A
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.
[Pg 128]
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[Pg 129] 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.
B
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.
[Pg 130]
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[Pg 131] 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[Pg 132] 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[Pg 133] 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[Pg 134] 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[Pg 135] 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[Pg 136] 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!"
N
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.
[Pg 137]
"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."
[Pg 138]
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?"
[Pg 139]
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[Pg 140] 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[Pg 141] 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,[Pg 142] 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 ?sthetic! 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.[Pg 143] He had been quite unable to think, he explained.
So that great difficulty was settled.
G
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,[Pg 144] 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.
O
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[Pg 145] 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[Pg 146] 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
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[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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[Pg 149] 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[Pg 150] 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?"
[Pg 151]
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.
T
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[Pg 152] 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[Pg 153] 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.
[Pg 154]
"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.
[Pg 155]
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[Pg 156] 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."
[Pg 157]
"Well, then, there\'s the parish."
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading
