 

 hulking flower pots with ornamental rims. 



With three hundred six-inch and larger 

 pots up in the hay-loft, I was forced to 

 justify their expense, at least to myself, so 

 I started to transplant my annuals into the 

 flower pots, sneaking them down a few at a 

 time from their hiding place. Of course 

 most of the plants could as well have gone 

 directly into the permanent border, but that 

 was one of the things I learned later. 



I stooped down over the hotbed and 

 scrutinized the rows of flowers. They were 

 in a hopeless mess. Sweet alyssum was 

 marked calendula, mignonette with the 

 coreopsis label, and of the many different 

 varieties of plants, the only unmistakable 

 ones were marigolds, sweet alyssum, 

 mignonette, pinks, and zinnias. 



Working from the known to the unknown 

 by an awkward process of elimination we 

 disentangled the familiar flowers first, and 

 then set ourselves at the laborious task of 

 sorting out those that remained. "Now 

 Copper, we'll take these next. They're 

 fine healthy looking plants and we have such 

 a lot of them, too. How does it come that 

 they're mixed in with all the other kinds? 

 Here, pass me some of the largest pots." 



