EXTRACTS FROM 
A Summer in Our Garden 
Mrs. Gertrude Ellis Skinner, before Minnesota State Horticultural Society. 
S I MMKH in our garden begins with the arrival 
of the first weed catalogue in January, and 
closes the day before its arrival the next 
January. In the seed catalogue we mark all the 
things we are KoiiiK to buy, we mark all the 
new things. There is the wonderberry, sweeter 
than the blueberry, with the fragrance of the 
pineapple and the luseiousness of the straw¬ 
berry! We mark the Himalaya-berry—which 
grows thirty' feet, sometimes sixty feet in a sin¬ 
gle season. Why, one catalogue told of a man 
who picked 3,833% pounds of berries from a 
single vine, besides what bis children ate. Our 
Himalaya vine grew four inches the first season 
and died the first winter. We were glad it did. 
We did not want such a monster running over 
our garden. We wanted to raise other thing's. 
Hut we did not lose faith in our catalogues. 
\\ c believe what they say just as the small boy 
believes he will see a lion eat a man at the cir¬ 
cus, because the billboard pictures him doing it. 
If wo ordered all the seeds we marked in the 
catalogue in January, we would require a town¬ 
ship for a garden, a Rockefeller to finance it and 
an army to hoe it. W> did not understand the 
purpose of a catalogue for a long time. A cata¬ 
logue is a stimulus. It’s like an oyster cocktail 
before a dinner, tin* singing before the sermon. 
S-knows no one ever raised such a 
crop of cabbages as he pictures or the world 
would be drowned in sauerkraut. If the llima- 
laya-berry bore as the catalogues say it does we 
should ail lu* buried in jam. 
Hut the best part of summer in our garden is 
tin* work we do in winter. Then it is that our 
garden is most beautiful, for we work in the 
garden of imagination, where drouth does not 
blight, nor storms devastate, where the worm 
never cuts nor the bugs destroy. No dog ever 
uproots in the garden of imagination, nor doth 
the hen scratch. This is the perfect garden. 
Our golden glow blossoms in all of its aurifer¬ 
ous splendor, the Oriental poppy is a barbaric 
blaze of glory, our roses are as fair as the tints 
of Aurora, the larkspur vies with the a/.ure of 
heaven, the Gladioli are like a galaxy of butter- 
tiles and our lilies like those which put Solomon 
in the shade. Every flower is in its proper place 
to make harmony complete. There is not a jar¬ 
ring note of color in our garden in the winter 
time. 
Then eomes the spring in our garden, a time of 
faith, vigilance and bard work. Faith that the 
seed will grow, vigilance that it is planted deep 
enough and has the right conditions in which to 
grow. Vigilance against frost, weeds and in¬ 
sects. Planting, sowing, hoeing, transplanting, 
coaxing, hoping, expecting, working—we never 
do half that we planned to do in the spring¬ 
time—there are not enough days, and the days 
we have are too short. 
Then conies summer, real summer in our gar¬ 
den. Then flowers begin to bloom, and our 
friends tell us they are lovely. Hut we see the 
flaws and errors. We feel almost guilty to have 
our garden praised, so many glaring faults and 
shortcomings has it. The color scheme is wrong, 
there are false notes here and there. There are 
tall plants where short plants should be. There 
are spaces and breaks and again spots over¬ 
crowded. We water and hoe, train vines, prop 
plants and kill the bugs, but we know the weak 
spots in our garden and vow that next summer 
we shall remedy every mistake. 
Then “summer in our garden” lias an autumn. 
The garden is never so beautiful as when the 
first frost strikes it.. Pillow-cases, sheets, 
shawls, aprons, coats and newspapers may for a 
brief time bold at bay the frost king, but he soon 
laughs at our efforts, crawls under the edges of 
the unsightly garments with which we protect 
our flowers, nips their petals, wilts their stems 
and blackens their leaves. We find them some 
morning hopelessly frozen. Hut the earth has 
ceased to give forth its aroma, the birds are 
winging southward, the waters of the brook run 
clear and cold, and the voice of the last cricket 
sounds lonesome in the land. We say to nature, 
"Work your will with our garden; the summer 
is over, and we are ready to plan for another 
season.” 
And what have we learned from the "summer 
in our garden.” That no one can be happy in 
his garden unless he works for the joy of the 
working. He who loves his work loves nature. 
To him bis garden is a groat cathedral, bound¬ 
less as his wonder, a place of worship. Above 
bim the dome ever changing in color and design, 
beautiful in sunshine or storm and thrice beau¬ 
tiful when studded with the eternal lamps of 
night. The walls are the trees, the vines and the 
shrubs, waving in the distant horizon and fling¬ 
ing their branches on the sky line, or close at 
hand where we hear the voice of the wind among 
the leaves. 
A wondrous floor is the garden’s cathedral of 
emerald green in the summer, sprinkled with 
flowers, of ermine whiteness in the winter, 
sparkling with the diamonds of frost. Its choir 
is the winds, the singing birds and the hum of 
insects. Its builder and maker is God. Man 
goeth to bis garden in the springtime, and, be¬ 
hold, all is mystery. There is the mystery of life 
about him, in the flowing sap in the trees, the 
springing of the green grass, the awakening of 
the insect world, the hatching of the worm from 
the egg, the changing of the worm into the but¬ 
terfly. 
The seed the gardener holds in his hand is a 
mystery. He knows what it will produce, but 
why one phlox seed will produce a red blossom 
and another a white is to him a miracle. He 
wonders at the prodigality of nature. In her 
economy, what is one or ten thousand seeds? 
She scatters them with lavish hand from rag¬ 
weed, thistle or oak. If man could make but the 
single seed of the ragweed, lie could make a 
world. The distance between a pansy and a 
planet is no greater than between man and a 
pansy. The gardener sees the same infinite care 
bestowed upon the lowest as upon the highest 
form of life, and he wonders at it. He looks into 
the face of a flower, scans the butterfly and notes 
the toadstool and sees that each is wonderful. 
From the time he enters his garden in the 
springtime until he leaves it in the autumn, he 
will find a place and a time to worship in his 
cathedral. He enters it with the seed in his 
hand in the spring, and as he rakes away the 
ripened plants in the autumn, he finds some¬ 
thing still of the mystery of life. A puffball is 
before him, and he muses on its forming. The 
little puffball stands at one end of the scale of 
life and he, man, at the other, “close to the 
realm where angels have their birth, just on the 
boundary of the spirit land.” From the things 
visible in our garden we learn of the things in¬ 
visible, and strong the faith of him who kneel¬ 
ing in adoration of the growing plant looks from 
nature to nature’s God and finds the peace which 
passetli understanding. 
THE SPRINGFIELD (OHIO) PUB. CO. 
Page Thirty-six 
7 he Good & Reese Company, Springfield, Ohio 
