A Skirmish for a Garden 
THE EXPERIENCES OF A MAN WHO WAS TIRED OF A FLAT AND WANTED A FEW GROWING 
THINGS—HOW HE MADE FLOWERS COME WHERE THERE WAS NOTHING BUT WEEDS BEFORE 
BY A. A. Farrington 
W E lived in a flat, four stories up, with invigorating air; and 
grass—a patch ten by thirty—forty feet below our ele¬ 
vated station in life. A mighty poor chance to grow things! 
The house across 
the way became va¬ 
cant. We moved into 
it the tenth day of 
June. 
What a prospect! 
Grass that we could 
actually step on, twen¬ 
ty by fifty along the 
side of the house and 
fifty by forty back of 
the house, with a lux¬ 
uriant growth of dan¬ 
delions two feet high. 
Ofif came our coats, 
up went our trousers' 
legs and on the old 
shoes. 
We got a lawn 
mower, a rake, a 
spade, a hoe, a grass- 
cutter and wheelbar¬ 
row—and blisters and 
a sore back. The 
lawn mower would 
run over, but could 
not cut through the 
dense forest of dande¬ 
lion stems. We mowed with a scythe; then the lawn mower be¬ 
came possible. 
Three wagon loads of this inspiring plant and general rubbish 
were hauled from the little patch, and a mighty sigh of relief 
escaped us as we stood, the conquering heroes of the first skirm¬ 
ish with a garden. 
We removed the sod from a strip three feet wide around the 
edge of the back yard enclosed with a four-foot board fence. 
Hurrah! Earth, real earth! And nightly dreams of a beauti¬ 
ful lawn bordered with flowers and vegetables, butterflies and 
bees, and birds, and raspberries, big red ones, were ours. Vege¬ 
tables to gather ourselves, from our own garden, grown between 
the ornamental patches of an Aladdin’s wealth of flowers, ap¬ 
peared in our fancy. 
A spade, and the first thrust reached the rock at three inches 
depth. Then came a long pause, a thoughtful wrinkling of the 
brow, a dull sickening realization that we were not Chinamen 
and consequently could not grow flowers and vegetables from 
rocks. Just a mere covering of thick, terribly thick, pasty red 
clay, and that only three inches deep, was over a foundation of 
broken rock. 
We adjourned to the front of the house, a lattice-work under¬ 
pinning three feet high to the porch floor, built to hide the un¬ 
covered rocks and rested on a solid rock foundation. 
The petals of the dream flowers floated off into the thin air 
of despondency, and the vegetables lost tbeir crispy freshness in 
the ring of the spade against the adamant beneath our feet. 
We acquired a scowl, a Napoleonic determination to conquer 
that clay and rock, a hope born of the very desperation inspired 
by the obstacles confronting us. 
We bought boards ten inches wide, laid them on edge along 
the front and side of 
the porch, making a 
bottomless box eight 
inches wide and ten 
inches deep. This we 
filled with street 
sweepings, plant- 
ed rose bushes and 
nasturtiums, some 
climbing or, rather, 
hanging vines along 
the edge of the box; 
and that we might 
have some foliage, set 
in geranium plants to 
lend a touch of green 
while we waited for 
the nasturtiums to 
grow, crowning the 
whole with the self- 
satisfied smile of the 
conqueror. 
Our friends flat¬ 
tered our ingenuity. 
They said it was very 
simple and very in¬ 
genious, but we could 
not expect anything 
from our efiforts this year. It would be next year before we could 
possibly hope for any results. It was so late in the season, et 
cetera, et cetera. 
But the geraniums were really green, and the rose bushes 
were really there, although they were leafless, and the nasturtium 
seeds were really in the ground. We could really touch real 
earth, and the dandelion stubble looked something like genuine 
grass ; our feet could touch it, and we could smile a little any¬ 
way, so we were a little bit happy even if our good friends could 
not enter fully into our happiness. Perhaps they had not been 
living in a flat 40 feet above the surface of the earth. But how 
could we blame good friends for doubting our success when even 
the kittens a year and a half old were so frightened at the first 
contact of their feet with real grass they ran to the attic and 
stayed there for three days, not daring to venture again into the 
mysteries of this new world. 
In August our table was daily beautified with nasturtiums fresh¬ 
ly picked, and pansies, and roses — real roses, Richmond’s and 
American Beauties from our very own bushes. And on the 
twenty-fifth day of October we picked the last beautiful buds and 
presented them to our doubting friends. 
We had bachelor buttons, too, and ferns, and morning glories; 
and a beautiful blue flower appeared on our hanging vine. We 
didn’t know the name of it and asked the florist who sold it to us. 
He said he never knew a blossom to come on that kind of vine 
before. And our geraniums bloomed — beautiful large clusters of 
red blossoms. Then there were purple columbines, and a blue 
{Continued on page 58) 
There is a bed of nasturtiums that bloomed the first year and the promise of a green vine¬ 
covering beside the house 
(38) 
