240 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
April, iqii 
content with one’s present state, then 
surely the spirit is not retrograding. I'm 
sure I’m a reconstructed being in more 
ways than one since I moved to the 
country, especially in my attitude toward 
vegetables. During the first year I ig¬ 
nored the “sass patch”—treated it as a 
snob does the real toilers of this world. 
But gradually lured by the sheer beauty 
of bejewelled-by-dew cabbage, the fra¬ 
grance of the onion, I now expend as 
much muscle on the vegetable kingdom as 
I do on my roses, and incidentally I’ve 
become a vegetarian. 
That’s the only way to become one — 
just because there are so many good veg¬ 
etables to eat, one doesn't need to en¬ 
courage the slaughter of beasts to be well 
fed. 
And this kind of vegetarian, the acci¬ 
dental kind, is not afflicted with anaemia ; 
it is only the theories of the professional 
vegetarian that makes 
him look so bloodless. 
When we were once 
without a maid, and 
very busy in the stu¬ 
dio, we didn’t have 
time to prepare course 
dinners, so we 
chucked thirteen different kinds of vegetables 
in a big aluminum preserving kettle and went 
off about our business of being great. After 
several hours we came to, and remembering 
the pot a-boiling gave a yell of dismay; we 
were so sure it was burnt I don’t think we had 
time to use the stairs, the banisters were more 
expedite. Now, if that pot had contained a 
chicken it would have gone to glory, but lo and 
behold, there were our faithful vegetables 
philosophically stewing away, sending forth a 
fragrance that was like a patch quilt of odors. 
And when we sat down to sample the thirteen 
courses compressed into one, we found a dish 
delectable enough to make Lucullus and Sulla 
resurrect before their time. Of course we had 
so much left over, after we’d gorged our¬ 
selves, the next day was provided for too, and 
by merely adding a preponderance of tomato 
the stew was metamorphosed on Tuesday (we’ll 
say it was Monday when this kitchen vaude¬ 
ville began), and on Tuesday the meal was 
quite different; on Wednesday by the addition 
of much cabbage and little disks of bacon, still 
another culinary enigma was achieved; on 
Thursday a heavy hand with celery made a 
new avatar of the dish; on Friday carrots 
recklessly donated caused a strange masquer¬ 
ade of flavor; on Saturday cauliflower gave 
the departing a reprieve, and on Sunday we 
held a wake over all the ghosts of thirteen van¬ 
ishing vegetables. 
The gardener is an explorer, an experimen¬ 
talist, an idealist, and best of all he becomes 
inevitably a humanitarian. If he is an artist, 
he can satisfy all the cravings of his soul for 
color and pictures; if a musician he can find 
expression for all the harmony in his being. Music, painting and 
gardening are based on the same laws of color, harmony, compo¬ 
sition. Take a long path that is bordered by hollyhocks on each 
side, ranging from white through pinks, lilacs, salmon, red, yellow, 
climaxing with black. 
The path leads curvingly, luringly to a point of exceeding love¬ 
liness, an open vista commanding a general view of the garden, 
and the distant hills and countryside. Is it not like the gradual 
crescendo of a passage of music developing through tones of ever- 
increasing richness to the final magnificent chord? A gardener 
lives in the present and future; if he has a sad past, he forgets it. 
A garden is ageless, and the gardener becomes ageless too, as 
ageless as the wind, the rain, the sun, summer and winter, for he 
becomes one with them all. 
I don't believe any living creatures could remain bad if they 
associated daily with flowers, for flowers have such an Irish way 
of seducing with blarney of beauty to the simple, real and only 
abiding things of life. 
Finding contentment, the gardener exhales it. 
Tucked away in a dim corner of the curiosity shop of my brain 
is a fragment heard, read or dreamed some time in the nebulous 
(Continued on page 300) 
“If the gardener is an artist, he can satisfy all the cravings of his soul for color and 
pictures; if a musician, he can find expression for all the harmony in his being” 
