HOUSE AND GARDEN 
261 
| April, 1914 
When the iris are in bloom, when the water lilies smile, when the fish are swimming in the pool 
-visitors will admire my garden, but I shall go putterin’ away at other tasks 
Nature is the ability to house, clothe and feed himself. In our 
Twentieth Century civilization nobody wishes to make himself 
ridiculous by wearing clothes of his own manufacture, but he is 
not made ridiculous by practice in agriculture and carpentry. 
That is the reason why most men, when they putter, do so with a 
saw or a spade. That is why a garden is the ideal spot for put¬ 
terin’. If you can build a hotbed frame and a trellis and a rose 
arch, and perhaps a summer house; if you can spade up the soil 
and grow flowers and corn and celery and cauliflowers — obviously 
you would not be wholly helpless on Crusoe’s island. No man 
likes to feel that he would 
be helpless on Crusoe’s 
island; no man likes to feel 
that, however skilful he may 
be in some super-profession 
of civilization, he has no 
command over the primitive 
arts on which civilization 
was based back before tbe 
dawn of history, and upon 
which, for that matter, it 
rests to-day. So, whether 
he realizes it or not, it is 
really pride which makes a 
man putter ’round his gar¬ 
den, or build a book-shelf in 
his carpenter shop in a cor¬ 
ner of the barn. If a man 
does not feel the urge of 
such a pride, naturally he 
doesn't putter — and upon 
close acquaintance you will 
generally discover that he 
lacks certain qualities of 
healthy virility. It used to 
be the fashion to hold up the Yankee jack-of-all-trades to con¬ 
tempt. He was not contemptible. He was merely enamored of 
his power over his environment—and he was extremely handy 
'round the house! In these effete days, when we even hire a spe¬ 
cialist for so simple an operation as screwing on our double win¬ 
dows, he seems almost a demi-god. And the greatness of New 
England vanished with his passing. 
It is once more spring in my garden. I have a new hotbed to 
build, which will be a movable framework set on a cement-sided 
pit. Tbe chestnut lumber and the bags of cement even now stand 
out behind the tool house. 
My wife’s aunt gave me a 
new saw for Christmas (un¬ 
der protest, as it seemed to 
her a most unaesthetic pres¬ 
ent, and my delight was in¬ 
comprehensible), and I am 
eager to be at the work. The 
floor of my summer house, 
where 1 write in warm 
weather, dashing out to pull 
weeds between paragraphs, 
needs repairing. The stumps 
of a Japanese willow hedge 
cut down last autumn must 
be grubbed up before they 
sprout — a task of heroic 
proportions, for no tree on 
earth has such tenacious 
roots, such hungry, soil¬ 
sucking roots, as the Japan¬ 
ese willow. I shall do all 
these things myself, and 
many more besides. When 
(Continued on page 325) 
My putterin's — what delicious moments they represent—when the April sun beats 
down pleasantly upon my neck — when 1 pause to straighten out the kinks in my back! 
