Chapter III: Part 3

I suspected that amongst much neglect the vegetable ground had suffered least, and so, in spite of his Reverence's outcry that I was robbing him of at least a sack of potatoes, I continued to make little inroads on his property. And thus I was brought in contact with the fruit-trees bordering the pathways. They had been renewed, many of them, when first his Reverence came to Fairleigh. They looked healthy enough, but very few blossoms and no fruit ever accounted for their existence. I pointed this out to his Reverence, and, full of newly-acquired knowledge, asked him if he had heard of tap-roots. "Griggs planted them, so you may depend that is what is the matter with them, and in the autumn we will have them up."

"You are poaching," said his Reverence.

"You ought to be full of gratitude, but I can't take them in hand myself, I only give you some of my overflowing knowledge. And we should all like to eat our own apples and pears!"

Jim was much interested in tap-roots; he promised himself quite a good time hacking away at them in the autumn. He wondered if the barren fig-tree had a tap-root, but I could not enlighten him.

Everything was growing, we had had some good rain. I can feel for the farmers now; I know what it is to _want_ rain. One of the Others said she wished we would keep quiet, all we gardeners and farmers who hankered after rain. She thought perhaps if we ceased the weather might get a little settled and the sun shine week in week out. To her mind that was far better than fields of corn or beds of even luxuriant flowers. There were sure to be _some_ corn and _some_ flowers anyhow, "so do let other people enjoy the sunshine in peace." Certainly if the English climate is the result of conflicting desires, it would be a good thing to have a national creed on the subject and make it obligatory.

After the rain, however, in that particular month of April, came the sun, and things grew apace.

Though not only my seeds and flowers. The enemy, who for many a long year had sown, or allowed to be sown, weeds in my garden, had his crop likewise.

"They're overmastering us agin," said Griggs, who had his friendly moments; and sometimes, if we were working hard, quite enjoyed standing near and pretending to help us.

"It's your fault that, you know," said Jim, who minced matters with nobody. He was doubled up over the border surrounded with all kinds of implements, for Jim liked everything handy. There was a big clasp knife and a spade and rake, a trowel and little fork, and then he generally used his hands. He was now "tracking home," as he said, that evil-minded weed called, I believe, the ground-elder, and pointed out with some heat, quite excusable under the circumstances, that Griggs, who had just calmly and coolly cut off the head of the plant, had done not a "blooming bit of good."

If you should ever want a really good back-aching job, take a trowel or a little hand fork and begin a fight with those innocent-looking, many-fingered leaves growing in and out in so friendly a fashion with your flowers. You turn up the root, but its hold is still on the earth; you pull a bit and find it belongs to that other cluster of leaves some little distance off. You attack that, very careful not to lose your underground connection, it also has sent long stringy branches in all directions. Then you pull and tear and say "Oh, bother!" and "What a brute of a weed!" Jim and I are careful not to say anything stronger, though he has been known to indulge in "hang," but I feel sure Griggs gives us the character of using "most horful languidge you never heard." Still it goes on, and quite a heap of potato-like roots will be out and yet its hold is not slackened. Finally it lands you in an iris or lily root; it is not particular, but I find it prefers a solid root, and there you get sadly mixed as to what is root and what is weed. But if the job is to be done finally, these roots must be all taken up and carefully disentangled, for all are twined together. This radical measure is best, or rather least injurious to lilies and irises, when their flowering time is over--July and August--and moving or dividing does not disturb them.

Never in all old Griggs's reign of twenty years had he tracked a ground-elder weed home; but I now know the look of those potato-like roots better than any other in my garden.

I cannot say I like doing it. Boys are more invertebrate and do not get so red in the face; and this I pointed out to Jim, suggesting a division of labour.

"You do get jolly red," said Jim, "but really, you know, I expect it's your stays."

"Jim!"

"Well, you needn't get up the steam. I only know when I was dressed up for those theatricals as a beastly, I mean, as a girl, the fellows got hold of some stays, I suppose they bagged their sister's, a precious tight pair, too! and I just tell you, in confidence, they made me absolutely sick. I had to retire looking like an unripe lemon. My! never again!"

"You squeezed too much, Jim."

"That girl must have squeezed more; and you all do, that's my private opinion."

In consideration, therefore, of the infirmities to which a rigorous convention condemns my sex, Jim said he would do the thinning out for me.

My promising annuals, designed for grand duty in the cutting line, godetias and larkspurs and chrysanthemums and Shirley poppies, were all most flourishing, but coming much too thick. They ought to have been thinned out sooner, of course, but we had been too busy, so Jim devoted his early morning hours to them, before the five minutes' rush on his bicycle which took him to the station for Gatley, where he and some other fellows were being crammed to pass the examination for the Royal Navy.

Jim's days were always filled. He never neglected cricket, nor, in its good time, football and hockey; but he was going to see me through with my garden for the first year, he said, and his help and ideas were never-failing.

On the thinning-out mornings Jim got up early; very early it seemed to me when he bounced into my room and sent a flood of light full on my face, or placed a damp sponge there.

"Now I am going to thin, and I can't do it with any satisfaction if you are asleep. What you have to do is to think out any blooming thoughts for this blooming essay on courage. Why the blooming idiot gives us such rotten subjects I can't think. But you must jot down some headings and be ready with them when I come back."

"Jim, what a worn-out old subject. I shall go to sleep over it."

"This won't do," and Jim strode to the washing stand and plunged the sponge in water.

"Oh, don't, Jim, I am awake! There was 'the boy who stood on the burning deck,'" I shouted hurriedly.

Jim came back and stood over me.

"Open your eyes then wide, so. You see you are wasting precious time with your sluggishness."

I thought of those thickly-sown seedlings growing up so leggy, and I roused myself.

"Well, 'the boy' will do, then; he is a good old stager."

"Yes, so he mustn't be left out. All the other fellows will have him in for sure, and if I don't, 'old Joe' will think I don't know about him. They don't want any originality, these chaps; they want you just to stick on and learn what they learnt, then you see you can't put them in a corner. So just rout out good old standing dishes."

Jim turned to go.

"All right; but, Jim, remember to leave the strongest plant."

"'Survival of the fittest,' yes, I've heard that before."

"And don't forget about eight inches apart."

"I prefer six; you turn your thoughts to courage."

"Primitive instinct, difference between man and woman, one has more of the physical variety and the other of the moral," I shouted after him.

"No twaddle," said Jim, striding back. "Think of what _I_ should be likely to say. Of course we all may pick up ideas outside as we have to write the blooming thing in form, but it must sound like me, not you."

"It will, Jim, after it has been through your mill, never fear. And I think eight inches produces strongest plants."

And then Jim slid down the bannisters and I heard him whistling in the garden; but that soon ceased, for you can't whistle when you are bent double.

I must say the row looked very nice when I reviewed it after breakfast. Jim had selected with great care! but the heaps of rejected plantlets lying on the gravel path caused my motherly heart a pang. What a shocking waste! Every tiny seed had come up and ten were growing where but one could find sufficient support for full development, so out must come the nine. Nature is wasteful, and so is human nature, but we can't weed out the overcrowded families; and do the fittest there always survive? Truly it would need courage to tackle that problem.

* * * * *

A little later, in May, I found an employment in which I tried to interest the Others, but it was no good. The only one I brought up to the scratch, or rather the rose tree, fled with horror when I showed her what was needed, and vowed she would rather never smell a rose again than do such disgusting work. But his Reverence took quite kindly to the job, I am glad to say, and it was a good sight in my eyes when I saw his wideawake carefully bent over the standard roses, and then a certain look of victory rose over his spectacles as he spotted the enemy. This new enemy is a very vile-looking little green grub; one variety is brown and fat, and then indeed I have felt inclined to flee myself. I suppose his mamma lands him in an invisible stage on the tender young rose leaves and he curls them round him for a cradle. Then in some mysterious way, which I heartily wish Dame Nature had never taught him, he rocks his cradle to the side of a juicy young bud, glues himself to it and enjoys it. Not much bud is left. So his Reverence unfolds the green cradle and carefully ejects the baby. I simply cannot do that, I pick off the leaf; but in either case the end is rapid and final.

And how prolific is that abominable butterfly! You may, in fact, you _must_, visit your rose trees daily if you would hope to see a goodly show.

At least, so it is in my garden. I can but speak from a limited experience. I have often thought others may be more blessed than I am, but you may not be one of them, friend Ignoramus.

Then there is the green fly, thickly swarming all over banksia or cluster roses, at least, more especially favouring them. Jim would have little to say to the green grub, though occasionally even he and the Young Man had their steps gently led in that direction; and seeing his Reverence's absorption, they too began and then somehow went on. A kind of fatal fascination, I suppose, "Just one more!" The Others would never give the spell a chance, but Jim grew to take the greatest interest in green fly.

The Young Man suggested smoke for their destruction, but his cigarettes did not seem to effect much, though he blew round a bush for quite a long time while I picked the cradle leaves off another, and of course my work was the most effectual. Jim was very keen on trying this remedy too. I said the effect would be worse than his experience with the stays, at which he asked me with dignity if I supposed he was as green as all that! However, Griggs came out with an old syringe, and Jim said that was the work for him. Soapy water and a good shove, and the Young Man was simply deluged.

All Jim said was, "What a mercy it was only you. Think if it had been his Reverence! Winkie! what a shine there would have been."

I thought the young man behaved beautifully, for a man, though he did catch Jim and hold him upside down until he was gurgling.

But when the green fly got the douche very strongly given they too objected, and vacated their position.

Afterwards I obtained a recipe for a douche which had even more effectual results.

Take two ounces of quassia chips (you get them from a chemist for a very small sum) and one ounce of soft soap, and pour on them about a pint of boiling water. Leave it till cold and then add water to the amount of two gallons. With this concoction syringe your green fly, and its extreme bitterness will make them lose all fancy for your rosebuds.

* * * * *

The lilacs were out, and the white guelder rose and the ash tree; may and syringa and laburnum were soon to follow. Truly even a poor neglected little garden has its happy moments!

I would rest some days looking around and enjoying the green so new and fresh everywhere, and trying to shut the reformer's eye. But it was growing too strong for me; the only way to shut it was to reform. The shrubberies were terrible. Laurel was rampant everywhere. A nasty greedy thing, it cannot live and let live, for it takes the nourishment needed by its better brethren. I would have no laurel in my garden, none, but that is a dream for the future. The elder tree too has no manners, it shares this failing with its namesake weed; it shoves and pushes all more gentle growth to the wall. It must be cut back hard. And the syringas also, they need the judicious knife to prune out the old wood and so give strength to the young shoots. And so does the yellow Japanese rose, more learnedly called Kerria Japonica, which in late March and April had given but a poor little show of bloom. I guessed that its treatment had been that of the yellow jasmine. It had been clipped in the autumn on the hedging and ditching principle, and the young shoots with the promise of buds had disappeared beneath Griggs's shears. Better for the plant to have razed it to the ground after flowering, said the Master, for the vigorous young shoots would soon have appeared; so following his instruction I this spring cut the old stems right away, leaving only the new green ones springing from the ground. I am hoping here, too, for next year.

It seems a gardener must always be living in the future, "possessing their souls in patience," and "hoping all things." Truly it is a liberal education, and I hope may prove very valuable to Jim and the Young Man--and other persons.

It has done no good to Griggs.

* * * * *

Spring slipped into summer. The sun shone longer and melted the iciness in the wind's breath; the tender green of the trees gave place to "leafy June" and the shade was grateful.

Jim found a waistcoat superfluous, and the head gardener donned a shady hat and tried to wear gloves.

Yes, the spring was gone, and even with summer's glories to come one turns a regretful glance back to the months when "Behold, He maketh all things new."

SEASON III

Summer

"Knee-deep in June."

And knee-deep in work, too, for June will not give you anything for nothing if you are running a garden. I had my hands full, not only with the legitimate work of June, which is great, but May is sure to have left you in the lurch; this "getting forward" process so much preached by the Master is not seconded by May with at all a whole heart.

"March ain't never nothin' new!
Apriles altogether too
Brash fer me, and May--I jes'
'Bominate its promises.
Little hints o' sunshine and
Green around the timber-land,
A few blossoms and a few
Chip birds, and a sprout or two--
Drap asleep, and it turns in
'Fore daylight and snows agen!"[1]

[1] James Whitcomb Riley.

My poet is an American, but the complaint may be raised also in the old country; only I do not "'bominate" promises. I love them, and as I am perforce a gardener it is a good thing, for I often get nothing else.

But be the garden forward or not, how lovely a garden can be, even a neglected garden, these last weeks of May and first of June.

The chestnuts are scarcely over, the laburnum is raining gold, the may trees are like snow, a delicious reminder when the sun is doing its duty brilliantly; the roses are just breaking from the bud, and now we can congratulate ourselves on the wholesale slaughter of green grub and green fly, without, however, giving up the pursuit.

But what was the matter with those newly-planted rose trees? The crimson rambler, for one, that was to ramp up the verandah, had not ramped an inch; it had only put forth some miserable, half-starved leaves and not one bud. The Others derided it freely. William Allen Richardson looked unhappy too; the new standards seemed more contented, and the Reine Marie Hortense, who also was destined to cover the verandah as rapidly as might be with pink Gloire de Dijon roses, had really begun her work with a will. Why then had my much-vaunted crimson rambler failed me? I had been told they disliked a wall, but not a verandah. "A worm i' the root," suggested One; but I held to certain laws of the Medes and Persians, and one was to leave the roots alone until the right time; so if my rambler wished to flourish elsewhere it must bide until the autumn; though in the front, over an old stump, and down in the kitchen garden it was the same tale, the ramblers refused to ramble.

* * * * *

But the business of the month must not be kept waiting a day, in fact, we began the last week in May, and that was promoting the nurslings from their shelter to the open borders.

The two large round beds that were generally devoted to Griggs's semi-red geraniums and scraggy calceolarias, and which were the only regular planting-out beds the garden possessed, were now a subject of much disquieting thought to me.

They were so terribly important. By them I felt my reputation must stand or fall. They were plainly visible from everywhere. They needed to be a brilliant mass of colour from June to October; no easy problem for one lot of flowers to solve. I had set my face against Griggs's geraniums bordered with calceolarias and lobelias, the refuge of the destitute; any other refuge was to be mine, I resolved. And since it had been no silent resolve, it had perforce to be kept.

At present those beds were an eyesore, but one for which I did not feel responsible. Before I took in hand the reins of garden government, Griggs had buried there a mixture of tulips and edged them with alternate polyanthuses--the poorest of specimens--and forget-me--nots that had weathered the winter in what Griggs termed a "spotty" way. It was certainly a suggestive phrase for those particular plants. But I had been able to join the Others in their chorus of condemnation. Now the time had arrived for a change, and the responsibility appalled me.

I had had visions of those two beds with many various inhabitants. At first the dream had been of violas, pale mauve deepening into the dark purple, but to complete that idea some tall things with a strong colour--red salvias or good red geraniums--were needed; these, planted some eighteen inches apart, would bring out the delicate background. But the dream vanished perforce. Apart from the lack of good red anything, my violas had failed me, and some few dozen little plants were all I could reckon upon. Why, I do not know; it was just this, the seeds had not come up.

So then I dreamed of all my straight little antirrhinums; they would surely make a fine glaring effect. I had red, yellow, white and a good quantity. Jim liked the idea; red was to be the centre, and yellow and white alternate, a broad border.

Griggs took his arrangement away. The dilapidated tulips were saved, of course, and kept in a dry place stored for the autumn planting out.

On the polyanthus roots too I laid rescuing hands. They were not very good colours, but needing so much I dared not waste. The best of the lot I had noted, and now placed them down the shaded lime walk. They could grow where the primroses grew, and in spring I should welcome even their uncertain shades down amongst the bright green of the wild things. The beds were turned over well, and a little fresh soil and manure dug in; then, when neat, smooth and ready, I brought up the first detachment of small antirrhinums from the nursery for their adornment. These had grown to the height of from five to six inches, but had still a slender air. I think it would have helped their more rapid development had they been moved sooner from their first box. With seedlings, friend Ignoramus, you cannot be _too_ particular. Never let them have the slightest check; keep them watered, cared for, and as they need it give them room. They will then reward you.

All one cool afternoon Jim and I planted out. We began in the centre and made rings round with an impromptu compass formed by a stick and string. In the rounds thus made the plantlets were steadily and firmly placed, eight inches apart, though eight inches seemed a great deal of spare room.

"They will grow," I persisted; "they are small for their age, but will soon need elbow room."

"I feel I am playing with little tin soldiers, don't you?" suggested Jim; "but they are strong little beggars and will grow bigger, won't they?"

"Oh, rather! over a foot, though they are the dwarf kind, you know; but they branch out like the wicked bay tree."

"Well, there's room for it," said Jim, and then we worked on steadily until tea-time.

"What are you sprinkling that bed with those tiny green twigs for?" asked one of the Others. "We want something a trifle cheering there, you must remember, Mary. We have to look at it all the summer."

"We don't _want_ to have to regret Griggs's semi-red 'janiums," said another of the Others.

"They will be a blazing mass of colour," I answered confidently as I hurried over my tea. "Come, Jim, they must be got in."

"Remember it is for _this_ summer," shouted the Other.

"And not to adorn our graves, my dear," came after us.

What had happened in my short absence? I saw with new eyes, the eyes not of the fond mother but of the critic.

"Jim!" and my whisper was awful.

"What's up? Have we done anything wrong?"

"Look at them!"

They looked absurd. They looked impossible. The bed so big and they so small, so like tiny tin soldiers, that my faith failed me. The Others would be confronted by little green twigs all the summer and regret Griggs's _régime_. It was hopeless! they could never rise to the occasion.

"They must come up, Jim."

"Oh, rot! Let's put 'em a bit thicker; they will flower all right, you said so half-an-hour ago."

"I don't know what I said half-an-hour ago; I feel sure now that they will take months to do anything! And what shall I do meanwhile? It's the pricking out; we were behind with that, you see. They must come up and go somewhere, where it won't matter so awfully. These beds _must_ be a success, even if I spend every farthing I possess on buying ready-made plants."

We took them up. Jim was impressed with my sorrow. We planted those we had disturbed in the border in front as an edging.

"It won't matter so much here, they don't strike the eye, because other things are coming here in clumps, but for those two beds!"

I had nightmares of tiny tin soldiers dressed in green who marched round and round and disappeared, and then two bare brown beds loomed up like giant's eyes, and the Others all shouted,

"Isn't it hideous? What did you do it for? Oh, Mary, what a mess you have made of it!"

* * * * *

Next afternoon Jim and I, his Reverence and the Young Man--who also joined the Council--calculated exactly how many plants would be required to really fill those beds with a desirable effect. I could hardly believe it, the calculation ended in two hundred for each bed. I sat down on the grass and looked and looked as though looking would make the necessary quantity appear.

"It can't be done," I moaned in the bluest despair. "I don't possess four hundred of anything; so there!"

"You might make a kind of pattern," began the Young Man.

"I hate a kaleidoscopic effect," I growled.

"You've jolly well got to have one," said Jim.

"There might be a border," suggested his Reverence.

"Really, you _may_ mix some flowers," ventured the Young Man, rather fearful of having his head snapped off again.

"I have seen uncommonly pretty beds done that way. Why, in the Park this year I noticed a background of small close blue flowers, and out of them rose tall pink geraniums. The effect was excellent," said his Reverence.

"'You may see as good sights many times in tarts,'" I remarked, and they none of them knew, not even Jim, that I was quoting the learned Bacon, but thought my temper was affecting my reason.

"Get up off the damp grass," said Jim, offering violent assistance, "and come and contemplate the nursery. Great Scott! after all your bragging to collapse like this. Aren't the babies there still?"

"I have hundreds of nothing, and they are all such tiny things it would take _thousands_ of them to fill these _hideous_ big beds."

So rather a downcast procession wended their way round the shrubbery to the little yard with its frame and manure heap and enclosures of plantlets.

His Reverence drew out pencil and paper, and after making several very shaky rounds to represent the two beds, he began to fill in with names as suggested to him by Jim and the Young Man.

"Let us start with the biggest geraniums in the centre, a group of six we will say, as they are not very big any of them. Now then, a row next of those yellow daisies, that will fill up a good bit and look bright, too. Then we might have those stocks, all colours are they? Do famously. And then the little snapdragons, what do you call them?--anti--anti--what? snapdragon will do for me. You say they are too small! Oh, but they will grow. Red, then yellow, then white. Why, see, Mary, the round is nearly full. Then a row of the smallest geraniums, don't you think, and end up with an edging of blue lobelia. That would be fine, eh?"

Jim saw my face and burst into laughter. I was in no laughing mood.

"Good heavens, sir! Imagine such a higgledy-piggledy assembly as that--all sizes--all colours--all blooming anyhow!"

"Not at all, not at all. Now, Young Man, what do you say? Look here--" And with the warmth of an inventor his Reverence read over his list and grew more in love with his colour scheme than ever.

"Yes," said the Young Man, at intervals, "yes, that fills in grandly;" and then he caught my eye, a flash of indignation, so he began to hesitate and hedge. "Only, you see, your Reverence, that for flowers, that is, for bedding out, it seems you need--you have to think--" and he looked at me but got no assistance. "Perhaps there might be too many colours, mightn't there?" he wound up feebly.

"Too many colours! Why, my dear fellow, it isn't for a funeral! Do you want all the flowers to wear black coats like you and me?"

"No, no, sir, only, you see in one bed--"

"Bless the man, of course they are in one bed! Why, where is the harm in variety? Just look here--" and we went through the scheme again. "Now, come; if you don't like this, what can you suggest better, eh?"

The Young Man looked so nonplussed and uncomfortable, and his Reverence was falling deeper and deeper in love with his arrangement, I saw that I must at once take the matter in hand or it would be too late.

"I know," I said suddenly. I did not know, at least, not what I would do, only what I would not, which is sometimes a great help in the other direction.

"Well, let us hear your idea," said his Reverence, with enforced patience, looking fondly at his scheme.

"The antirrhinums are too small and the violas too few," I began.

"Well, that is not much of an idea!"

"No, but I am thinking--" and so I was, for a thought had come.

Then his Reverence laughed. "Ah, well, you _think_. In the meantime I will leave you my list and go and see after old Griggs." He linked his arm in the Young Man's and walked him off. He, looking penitently back, found no forgiveness; I had no use for the penitence of cowards.

Then I began to expound to Jim the idea that had come like a flash! like a revelation! until Jim said, "Get on, let's have the idea. I don't personally think his Reverence's scheme at all bad, you know. I just laid low because I saw what a stew you were in, but _personally_ I like a bit of colour."

Then I explained to Jim what a delirium those beds would be, and Jim would have left me too had I not said he should do all the measurements for the beds as I wanted somebody with an eye! How queer men are, even in embryo. They always hang together, and it is only flattery that can overcome their prejudices.

Jim grew interested. The idea was to be all yellow. I had those marguerites of Griggs's cuttings developed now into fair-sized plants in spite of their neglected childhood, for I had seen to them since. They should grow in the centre; then should come my marigolds, which were very thriving, two kinds of them, the big, rather clumsy African, but with handsome colouring, and the smaller, neater, darker French variety, and we would finish with a good border of tagetes.

They were all bushy plants, all hardy, and would bloom steadily through the summer and autumn.

A basket of scabious--lady's pincushions--arriving from the Master while I was planting out were also worked into my scheme, and worked in well. The dark round balls of reds, browns, blues, with tiny white pin-points, did not disturb the yellow harmony. Eventually I was proud of those beds.

When first planted they did look slightly new and stalky, but they filled out daily. His Reverence only remarked, "Well, well, have it your own way; I suppose it is æsthetic! But my idea was more cheerful."

Griggs frankly said "yeller" was never his fancy. "Now, them 'janiums, that gives a bit o' colour."

And I quite forgave the Young Man his past for his present admiration was unbounded. He had been quite unable to think, he explained.

So that great difficulty was settled.

* * * * *

Griggs's geraniums turned out one or two good dark reds among the magenta hues, and these were put in the two old stumps that hitherto had been given over to mere ramping nasturtiums, and my superior seedlings of those useful flowers were encouraged to fall over the edge and ramp downwards.

An old oil cask, cut in two, burnt out and painted green--Jim and I and the Young Man enjoyed that artistic work very much--formed two capacious tubs and were filled with more geraniums, the best and pinkest, and they brightened up the shrubbery corner where the daffodils had shone.

Stocks and other geraniums--even the mauvy-tinted ones looked quite well away from all touch of red--with a border of lobelia, were placed under the study window in a narrow bed running along the front of the house, thus helping his Reverence to realise _his_ ideal. Then by degrees we arranged all the contents of my nursery, some in clumps, some in rows, down the herbaceous border, and others in the front border, the border which had looked so dismal and unpromising on that November day when I first took my garden in hand. There had been a brushing up of old inhabitants--Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums--but much was still left to be desired.

You cannot do everything in the first year. It is no use thinking you can.

* * * * *

One day, at the very beginning of June, I visited the potting-shed, our one and only shed, which held a collection such as may be imagined after the reign of Griggs for twenty years. In a dark corner I came across some queer-looking roots sprouting away in a most astoundingly lively fashion.

"Griggs, what on earth are these?" I called to that worthy.

"Them? Oh! them's daylers. Just stuck 'em there to keep dry for the winter. They oughter be out by now, they oughter."

"Oh! I should think so," and then I marvelled on the nature of dahlias.

"Is this a good place for them during the winter? Don't they want anything to eat or drink?"

"Bless yer! no, they takes their fill in the summer, but they oughter be out by now; some'ow I've come to overlook them."

That these dahlias forgave the overlooking has always been a wonder to me; perhaps they did not do so entirely. I believe more firmly than ever in the thoroughness of the edict which rules "that what a man soweth that shall he reap."

A child or a flower starved in infancy does not recover for some time, if ever, and though my dahlias kindly bloomed and did their best, once started in as good a bed as we could give them, they ought to have been "potted up" in the beginning of May and kept from frosty nights; then at the end of May or beginning of June they should have been placed in their flowering position. So soon as frost touches them they droop, as we all well know, in their own peculiar, utterly dejected and forlorn manner. Then cut them down, dig them up, let them dry, and place them for the winter in a dry and protected cellar or outhouse, there to sleep until the spring calls them to fresh life.

* * * * *

I watched the long herbaceous border with an anxious eye. The poppies--those dazzling papaver--opened their large green pods and shook out blazing red and rather crinkly leaves in the sunshine. They made one hot, but happy, to look at them. For that first year in my garden I think they did their duty well, but bigger clumps will look better. Some little spiky leaves that I had not recognised--how should I when no label accompanied them?--turned out to be the Iceland variety. They had one or two dainty blooms made of yellow butterflies' wings, but oh, dear! one or two! I needed a mass. The delphiniums looked healthy and promised a spiky bloom or two; the lupins were already in flower, nice, quite nice, when one has not much else, but the blue is too near purple. I must get some other varieties; the white would be prettier. The big thick leaves of the hollyhocks grew well at first, and then some beast of sorts began to fancy them and they developed a moth-eaten appearance. All Griggs could say was, "You never could do nothing with 'olly'ocks in this gardin, you couldn't." My other wiseacre, old Lovell, said, "They liked a bit o' wind through 'em." His own seemed to flourish, so mine must be moved from the sheltering hedge where I had thought they would show up.

Everywhere still grew and flourished the ever-present weeds. They needed no watering, nothing to promote their vitality, they grew apace; and I could mention other varieties beside that champion grower, the ground-elder. There is a sticky, burry kind of rapid, straggling growth with tenacious hot-feeling leaves. Its hold on the earth is not strong, but it is brittle, and eludes its death-warrant that way; also a kind of elongated dandelion, that looks straight at you as though it had a right to be there. Then the common poppy, last year's nasturtium seeds, and the offspring of last year's sunflowers are as bad as weeds, and indeed the latter gave me as much trouble. The strong tuberous roots required a vigorous pull, and were growing everywhere, through the centre of every flower; I took at least a dozen out of one clump of golden rod, and vowed I would have every sunflower up before it had a chance of seeding. Of course all such things must come up or they exhaust the feeding capacity of the border.

It is all very fine to say "_must_," but I believe a poor soil is composed of weed seeds.

I walked down the garden with one of the Others, one who loved flowers, only in her own way. She arranged them beautifully when everything was put ready to her hand; she loved picking one here and there and sticking it in her waist-band, or playing with its soft petals against her cheek, then, its brief duty done, it was forgotten.

I have seen people--even mothers--love children in the same way; but flowers and children need a broader love than that.

We walked down armed with scissors and with an empty basket; I had said that there _were_ flowers.

"My dear girl, what on earth _have_ you? when all is said and done. You show me a green bush thing and give it a name"--I had mentioned delphinium--"and it does sound aggressively knowledgeable, of course! And then another isolated and flowerless specimen and give _it_ a name. But wherewithal am I to do the dinner-table to-night? Will you tell me that?"

"You have a most lovely bunch of poppies in the drawing-room, and I cut the copper-beech, which was wicked of me. Very soon you shall have roses and sweet-peas and all these seedlings; and next year you shall have sweet-Williams and cup and saucer Canterbury bells and foxgloves and--"

"_Next_ year! my dear. I am wanting some flowers for _to-night_."

"To-night! Oh, dear, let me think. Why won't the things make haste? You must have _something_, of course."

What was there? A good many things in bud, but had they been out I could not have cut them. Just the one first specimen! To cut from a plant you need such a big show, and all the tall perennials were no good anyway for the table decoration. The blue cornflowers were coming; the godetias held promising buds of pinkiness; the Shirley poppies, too, and the sweet-peas; but for to-night! Everything was for to-morrow. Down the garden we walked, hope always deferred, and beyond the garden shone a field of brilliantly deep red. I caught my breath. "Isn't it lovely? It is old Mason's saint-foin; let us take some. And see, there are white daisies in the hay there, mine aren't out yet. And with grasses, those lovely, wavy grasses! don't you think that will do?"

The table did look lovely, but small thanks to my garden, I felt; though the Other One cared not for that, and comforted me by saying that gardening had certainly developed my resources if not the flowers.

Nature's garden is at its best in June.

The wild rose and honeysuckle scent the hedges, the tall white daisies shine in the grass, the ruddy chickweed, with the setting sun behind, glows like the evening clouds; and the tall, dainty, white meadow-sweet offers itself to one's hand. Were it a garden flower we should prize it almost as we do gypsophila. But Nature does not mean her favourites to be promoted to the drawing-room. Their rustic beauty fades at once, and it seems truly unkind to cut so short their joyous sunny day.

* * * * *

The dinner-table that had caused me so much anxiety was specially needed for an American friend of one of the Others. She greeted the pretty effect with, "My! how cunning! Do all these pretty things grow in your garden, Mistress Mary?"

"In mine and Nature's," I added.

"You have a little rhyme about Mary and her garden, haven't you? And her lamb, too. Have you a lamb?"

"Oh, yes," said one of the Others, "she has a lamb, the new version of that rhyme, too, 'with coat as black as soot.'"

But what she meant, or why I grew hot, it passes my wisdom to say.

"Say now, do you grow nightingales in your garden, Mistress Mary? I assure you, sir," turning to his Reverence, "I have never yet compassed an introduction to that much-vaunted British institooshon, the nightingale. I am just crazy till I hear those liquid tones, the jug jug and jar jar: such vurry ugly equivalents they sound to me for thrilling notes, but the best, I conclude, our poor speech can do in imitation of that divine melody."

When our friend had quite finished--I noticed she landed herself without fear in the longest of sentences, and brought them always with much aplomb to the neatest of conclusions, an accomplishment in which she must find the majority of her English cousins sadly deficient--his Reverence promised her the wished-for concert; and he further dilated on the beauties represented by jug jug and jar jar, until she assured him that with him for her guide she would face that dark and lonely walk of Mistress Mary's--she meant my lime trees--where doubtless she would find a blue or white lady flitting past, with a sigh, wasn't it? for some recalcitrant lover.

However, I noticed she walked off later with the Young Man, who dropped in after dinner, and she asked him all about the jug jug and jar jar with ever-increasing animation.

It certainly was very cool that night, as it can be in June even after a hot day. We looked round to send Jim for shawls, but Jim had vanished, to his work, no doubt. We strolled down the lime walk to see if the nightingales would oblige us, which I doubted, as nightingales are as careful of their throats in a cool wind as are prima donnas.

"You really mustn't talk," I heard the Young Man say.

"Land's sake! but do they want it all their own way? Though who could talk when the whole night is throbbing with beauty? Just look at that intense blue vault above us, and the calm stars shimmering down on us. Say! doesn't it make you feel just too awfully small for anything? You don't feel inclined to get up and preach now, do you? Just shut your eyes and listen; that's about all one can do."

The figures wandered up and down under the overhanging lime boughs, two and two, and presently the black and white ones ahead of us stopped. When we wandered off again somehow we had changed partners, and Mamie was arm-in-arm with her special Other One and the Young Man was walking with me.

"I had such a lot I wanted to talk to you about," he began. This sounded interesting, but he seemed unable to get further.

"About the Sunday school?" I asked gently, for we were still listening for the nightingale.

It was almost a cross "No" that he muttered as we passed Mamie and her friend.

"Oh, I know," I suggested; "it is about the garden. You haven't been helping me in my garden for weeks and weeks. What can one talk of better than a garden? I think it is the most interesting subject, and you must want to know how the nurslings are turning out, now they are started in real life."

I suppose Mamie had caught the word garden, for she began to sing in a very high thread-of-silver voice,

"If love's gardener sweet were I,
I would cull the stars for thy pleasure."

"Say, tall and reverend sir, can you reach a star? Look how they twinkle!"

The Young Man is so very English I half feared he would not understand how to take her, but Mamie's freedom was infectious.

"All the stars are not up there," he said, "fortunately for my arms. They are twinkling under these trees to-night."

"Why, you _are_ poetical! But these lively stars of white and blue are not the kind to cull, are they, Mistress Mary? Land's sake! but they might prove as big an undertaking as one of those fiery worlds twinkling up there. 'How I wonder what you are!' Why, _we_ don't wonder, we _know_. I learnt all about them at school. But who knows what _I_ am composed of?"

"'Ribbons and laces and sweet pretty faces!' is what they taught me at _my_ school," said the Young Man, calmly.

"Really, the nightingale _can't_ sing if we all talk so much. Do let us try and be quiet for two minutes," I said.

But Mamie was walking away laughing, and saying the nightingale would soon get used to her dulcet tones, and the Young Man stayed listening with me.

"And yet it's true," he said, "what she says; how is one ever to know about another person, particularly when that other person always turns the conversation when one begins to talk about--"

"You are getting mixed," I interrupted. "Don't you like talking about my garden?"

"Not always."

"Well, then, there's the parish."

"You only do that to annoy."

"I don't! But to please you I will talk of your last sermon."

The Young Man was very hard to please; he said he preferred to know the exact ingredients of the stars, so I stopped Mamie to ask her, but she said we were becoming prosaic; the stars were really little holes in heaven's floor that the angels made to peep through. "That's what they taught at your school, didn't they, Reverend Young Man?"

"They did. My education has greatly helped me to retain my fond delusions and pet prejudices."

"Why, what an ideal education for a clergyman!"

"Since young ladies are taught to weigh the stars and won't listen for nightingales, it does seem good to me."

"Now, don't you get rattled. Mistress Mary, you have been rubbing him up the wrong way, and, mercy me! however can a poor Yank hear your nightingale? That is a delusion I must part with unless he condescends to commence soon."

"Well, wait, do wait quietly for one minute."

So for a brief pause there was silence; and the stir of the leaves and little rustle of unseen creeping things could be heard, and then, yes, there it was! We all raised a warning finger, but the throbbing note broke through the stillness; a little gurgle, a break, and then a longer effort.

"Oh, my! Is that it? It makes me creep all over. Oh, don't let us talk. Will it go on?"

Yes, it went on. After some tentative "jugs" and "jars" it broke into a full-throated throb, and even our fair visitor's exclamation did not scare it.

"It _is_ singing to-night," said One; "really, it must be in honour of you, Mamie. It seldom sings with such vigour!"

In the centre of the sloping field grew a fine clump of trees, birch, chestnut and one or two straight pines; the nightingale had chosen this for his stage, and now again quite distinctly rose the gurgling note, and continued, too, right through Miss Mamie's piercing whisper.

"Why! it's purfectly lovely! I guess I must take one or two back to Amurica. This grove of trees, the dense blue sky, the silence of all you dear people, and just that one divine voice throbbing with love! It makes me feel like melting. If anyone proposed to me now I should just have no strength to refuse. Don't feel nervous, most Reverend Young Man. I am really thinking of that fascinating Mr Jim. Say! has he gone to bed?"

Jim! Where was he? I saw the Young Man give a start, and a quick glance showed me we had both solved the mystery of that persistently gurgling bird. "He ought to be doing his preparation," I said in firm tones.

"Don't, Mary! how you shouted. Now he has stopped. Oh, what a pity!"

The Young Man whistled softly, and after a pause a little answering whistle came from another spot.

"What is that?" asked Mamie.

"Night-jar," suggested the Young Man.

We listened in vain for more warblings from the nightingale. He had flown for good, and they all said it was my fault.

"Did you have a good concert?" asked his Reverence, as we returned to the drawing-room.

And at the chorus of approval he laughed, and assured us the nightingale had given him a dress rehearsal, and that was why we waited so long.

Mamie declared his Reverence was the biggest dear she had met "this side," for you never could believe a word he said. He and the Young Man had both been to the same school, she reckoned.

Next morning she had a tale to tell of her own special nightingale throbbing with love just below her window, and again in the early morning hours at her door. When she laid great stress on the "throbbing with love," Jim got bashfully red. Then she maintained she heard him flutter downstairs just as she was going to pipe her love tale too, and that always, always, she will love her English nightingale the best of all British institooshons.

"You don't think she really knows," whispered Jim to me, "because if she does, she is going rather far, isn't she?"

* * * * *

How lovely a garden can be by moonlight, even a poor little garden. The moon is merciful, she touches all things, even the weeds, with a soft mystery; hallows the lily and every white bloom; in her light the red and blue flowers are not faded or extinguished, but softened; distances, shadows are intenser, more suggestive than in the garish glory of the sun; soft voices, soft footsteps are needed for the moonlit garden, and one may not think of work or gardeners. The flowers are asleep, wake them not; all but those of strong sweet scent and small blossom, like the jessamine and nicotina, which fittingly star the night garden, and these are sweeter now than ever, and thus woo to them the little moths, those flitting, dusky, silent lovers.

The lime-tree avenue became a favourite night walk. The path that was once gravel, and by long neglect had become green in patches, was encouraged in its overgrowth, and Griggs and a scythe will turn it in time to quite a respectable grass walk, I hope. In the subdued light the feathery tall weeds gave it quite a fairy glade appearance.

I can dream in my garden by moonlight, and perhaps not always of my garden.

* * * * *

The little perennial and biennial seeds sown in the open in April were, at the end of June, ready for thinning. They had each developed the "body" prepared for them, and nice, sturdy little "bodies" they were, but growing too close together and needing more elbow room. I do not think one ever sows seeds thinly enough, and this is not so much to be regretted for economy's sake as for the sake of the tiny plants' nourishment. Here again was a great waste of plant life, though, had all been wanted, all could have been used, for they are none the worse for this shifting. Still, half a row instead of two would have been sufficient for my needs.

I selected the sturdiest, left some growing where they were, at about six inches apart, and moved the others to a new bed, also allowing them six inches; the rest were wasted, except a few, which found their way to a corner of some cottage gardens. But this is not the time when people are grateful for them; they like the well-grown plants in the autumn, which can then be placed in their spring bed.