AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
343 
and should you think it desirable, will for¬ 
ward to you the results. 
The substance employed could be made at 
a very small price, if there should arise any 
demand for it. At present chemists gener¬ 
ally make it for themselves.— Horticulturist. 
GARDEN WORK. 
I havn’t a garden of my own yet, I con¬ 
fess ; but that proves nothing in respect to 
my desire for one. In fact, just as soon as I 
can get matters arranged a little more to my 
mind about me here, I mean to have such a 
domestic tract of land as will do one’s eyes a 
great deal of good to look over. 
Goethe said that he always took the solid- 
est delight in the simplest pleasures : and 
he spoke the general feeling, without ques¬ 
tion. 
For an enduring pleasure, clean and sweet 
all the time it lasts, I know nothing before a 
little garden. Not too large, by any means ; 
that tries, and sweats, and breaks down the 
lively earnestness. Not over half an acre, if 
quite that; where every variety of vegetable 
may find room to grow, and every sort of 
useful and ornamental plant may root itself 
in rich domestic soil. 
The before-breakfast work is worth, for 
down-right pleasure, all the rest of the day to¬ 
gether. Seeing me in this soiled and shred¬ 
ded suit, a limp old hat dropping down over 
my eyes and neck while I ply the spade or 
hoe, you would hardly believe me the same 
person whom you may possibly meet on the 
town sidewalk later in the day, betraying no 
other signs of my early morning’s work than 
a well browned face and a glistening eye. In 
truth, that is the time in the day when your 
garden is serviceable ; unless, perhaps, I add 
the evening, after business is finally over, 
when you stroll with a very leisurely sort of 
delight over your little grounds, transplant¬ 
ing a few roots, or grubbing up some pestif¬ 
erous weeds, or planning somewhc$ for the 
industry of the following morning. 
Some people have such a religious horror 
of dirt !—when dirt is just what is good for 
them, that’s all. They know nothing of the 
health and strength they snuff in with every 
spadeful of earth they turn over, nor how 
much better still it would be for them, if they 
would follow the track of a plowshare with 
their nose, from one end of a great wide 
field to the other. 
Dirt! Well, what are we all but dirt, say 
the most for ourselves we can ? What do 
we eat, that doesn’t grow straight out of the 
dirt 1 What do we drink, but water that is 
filtered through heap after heap of this same 
dirt 1 What is all this beautiful world, but a 
ball of dirt 1 What are fine landscapes, but 
unmitigated dirt 1 What makes these roll¬ 
ing lawns, these swelling uplands, these 
smooth and level meadows but dirtl Dirt! 
How very ridiculous for one to cry out thus 
against his own constitution ! 
There is nothing in the world that will 
sooner spoil a nice garden, or more thorough¬ 
ly spoil the amiable temper of its proprietor, 
than hens. Yes, hens ! Do you know any¬ 
thing about it yet, my dear reader ! Hens 
have been all over your garden, do you say 1 
—and still you do not lose the sweetness of 
that disposition of yours 1 Look here, Let 
me have a good gaze into your eyes. Pshaw ! 
I can see a spirit there already, at even the 
thought of a hen, as red as the reddest cock’s 
comb itself! 
Hens are highly useful in their way, l con¬ 
cede ; but be careful not to let their way lie 
through your garden. Of all horticultural 
pests, deliver me from hens. I like them, 
too. But never in the garden ; unless in 
those pleasant and sunny days in mid-Octo¬ 
ber, when they lie along so cosily under the 
walls and fences, stretching out their yellow 
legs at full length, or wallowing by the hour 
in the soft dirt. Eggs are good things, too, 
more particularly in the early spring ; when 
bacon begins to taste fresh again, and fried 
parsnips, or cowslips, or dandelions, add a 
new savor to the product of the sty. Not a 
word is to be said against chickens , that is, 
when they first break the shell, and waddle 
about like little feathered chubs no bigger 
than your thumb’s-end—or again, when they 
come to the table sweltering in a rich gravy, 
flanked by vegetables such as one’s palate 
already waters for. But chickens in your 
gardens, or old hens either—shoo ’em out! 
stone ’em out! drive ’em out at the peril of 
their limbs and lives ! 
In old-fashioned gardens is always to be 
found a row of currant-bushes. They form 
the ancient metes and bounds ; and over 
them is to be seen a row of old ladies’ caps 
bleaching, or lines of white lace dangling and 
swaying in the air. Somehow I still incline 
to the old custom. I think I would cultivate 
my currants, even if I went without my 
strawberries. They have rooted themselves 
in gardens too deeply to be easily rooted out. 
It would be like tearing a healthy sentiment 
out of my heart, to pul) up the o'd currant- 
bushes. 
And a summer-house at the end of the 
main walk, over against the wall at the far¬ 
ther side of the garden—I couldn’t think of 
doing without that. Let a flourishing grape¬ 
vine twist and coil its lengths about it, giving 
a diversity to the shade that will make the 
very sight of it afar off refreshing. A sum¬ 
mer house is a garden temple. Here is the 
shrine of Pomona ; and here you go to cut 
your early fruits in the autumn. Some have 
fountains playing ; but not in such a simple 
little kitchen-garden as I have already map¬ 
ped out in my heart. The dew of heaven 
will keep that fresh enough, and it descends 
far more gratefully. All real blessings come 
in silence. You can never tell them afar off 
by their plash and patter. 
Last summer I wonder how many birds’- 
nests I counted in this garden here ; all rob¬ 
ins’ nests. They built in the angles of all 
the pens and fences, and on almost every 
variety of bush. The wild rose-bush was 
occupied by a very respectable and matronly 
cat-bird—Phebes took up their quarters in 
the cornice beneath the eaves of the porch 
But robins outnumbered them all together; 
and being really the most domestic bird we 
have in our changeful climate, I confess I 
always studied their summer lives with a 
closer interest than I was in the habit of 
bestowing on the rest. As you dig over the 
ground, they follow up your hoe or spade in¬ 
dustriously ; and the worm must be a remar¬ 
kably spry one, that pulls in his head before 
Mr. Redbreast comes along with his long 
pick of a bill. I could write a whole chapter 
on my robins here ; perhaps at another time 
I will. 
The time to begin work in the garden is in 
the morning. Go out as soon as the day 
dawns : though a smart old gentleman I hap¬ 
pen to know carried his habits to such an 
unreasonable extreme, as to get to hoeing 
before he could see to tell weeds from his 
beans and peas; and the consequence was, 
he lifted the soft earth with great care about 
some miserable weeds, while his promising 
young vegetables lay wilting all day long in 
the hot sun ! But there is a great glory in 
the daybreak in the summer ; and it is a sore 
pity that as few know it as do. 
If you have a little garden spot to hail the 
coming morning in, you have at least one in¬ 
ducement to get out of your bed at a fresh 
and dewy hour. Then to be among your 
own growing vegetables ; to watch the bean- 
sprouts, bursting through the divided seed ; 
to shave down whole ranks of red-stemmed 
weeds at a single sweep of your hoe ; to 
brush your peas, and pole your beans, and. 
set frames about for your tomatoes and cu¬ 
cumbers ; to trim up tastefully your young 
hedges,and lay out new walks that shall reach 
to your remotest grounds; this is to seize 
hold of a breathing pleasure, that will delight 
the heart of any man who has a heart to be 
delighted. 
A garden, we judge, should not be so large 
as to require severe labor, or more than 
moderately close attention. One that occu¬ 
pies a couple of hours in the early morning, 
and another leisurely hour in the evening, is 
both large enough and small enough. There 
you turn the dark earth, and turn over the 
most genial thoughts. The free prespiration 
that moistens your forehead, seems at the 
same time to start to yourbrain dewy fancies 
such as make your little day’s life both sweet 
and romantic. It isn’t altogether in hoeing 
beans and corn, vegetables like potatoes and 
peas, that the satisfaction lies ; it is rather 
in the delicious feelings that grow up in the 
heart at the same time your young vegetables 
are growing in the soil, and that come to ac¬ 
quire the strength and vigor of sentiments at. 
last. 
Gardening always inserts itself with a 
charm, from the very name alone. It car¬ 
ries your thoughts back from restless world¬ 
liness to the innermost heart of simplicity. 
You think you are standing m the very porch 
of peace. You smell savors as fresh as the 
morning dew, and as sweet as the breath of 
the rustling corn. There is such a cool, 
such a retired, such a far-off look from your¬ 
self in your garden to the outer world be¬ 
yond, that you deplore the necessity that 
takes you away from so peaceful a pursuit, 
and wonder if there may not come a time 
when you may stay at home altogether in 
your rustic corner, and dress and keep your 
little garden to the end of your days. I 
would have a garden, it seems to me, if I 
were by the means obliged to shorten my 
investment in bank stock. I feel very sure 
1 would, even if I had to go without bank 
stock altogether.— Fireside Journal. 
GROWING BALSAMS TO GREAT PERFECTION. 
BY AN ATTENTIVE PRACTITIONER. 
Balsams being general favorites, and grown 
in almost every cottage window, I beg to 
submit to their admirers a system for very 
much improving their flowering. I sow the 
seed in March, pot singly into small sixty- 
pots, and when the plants begin to show 
bloom-buds I select the best, rejecting all the 
inferior, and with a pair of grape sissors 
clip off all the blooming flowers and far ad¬ 
vanced buds, being careful to cut them off 
close to the flowers or buds, thereby leaving 
as much of the flower-stalk to the plant as 
possible. I then shift them into larger pots, 
and place them in their former situation. 
By these means the plants throw up their 
lower branches to great perfection. If the 
flowers are allowed to remain on the plants 
as they appear, they injure their growth, and 
still remain separate ; and, being hid by the 
leaves, are prevented from being seen to ad¬ 
vantage. If my method be adopted, the 
plants will require shifting again in a fort¬ 
night, only then clipping off the flowers, but 
leaving the buds, and in a short time they 
will be entirely covered with one complete 
mass of flowers, for where the flowers were 
clipped off they will throw out three for one ; 
the plants also grow double the strength of 
those treated in the usual way. To pro¬ 
long the flowering season, I take off both 
sei j d-vessels and flowers as soon as they be¬ 
gin to fade. Thus new flowers are produced 
in succession for a considerable time.—FYo- 
ricultural Cabinet. 
