Chapter II: Part 2

Stocks. I need them in plenty, but I must walk warily amongst such luxuries with only three pounds to spend and so many other things to buy. Wallflowers, red and gold; but, alas! the Master has warned me these are for next year, as also many other things. The polyanthuses, that I long to see in masses like a fine Persian carpet, the pansies and violas, the forget-me-nots, even the Canterbury bells and campanulas and sweet-Williams must be thought of now, and will need the year round before coming to flowering time. Still, down they go on my list. And gaillardias, too, they look so handsome in the picture and promise so much: "showy, beautiful, brilliant, useful for cutting" (there were those Others to think of), and they were perennials. Blessed perennials! Then larkspur or delphinium, I should say, for I did not want the annual variety. I could not wait, however, to grow those tall, beautiful spikes of bright blue, Oxford and Cambridge in colour, from seed, I must indulge in plants. Hollyhocks must also be bought ready-made, and phlox. Oh! the poverty-stricken little specimens that grew in my garden, flowers capable of such beauty. I had seen them growing in the Lake country and marvelled at their upstanding mass of brilliant heads. They were a revelation as to what the phlox family could do.

And there were all the magnificent possibility of lilies, of gladiolas and montbresias, and ixias. These must be bought. I must have them, but oh! the years before I could make a home for all. I turned to the annuals; they sounded as easy to grow as Jack's bean-stalk. What a list! Antirrhinum--that is, snapdragon, but one gets used even to spelling the other name--red, white and yellow; the taller kind call themselves half-hardy perennials, but I don't believe they would stand my winter, and the dwarf variety do their duty nobly for one summer. Mignonette, that was a necessity; marguerites, annual chrysanthemums sounded inviting; "continuous blooming" would suit the Others.

Convolvulus and heaps of nasturtium, canariensis and other little tropoeoleum. Balsam and asters; no, though I liked the sound of balsam, still I could do without it, and I must do without something! But of sweet-peas I could not have too many, even though most of the "dukes" and "duchesses" cost a shilling a packet. I pictured hedges and hedges of sweet-peas in the garden, and bowls and bowls of blossom in the house. Sunflowers again--"golden-nigger," "æsthetic gem," "Prussian giant"--how could one help sampling such seductive names? And tagetes, the Master had said, "Get tagetes, it is a useful border." Marigolds, too, they were not a favourite of mine, but they lasted well into the autumn, and I had to think of the failing months. Zinnias I could not resist because they are so "high art" in their colouring; and salpiglosis, the Master had a lovely group of these daintily-pencilled belles.

Then I made up my list, threepence, and sixpence, and one shilling, and one shilling and sixpence. How they mounted up. Thirty shillings in seeds! and I had to buy plants and bulbs too. But I could cut out nothing, though it had been very easy to make additions.

But now to get all these thousands of seeds sown. They could not all be sown in the open; I knew so much. Those for coming on quickly would need little wooden boxes and a place in the one frame full of bothering geraniums; and when they were bigger they would need pricking out in more wooden boxes, and could only be planted out permanently the beginning of June.

Well, what for the open? Sweet-peas--thank goodness for that!--and the wallflowers, Canterbury bells--cup and saucer variety had taken my fancy--sweet-Williams, sunflowers, nasturtium, mignonette and forget-me-nots, they could all be trusted straight to Mother Earth; and I had enough of the dear brown bosom, bare of all children, down in that long desolate border. And for the boxes and pricking out and glass frame I would begin with antirrhinum, stocks, violas, tagetes, zinnia, salpiglosis, lobelias, polyanthus and columbine. That must suffice for the first year. But oh! what a lot of flowers there were to be had, and how lovely a garden might be if only--well, if only one had a real gardener, money, the sunny border, good soil, and--if they all came up!

And what flowers had I omitted? Of simple things that even an Ignoramus may have heard. There were all the poppy tribe, Iceland, Shirley, the big Orientals, Californian, though these are not poppies proper at all; verbena, the very name smelt sweet; gypsophila, a big word, but I knew the dainty, grass-like flower from London shops; penstemons, carnation, scabious, or lady's pincushions. The only way was to shut that book resolutely and go and write to Veitch.

The book said, and so did each little neat packet of seeds, "sow in pots or pans," or "sow in heat," and talked of a cool frame and compost, so, armed with this amount of knowledge, I took my seeds out to old Griggs.

"Griggs, have you any wooden boxes or pans or things in which we can sow these seeds?"

Griggs looked at me suspiciously; he did not like my energy, there was no doubt of that, but since he was a gardener he recognised that flower seeds, or such-like, ought to be in his line.

He took the packets.

"P'haps I can knock up a box or two. That frame's mostly full of janiums, though. I've a nice quantity of them saved."

"But we can't fill the garden with nothing but geraniums, you know. I want to have a great show this year; don't you? Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to you to see the garden looking nice than like a howling wilderness?"

Griggs laughed, positively.

"You've got to spend money if you wants flowers, and the old rector as was 'e never put 'is 'and in 'is pocket for no sich thing as flowers. I dunno 'bout a 'owling wilderness. My fancy is them janiums brightens up a place wonderful."

I pushed open the lights of the long frame by which we were standing and looked at the stalky, unpromising appearance of old Griggs's favourites. There were other lean and hungry-looking plantlets there, a bit yellow about the tips.

"What are those?" I asked, pointing.

"Oh, them's marguerites, white and yellow. I got Mr Wright up at the 'All to give me them cuttings. They wanted a bit of water this morning so I give it em."

I pressed my finger on the sodden soil of the box that held the drooping cuttings. "They have had too little, and now you have given them too much," I said sternly. How could I trust my precious seeds to this old murderer? "Griggs, if you would only _love_ the flowers a bit, they would grow with you."

"Bless you! they'll grow, they 'aven't took no hurt. Let's look at your seeds. Anti--rrh--well, what's this name?"

"Snapdragon."

"Oh, and violas and polyan--thus. Well, we can get 'em in. I've a box or two."

But I grabbed all my packets quickly.

"All right, get the boxes ready and I will come and sow them myself."

The boxes were filled with a light soil, mixed with sand and leaf mould. I turned it over myself to look for worms or other beasts, and very, very thinly, as I thought, I scattered the tiny seeds over the surface and gave them a good watering. Then out with some of the scraggiest of Griggs's plants and in with my precious boxes.

I felt Griggs's hands must not touch them. He had something wrong about him, for a gardener, that is to say. He always broke the trailing branch he was supposed to be nailing up; he always trod on a plant in stepping across a border; if he picked a flower he did it with about an inch of stalk and broke some other stem; no blessing flowed from his hand when he planted out the flowers.

I sowed the end of February, and in March little tiny green heads were peeping up in most of the boxes. The violas still remained hidden. If Griggs had sown I should have said he had done it very irregularly, for the green heads came in thick patches and then again very sparingly; but I knew, of course, it must have been the seeds' own fault, since I had done it myself!

* * * * *

I was standing with his Reverence at the study window watching a squirrel swing himself from bough to bough, and I think we were both envying him, when my eye caught some specks of colour on the grass plot in front, that grass plot which ought to have a sun-dial in the centre and a stately bed of flowering shrubs as a background instead of laurels! What was it growing in the grass? White, yellow, purple, a touch here and there, all across, straight across, in one horrid straight line! Could it be?

"Look, Mary, there he goes! See him spring up that tree?"

"Look," I said in a tragic voice, "look at them! Do you think--can it be--are they my crocuses?"

"Where? Oh, there! Yes, I thought they looked like a rather straggly regiment this morning, marching single file. Was that your idea?"

"My idea! a straight line! Oh, how can you! That old fiend of a Griggs!" And then I rushed out to see the full extent of the horror.

It was too true. In spite of my careful scattering the old ruffian had drawn my crocus bulbs into line. I can see how he did it, striding across the grass, clutching bulbs to right and left, sticking them in under his nose, and probably sweeping up those outside his reach with the dead leaves. What a show! Many had not come up, and many had no flower, so the regiment was ragged. I could have cried.

Jim had joined me.

"Don't think much of this idea anyhow Mary."

"Don't you know how I meant it to be? Haven't you seen the Park?"

"Can't say I've given it my undivided attention lately. Shall I go and pitch into old Griggs?"

"It would be no good. I must do that."

"That isn't fair, Mary. If I'm to help you I must have some of the fun."

"Jim! It is no fun to me. You can't _murder_ him, and nothing else would be any good. What shall I do with them?"

I looked at my poor little first-fruits. They did look so forlorn and battered. A crocus all alone, separated from its kind by a foot or so, has a most orphaned and cheerless appearance.

"Let's have 'em up," said Jim, the man of action.

"No, they mustn't be moved in flower, not even till their leaves die, and by that time the grass will be mowed and I shan't know where they are, and then it will look like this next year too."

"Oh rot!" said Jim, "something has got to be done. Can't have these stragglers roaming across the lawn and never getting home. I know," and off he was and returned with a lot of little sticks which he proceeded to plant by the side of each crocus. "Now we will locate the gentlemen and have 'em up when their poverty-stricken show is over."

Afterwards, when Jim saw in my account that crocuses were two shillings a hundred, he said I did not value his time very highly. He thought by my face we were dealing with things of value. But anyway we moved that ragged regiment on and stationed them in clumps at the foot of trees, where they will look more comfortable.

* * * * *

March should be a very busy month, and old Griggs found employment in the kitchen garden. I should have moved plants now, and arranged the neglected herbaceous border of the autumn, but, alas! all the new green things coming up were strangers to me, and I saw quickly that in their present state Griggs was as likely to make mistakes as I. He hazarded names with a scratch of the head and a pull at the tender green shoots that made me angry.

"Them's a phlox, and them's--oi can't quite mind, it's purple like; and them's flags, but they ain't never much to look at; too old, I reckon. That's a kind of purple flower, grows it do, and that 'ere's a wallflower." This was said with decision, and I too could recognise the poor specimen of a spring joy.

So I left well, or ill, alone until the nature of the plant should be declared, and then, if useless, out it could come later.

We prepared a long narrow bed alongside a row of cabbages, made a neat little trench some three inches deep, put in a layer of manure and mould on top, and there my first sowing of sweet-peas was placed, and carefully covered and watered and patted down. I felt like a mother who tucks her child in bed. Surely the pat did good! February, March and April were all to have their sowing, and then the summer months should have a succession of these many-coloured fragrant joys.

In March also the other annuals found resting-places; some in square patches down the long border, some in rows that looked inviting down the side and cross paths of the kitchen domain. It was encroaching, of course, but no one used the spare edges, and it seemed kind to brighten up the cabbages and onions, all now coming up in long thread-like lines of green. I had added a few more seeds to my list, so a long row of tiny seeds that were to be blue cornflowers, with another row in front of godetia, would provide, I hoped, a very bright sight and be so useful for cutting.

On Shirley poppies, too, I ventured. It seemed so easy just to sow a few seeds and trust to Nature to do the rest. I did not then appreciate the backache caused by the process "thinning out."

People may talk of sowing in February, but one cannot sow in either frozen ground or deep snow. Some Februarys may be possible, but it was the beginning of March that year before I committed my seeds to Mother Earth, and even then it seemed a very unsafe proceeding. However, a lot of tiny green pin points soon appeared, and the only havoc wrought by birds, mice and rabbits--Griggs suggested every imaginable animal--was amongst the sweet-peas. These had to be protected with a network of cotton.

* * * * *

So the winter slipped away very gradually, for even after the first breath of spring, which comes to us from afar and thrills us as no other fragrance of air, frost, snow, rain and biting winds triumph again, and bud and sprouting green seem to shrink up and cower away. Yet we know the winter is surely passing and the first trumpet-blast of spring's procession has blown.

SEASON II

Spring

"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."

Daffodils always make me glad. From the moment their strong, blue-green blades pierce the grass, they give one a feeling of strength, vigour, activity and determination to be up and doing, unmindful of wind or weather; in fact, using all for their own purpose, bending circumstances to their own development.

And when the big golden bell bursts its sheath of pale green it does it with fine independence, and then swings on its strong stem, ringing out lustily that the spring is here, the sun is shining, for the sun always seems to shine on the daffodils, they reflect his glory under all clouds, and depression flies before their sturdy assumption of "All's well with the world."

And so I felt very hopeful as I saw my circles, my clusters, my rows of daffodils, one by one, flashing up from the delicious blue-green blades. They none of them failed me, none, bless them! So plant daffodils, O friend Ignoramus! the single, the double, and any other of that dear family, the narcissus.

The birds were singing, and oh, so busy making late love, building and even nesting! The trees were bursting, the lilacs had a shimmer of green. The larches had colour almost too dim to be called green, they streaked the woods that still looked brown without looking bare; little catkins hung and danced, the blackthorn looked like forgotten snow, the grass was greener, and here and there a sweet primrose bud peeped up, whispering, "We are coming."

Down under the row of limes bordering the sloping field I found many pretty crumpled primrose leaves, and they gave me the idea to plant more and more, and to have my wild garden here, with snowdrops and cowslips, unseen things in our woods and fields. Ferns, too, of the common kind must be collected, and foxgloves, the seeds of which must be bought and sown. For the present there were the little wild things that grow on their own account, and are so sparklingly green and spring-like that one hardly likes to rebuke them with the name of weed.

Hope was in the air. Everything is young again once a year.

* * * * *

I felt obliged to begin the second division of my year in a hopeful voice, so I opened with my daffodils; but if March be taken as the first month of spring, then indeed I should not have written of that chime of golden bells. March holds February very tightly by the hand, and cannot make up her mind to hurry on with her work of opening the buds and encouraging the flowers. She blows cold winds in their faces, nips them with frosty nights, occasionally wraps them up in snow, then suddenly, repenting her of the evil, she opens up a blue sky and pours a hot sun down on them. A most untrustworthy month.

There is plenty of work to do, particularly if February has not been an open month, and for gardening purposes I really think it ought never to be so considered, and still more particularly if much has been neglected in the foregoing November. If you are an Ignoramus, and have a Griggs as gardener, the chances are much will have been neglected.

My attention was called to the subject of roses by the arrival of a rose-grower's catalogue.

Roses! I could only touch the very outer fringe of this magnificent garment, but I felt I must, positively must, have one or two of the cheaper sort of these dazzling beauties; and though they are better moved in the autumn, in early spring it is not impossible. A crimson rambler, the modest price one shilling and sixpence, tempted me to indulge in three. The deep yellow William Allen Richardson, delightful for buttonholes, which Jim assured me no garden should be without; the thought of a red Gloire de Dijon or Reine Marie Hortense was also quite overcoming. Our old yellow Gloire de Dijon was the only rose in my neglected garden that did herself proud, and she flourished up the front of the house and festooned one of the Others' windows, from which Griggs and his shears had been summarily banished. "Cut where you like, but never dare to come here," had been uttered in a voice that made even Griggs "heed." If her red sister only equalled this "glory" that half-crown would be well expended. Then two standards needed replacing, for one could not have dead sticks down so conspicuous a row; though standards were not my idea of roses, still there they were and I must make the best of them. So off went my modest order. I had indicated the whereabouts of each rose to Griggs, but was unfortunately not present on their arrival. I think even an Ignoramus might have helped Griggs on that occasion--but more of that anon.

The Others could see but little improvement in the garden, this they let me know; they were full of ideas, and I found them as trying as some Greek heroine must have found an unsympathetic chorus. "The verandah was so bare! Was it really any use putting in that silly little twig? Would it ever come to anything?" This of my new and very bare-looking crimson rambler. And then, "Why had we no violets? Surely _violets_ were not an impossibility? They grew of themselves. Just look at the baskets full in the London streets. Such a bunch for a penny! But it would be nice not to have to go to London for one's bunch of violets!"

I took up the cudgels. They should see how that crimson rambler ramped, yes, I prophesied, positively ramped up the archway. They should be buried in a fragrant bower of ruby-coloured clusters, and they might cut and come again. As to violets, I was giving them my best consideration; the bed down the garden produced but a few--certainly not a pennyworth--of inferior quality, because neither violets nor anything else, save weeds, grew and flourished by the light of Nature alone. The violet roots were choked with weeds, and I must have new suckers and begin all over again; and that was not possible until the violet season was over; then I intended to beg, borrow or steal some good suckers, and buy others if I had any money.

"Mary, you speak like a book with pictures; but I hope there will be _some_ result, and that the violets will be ready before they are needed for our funeral wreaths."

I entreated them to find the patience I had thoroughly lost, and hurried out to rage over the thickly weed-wedged violet plants, with here and there a feeble bloom, and to imagine myself in years to come bending over this same bed, picking one long strong stalk after another, and scarcely lessening the store by the big bunch I should carry away. Oh! a lifetime was not enough for all I should or could do in a garden.

* * * * *

There is a row of standard roses skirting the lawn on one side, and also a round bed of rose bushes. I had not much idea if they were any good, for roses had been to a great extent spoilt the last two years by very wet weather, still I had noticed the shoots they were sending forth with great pleasure. Anyhow _they_ were growing right enough. One day, the middle of March, I found Griggs busy down the row with a large knife. What was he doing? Horror! All the long shoots were being ruthlessly sacrificed.

"Griggs, what _are_ you doing?" I gasped, and afterwards I felt very glad I said nothing stronger.

Griggs paid no attention to my tone; he took the words as showing a desire for enlightenment.

"You 'as to cut 'em a bit in spring-time, you know; or p'haps you don't know, missy."

This mode of address was one of Griggs's most unpardonable sins, but I never had the strength of character to tell him not to do it.

"But do you cut off _all_ the new growth?" I said, with an inner conviction that if Griggs were doing it it needs must be wrong.

"Well, you trims 'em round a bit, starts 'em growin' more ways than one, d'ye see."

"But those aren't suckers?" I said, still feebly fighting with my ignorance and incredulity.

Then Griggs laughed. He did not like me, and I suppose I ought not to wonder, but he enjoyed laughing at me when he got the chance.

"No-a, they ain't suckers; suckers come from the root, leastways, they start down there, and, bless yer! they be the ol' stock trying to have a look in as you may say. I cuts them off soon as I sees 'em, as they wastes the tree; but you _can_ see suckers as 'as got the upper 'and. That rose front of the 'ouse is all sucker now. 'Twas a beautiful pink rose I mind in old Rector Wood's time."

"That is very instructive," I remarked, feeling no gratitude to Griggs for his information, as he felt no shame for the metamorphosis of the once beautiful pink rose, which was now a wild one. We had wondered how it came to be growing up with the clematis.

"And can't one cut back the suckers and let the pink rose grow again?" I added.

"'Tain't likely," was all I could get out of Griggs.

I bicycled over that very day to the Master's garden, a hot and tiring way of getting information, but a sure one, I knew, and one to which I often had recourse in desperate moments. The Master was out, but his garden was there, and all his rose trees were clipped. So I breathed again.

I had a little good luck with violets a few weeks later.

A friend who had heard of my gardening efforts sent me several dozen runners of the "Czar," and the Master spared me some others from his frame. I was full of joy, and choosing a shady spot, saw it dug, raked, helped out with a mixture of manure and leaf-mould, planted the violets at six inches apart and liberally watered them. Shade, of course, for the modest violet, I thought, carefully selecting for their home the shelter of an overhanging chestnut. Well, well! one lives to learn, or for some such purpose, I suppose.

The thick branches of that shadowing tree kept out sun as well as rain; and, doubt it not, brother Ignoramus, violets, be they ever so modest, like the sunshine and will only pine without it. So in the autumn another move took place, and again I waited, whilst the Others bought penny bunches and talked of funeral wreaths in the far future.

* * * * *

The long herbaceous border grew more and more interesting. A broad-leafed plant had been sending up tall stems, now it opened out and a big daisy-like blossom of yellow shone in the sun. "Leopard's bane," said old Griggs with decision, and "doronicum," said the Master, both being right, but I know not why it was considered a bane or healing, for the banes among the flowers are surely blessings. But there it was, and very grateful and comforting at this early time of year. As though conscious that a friendly eye had begun to watch over them, the scattered old plants of polyanthus, wallflower, a group or so of tulips and some clumps of London pride brushed up this spring and cheered the eye.

I was studying the shooting green clumps, lilies here and there, golden rod, autumn daisy, maybe a stray phlox, many, very much too many, evening primroses, seedlings of self-sown foxgloves, and wondering how to rearrange them and make room for the better company I intended introducing, when his Reverence's Young Man came down the path laden with a big brown hamper. He looked quite excited.

"Oh, Mistress Mary, do come and examine the contents. I hope you may find welcome strangers here. I told my mother you needed anything and everything except geraniums. Was that right? So she has sent this hamper with instructions to get them in at once."

The Young Man was cutting away at string and fastenings, and rapidly strewing the path with big clumps of roots in which a careful hand had stuck a label.

I was divided between joy and reproof.

"How kind of her! But you should not have bothered her. How nice to have such big, ready-grown plants! But why did you do it?"

"Mayn't I help the garden to grow? My mother promises more in the autumn; it appears flowers like to move just before winter."

"It is kind of you. This border is such a weight on my mind. It needs so much, I think. And what a lot the hamper holds!"

"Let me do the dirty work," cried the Young Man, as I hauled out a big root. "You shall tell me where to plant them."

"The earth isn't dirty, it is beautifully, healthily clean; and don't you love its 'most excellent cordial smell'? Shall I get Griggs and a spade?"

"Oh, why bother Griggs? Won't I do as well? I know nearly as much and am twice as willing."

"Yes, but think of--"

"Don't say parish. There is only old Mrs Gunnet and she will keep. These plants demand immediate attention. My mother was most emphatic about that."

It is very difficult to have a conscience as well as a garden and to keep both in good working order. I could not think Mrs Gunnet and her rheumatism as important as my garden; moreover, I felt I was carrying out the teaching of Tolstoy in bringing man and his Mother Earth into direct contact.

"Griggs could not come anyhow, he is digging a grave," I said conclusively. "Let us do it."

So the Young Man fetched a selection of gardening implements and we both set to work, he to dig and I to instruct.

"This is delphinium," I cried joyfully, handing him a big clump, "dark blue, I want it badly." And in answer to an inquiring look, for the Young Man knew less, much less, than I did, "That is larkspur and it is a perennial, and this jolly big root means plenty of spikes."

"Spikes!" he echoed, patting the roots vigorously.

"Those tall spikes of flowers, you know, very blue. One looks so lonely all by itself."

"Ah! that is a way we all have, we poor solitary ones."

"These are penstemons. They are, well, I forget, but I know I want them. Suppose we put them further forward; they don't look like growing so tall. Gaillardias, ah! I know, they are brilliant and effective. I bought some seeds to suit the others. These will save time. Now, a big hole; this is Tritoma. What on earth is that? I have heard. Grandis means big but Tritoma?"

We both studied the label.

"Must it have another name? Is that the rule? I told my mother the gardener was an Ignoramus. She might have written in the vulgar tongue."

"Did you mean me or Griggs?"

"Griggs, of course."

"Then you were wrong. But I remember now, I was studying its picture this morning in the catalogue. Tritoma stands for red-hot poker. It will look fine at the back."

"Well, you are getting on," said the Young Man, in tones of admiration. "But why won't they say 'poker' and have done with it?"

"I wish they would. It is very trying of them. See what a lot you are learning. This is much more improving for a son of Adam than visiting old women and babies."

"_Much!_ And I like it much better, which shows it is good for me."

"Ah, I don't know about that. Still, it does strike me as absurd to send a young man fresh from college to visit old women and babies. I can't think what you say to them."

"I say 'Did ums was ums' to the babies. But I am not quite fresh from college, you know. I talk some kind of sense to the mothers; at least, I hope so."

He was making a big hole and I was holding out a big root to fill it.

"This is galega. It is rather tall and so must go at the back. I don't mean you never talk sense, though I consider it insulting to address a baby like that. They look so preternaturally grave that Greek would suit them better. But I mean it isn't a man's work, it is a woman's."

"Galega! that means pok--no, larkspur! You see I am getting quite learned. There, it fits in beautifully."

"Press the roots firmly or they don't take hold," I observed.

"So. I always find your conversation very improving. My mother says the same things to me, I mean about old women."

I had walked down the path for another root. He went on when I came back,

"But you know the old women, and young ones too, like a visit from their clergy. The clergyman and doctor are great boons in their lives."

"Poor souls, I know they are very hard up. Even I am considered a boon, especially when I go round with puddings and things."

"Or without!" and he looked up quickly, "_I_ should think so if--but"--and his voice changed--"I do understand what you mean. _This_ is Adam's work, eh? Only the other is the vineyard too, and we, I--I mean, need the experience it gives me. They live at the root of things, touch life so nearly. It is something like coming in touch, actual touch, with the brown earth. Do you see what I am trying to say?"

I looked up at him from my plants, at this tall young man in a bicycling suit of semi-clerical cut, with his keen face and earnest eyes, whom we had fallen into the way of treating in almost brotherly fashion since his Reverence had adopted him as his Young Man as well as curate. He had broken down in some Midland town from overwork and come to Fairleigh to recruit and study and fill in a convalescent time. As a rule we did not like the curates.

"I think you are right," I said, "but somehow I feel I am right too in a way. One can't be saving souls all the time--one's own or other people's--and here, as you say, is Adam's work, the brown earth."

He laughed. "And here is Eve naming the flowers! I am sure Eve kept Adam to the digging while she picked the fruit."

"How men do love that old allegory! Personally I don't think they come out of it so well that they need quote it so often. However, as it gives them all the backbone, I feel quite absolved when I ask them to use it!"

The Young Man rose up. "Ah! if Eve had had the spirit of her daughters!"

"Here is a very large phlox, please dig that hole bigger," I interrupted, and as we carefully placed it in position, down the path came his Reverence and the Master.

"Oh!" I shouted, "come and see all my new arrivals; I am going to cut you out!"

The Master examined our work over his spectacles, and looked up and down the border critically, ending his survey with an unpromising "Humph."

Something was very wrong, evidently. My hopeful spirits sank.

"Have we been doing anything very ignorant? Don't you put plants straight into the earth? Will they all die?"

The Master laughed.

"Let us hope things are not as desperate as all that. I was looking at your border. Oh, what pauper fare! and what a lot of rubbish in it. Licence has reigned here for many a long year."

"For over twenty," I exclaimed savagely. "Griggs has been here quite that time."

"It used to look very well in Mr Wood's time, but that is many years ago, and he devoted himself chiefly to his roses. It is a pity you did not do it in the autumn."

"Oh, don't, Master!" I cried dolefully. "Nothing is more trying to my temper than to be told of all the things that ought to have been done months and years ago. I can't go back and do them!"

"No more you can. There is a great deal of sound sense in that remark, only--"

"And don't tell me to wait until the autumn again. I can't always be waiting for the other end of the year to do the things I want done now."

"Oh! then let us go forward at once," said the Master.

"What shall I do?" asked the Young Man, with as much energy as though the afternoon were just beginning. "Shall I take out the roots we have put in to begin with?"

The Master again looked up and down, and I could see he was again regretting the autumn.

"If you won't wait it must be done," he said at last. "Have this border thoroughly well turned over, two feet deep at the least, and work in some of that savoury heap I saw in your little yard. You will find a good deal of root to cut away from those trees; they take the food from this border, but that can't be helped now. Then clear out the weeds and those terrible marigolds I see springing up everywhere, and those poppy seedlings. I think your new friends will have a better chance when that is done."

"And the plants that are to stay, may they be touched?"

"You _must_ touch them, but do a piece at a time, and lift them in and out with a good ball of earth round the roots so as to disturb them as little as possible. Press them well in afterwards and water."

"Should Griggs put some of the savoury heap just round their roots?"

"No, no, let the whole border have a dressing. Later on any special plant may be mulched if it is needed."

"Mulched!" said the Young Man, turning to me. "Do you know what that is?"

I shook an ignorant head.

"Something to do with manure, I believe, but I don't know what."

"Griggs will show you," laughed the Master.

"No, he has his own vocabulary. I try the garden book words on him occasionally and he looks quite blank."

"It is giving the plants a little extra food from the surface. So it sinks gradually in or the rain carries it down with it. A gentle process and the roots are not disturbed. The other process may produce indigestion, you see."

Adam and Eve carefully replaced the unplanted roots in the hamper and gave a sigh.

"Oh, dear! All our work. You might as well have gone to see Mrs Gunnet."

"Oh, no," said Adam, "because I have learnt a great deal and can help you another time."

It was a good thing for me and the border that the Master had looked so grave over it, for his Reverence was duly impressed with the necessity of the case, and Griggs and a helpful stranger were hard at work next day and the next, and by the end of that week the border lay smooth and brown and neat with hopeful green patches at intervals. Jim and I and the Young Man had been very busy arranging those patches, and I hoped the front plants would not grow taller than the back, but a good deal had been left to luck. The evening primroses and marigolds and weeds had disappeared, I hoped for good. Time proved that this was too hopeful a view to take of weeds.

And I will never forget the Master's parting injunction.

"Mind," with raised finger, "you ought never to take a spade near your herbaceous border, only turn it over with a little fork, for the well-established roots should not be disturbed. And good soil and sufficient water ought to be enough as a rule. To-day we have been dealing with an exceptional case, remember that!"

Oh! Master, yes. Mine is an exceptional case; but I guess there are many would-be gardeners as ignorant, and, maybe, many gardens as exceptional.

* * * * *

But to return to my hopefully-growing seeds. I fear they were being left anyway rather longer than was judicious, for one day about the beginning of April it struck me my wooden boxes were very full and the plantlets growing very leggy.

"Why is that?" I asked Griggs. I hated asking Griggs, but there was no one else to ask. After all it seemed _impossible_ but that Griggs, during the forty odd years he had pretended to be a gardener, should not have gathered together some scraps of information concerning plants and their ways.

"They wants pricking out, that's why they're so spindle-shankey. 'Tain't no good asking me for more boxes, I ain't got no more; and you can't put 'em out in the open neither--leastways, they'll die if you do."

"Of course not," I said with all the knowledge I possessed in my tone. "But we must have boxes. They can be knocked up, can't they?"

"Not without wood, they can't. And just look at all them seeds wot you've sowed. Why, they wants a sight o' boxes now."

It was a dilemma, but Jim revived my faint spirits.

There were boxes--old winecases--in the cellar, he said. Jim knew every nook and cranny of the house; he would just ferret them out; no one would miss them. Jim never asked leave, for experience had taught him that a demand occasions a curious rise in the value of an article absolutely unknown to the possessor before it was required by someone else. And Griggs knocked them together, for Jim explained we had to let the fellow try his hand occasionally.

We filled the new boxes with a little heavier diet than the baby seeds had enjoyed, good mould from under some shrubbery, and then carefully separated each stem; and carrying out Nature's law of the survival of the fittest, I placed the most promising in the new environment.

I had done one whole box, it looked so neat, the little upright shoots all about three inches apart, when Jim and the Young Man came round.

He had been away for a few days and was quite anxious to know how my garden grew.

He had altered the old rhyme with which, of course, his Reverence and the Others were always pestering me; but I don't think his version was very original either--

"How does the garden so contrairy
Get on with its new Mistress Mary?"

I was seated on the corner of the one frame and the boxes were precariously placed on the edge.

The Young Man's face beamed. "I have been learning to prick out; now, let me see."

And to my horror he began to pull up my neat little plants.

"There, that's wrong, and that and that. No, that stands; but see, all these are wrong."

I gasped, "What are you doing? Do you call that pricking out? I don't."

"By Jove! you'll catch it now, my dear fellow," said Jim.

"Oh! don't you see it's all right to do that, because it shows you you have done them all wrong."

"I think you have misunderstood the idea of 'pricking out,'" I said coldly.

The Young Man was so full of information he paid no attention to my offended dignity or Jim's mirth.

"I learnt it on purpose to show you. I planted a box full at home and the gardener came round and did that to my plants. I nearly whacked him on the head."

"You're a parson," interrupted Jim, "you've got to think of that."

"I know, Jim. I managed to bottle my feelings nearly as well as Mistress Mary did just now. I know what she is feeling."

But I was still dignified.

"Now will you tell me," I began.

"Oh, it's a first-rate dodge! You see, if they are firmly put in they will stand that little pull, and if not it shows you ought to have wedged them in better."

"Why," said Jim, "I bet I could tug out any you could wedge in."

"That's the art; you must wedge right and tug just enough."

"And why," I asked again, "why this tugging and this wedging?"

"Oh, because otherwise they don't catch hold properly and make themselves at home. I didn't mean to spoil your neat box," he continued penitently. "May I help you?"

"Why, of course you must," I said, brightening up. "Look at all that has to be done. Jim, dear, fill those boxes nicely with mould, a judicious mixture of looseness and compression."

"I've other fish to fry this afternoon. If his Reverence's Young Man will do some beastly algebra for me I will stay and mess about with you; if not, he has got to do the messing."

And so Jim deserted us, and we planted and pulled at each other's boxes, and I certainly tried to get some of his out. And then the fresh difficulty faced us where to put all these new boxes, for they had to be protected from the still frosty nights, and also from any too heavy rains which might, perchance, drown them. I wanted much more room than the one frame afforded, even could I turn out all the scraggy geraniums.

"They must be protected somehow," I said despondingly, "and we can't carry them in and out of doors, and oh! how heavy even these little boxes are. There's the verandah, but the Others will never let me crowd them out with these boxes. It is just getting sunny out there. What can we do?"

The Young Man looked round and thought, and thought, and then it came, an idea worth patenting.

"You don't want heat for them?"

"Oh, no, they ought to be hardened, you see."

"And it's only at night, or against heavy rains, that they want protecting?"

"That's all."

"Well, then, I have it!" And he had it, the germ of the brilliant idea that, with Jim's assistance and mine, and Griggs's for actual manual labour, gradually evolved into an impromptu frame and saved us even the making of new boxes.

This was the plan of action.

We cleared a space in the little yard where the frame lived, and the manure heap in one corner, and one sunny border which held lettuce and I intended should hold my plantlets later on. We made first a bed of cinders (this for drainage), then a layer of manure (this for heat), then good mould, and all were enclosed with four strong planks, and in this protected spot we pricked out our nurslings. At night they were covered with a plank or two and some sacking, and this also protected them during any very heavy rains, until they grew strong enough to weather them. The boxes already pricked out we protected in like manner, only making no special bed for them.

It became truly a delight to see how day by day those tiny sprigs of green grew and prospered, and to watch the development of the various leaves. The pretty crinkly little round leaves of the polyanthus, the neat spiky twig of the marigold and tagetes, the sturdy, even-growing antirrhinum with pale green stalks for white, and yellow and rich brown for the red variety, and the trim, three-cornered leaves of the nasturtium, each after its kind, very wonderful when we realise all that potentiality enclosed in a pin's point of a seed, and needing no difference of treatment to produce either zinnia or lobelia.

I made all the Others, and everyone else too, walk round my nursery and dilated on the promising appearance of my children.

"Wonderfully neat! but how tiny they all are. Do you mean to say you expect those little things to flower this year? Why, it is like asking a baby of six months old to ride a bicycle!" said one of the Others.

"But they are annuals! In comparison they are now twenty years old! Of course they will flower this year, and be old and done for by October."

"Well, you are _very_ hopeful, but _I_ don't expect much result _this_ year."

"You will see!"

"Well, we have not seen much yet, have we?"

* * * * *

The packets containing my biennial seeds, which, of course, means such seeds as sown one year furnish plants for the next year's flowering and then go the way of all "grass," instructed me to sow in the open from March or April to June.

From what I have so far learned I would certainly advise sowing as early as possible and not taking June into consideration at all. The little plants get forward before the really hot weather begins, and usually the clouds supply sufficient water at that time; but if not, on no account must they go thirsty. I found watering a great necessity, for my ground is as porous as a sieve; a substratum of nice cool tenacious clay must be a great boon to those who happily have it. I suppose it may have some drawbacks, but my imagination is not lively enough to suggest any. Being light and poor, I usually doctored the soil before sowing the seeds. I believe it ought not to be really necessary; but a little manure mixed with leaf mould and some earth from a convenient shrubbery or background place, and all dug well in, was approved of by the plantlets. If by any chance you can lay aside, from hedgerows, corners of field or other prigable parts, some rolls of turf and let it stand aside until it rots, it makes most helpful dressing, particularly for rose roots.

After the ground is ready make little straight trenches about one inch deep, and thinly, because they are certain anyway to be too close, scatter in your seeds. There for the present your work ends, and Mother Earth commences her never-ending miracle of death and resurrection. "Thou sowest not that body which shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat or some other grain," and "that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die," when, "God giveth it a body, to every seed his own body."

Those little brown pin points, of which you hold hundreds in a pinch on your palm, each one has its "celestial" body ready to spring into life through the dark gateway of death. Surely St Paul must have had his garden as a little boy, and sown his seeds, and marvelled, even as Jim and I did, with eyes opening to the wonder of it all. A wonder that is passed over in the matter-of-course way of the daily round, but that startles one, almost as a revelation, when one's own hand holds the seed, sows it, and then watches for the result.

To say it is just "life" or the "force of nature" or "the energy that is behind all things," these are but words, the marvel remains. Irresistibly the thought arises, "With what body shall _we_ come?" Not with the old earth body for sure, if my seeds are to teach me anything.

So I sowed first the forget-me-nots, as this year they must come from seed. Another year I will take the little shoots that are round the old plant and, separating them, will prick them out in a nursery spot, and so shall my plants for the following year be more mature, stronger, and therefore better flowering; a first year's forget-me-nots are apt to be straggling. Then the sweet-Williams, the wallflowers, red and gold, Canterbury bells, silene, the little bright pink edging that with forget-me-nots makes a border so gay in spring time, these were my first year's venture in biennials; for though some of them may be considered perennials, the best results may be hoped for from a continuously fresh store.

The big sunflower seeds I placed just where I wanted them to come up, sometimes a single one, so that the plant should have all its own way, and wear as big a head as it knew how, and others in groups of four or five.

Nasturtiums also I placed as a border to a lonely shrubbery. Some of the seeds had been got forward in the impromptu frame, but those were for my tree stumps and for creeping up the verandah. Canariensis the same; the convolvulus also were planted freely to cover up deficiencies wherever a creeping thing could grow.

It is wise to sow your perennial seeds early; they get settled in life before they are called upon to face their first winter. So in another spot, judiciously cribbed from cabbage-room--crib I had to for my nursery ground--I sowed in like fashion the perennials, those which had not already begun their career in wooden boxes and frame. There were the big Oriental poppies, red and orange, for my impatience had so far succumbed to the gardening spirit that I could bear to contemplate sowing seeds with the hope of no immediate return, Brompton stocks, penstemons, foxgloves and gaillardias; campanulas, too, short and tall, white and blue; and those already started in boxes, the polyanthus and columbines, nice sturdy little plants by now, were moved to this division a little later, when frosty nights were a thing of the past.

These for my first batch of perennials; others would surely follow with succeeding years. The thought of their permanence delighted me. Dear, nice things! they would not need sowing year by year, but would yearly grow more and more "in favour with God and man." So I hoped, even as a mother hopes it for her children.

That long herbaceous border should one day be full of good stuff, one day blooming with a succession of flowers; but face the fact, one day is not to-morrow. The plants must grow; so, patience, patience, though mine was threadbare.

* * * * *

My other nursery of annuals sown in early March were growing apace and the sweet peas needed sticking. It certainly spoils their appearance for a time but is very necessary. I noticed all my seedlings growing in bits of kitchen garden filched from his Reverence's province grew with greater vigour than those down my own borders.