Mabel Osgood Wright - The Garden, You, and I

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THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I

[Illustration: A SEASIDE GARDEN.]

THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I

BY

BARBARA

AUTHOR OF

"THE GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE," "PEOPLE OF
THE WHIRLPOOL," "AT THE SIGN OF THE
FOX," ETC.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906

_All rights reserved_

COPYRIGHT, 1906.

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1906.

Norwood Press
J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

~Dedicated~

TO

J.L.G.

I.M.T.

AND

A.B.P.

THE LITERARY GARDENERS
OF REDDING

GREETING

This book is for those who in treading the garden path have no thought
of material gain; rather must they give,--from the pocket as they
may,--from the brain much,--and from the heart all,--if they would drink
in full measure this pure joy of living.

"Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet
have tried it well--be not detained."
--WALT WHITMAN.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE WAYS OF THE WIND 1

II. THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 7

III. CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 29

IV. THEIR GARDEN VACATION 48

V. ANNUALS--WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 70

VI. THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 92

VII. A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 117

VIII. A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 155

IX. FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 183

X. FRANKNESS--GARDENING AND OTHERWISE 202

LIST OF FLOWER COMBINATIONS FOR THE TABLE
FROM BARBARA'S _Garden Boke_ 230

XI. A SEASIDE GARDEN 233

XII. THE TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 246

XIII. LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 262

XIV. FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 281

XV. THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 305

XVI. THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 320

XVII. THE INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 336

XVIII. THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 352

XIX. PANDORA'S CHEST 365

XX. EPILOGUE 374

APPENDIX

FOR THE HARDY SEED BED 375

SOME WORTHY ANNUALS 387

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A SEASIDE GARDEN (see p. 243) _Frontispiece_

"THE MAGNOLIAS BELOW AT THE ROAD-BEND" 8

ENGLISH LARKSPUR SEVEN FEET HIGH 32

FRAXINELLA--GERMAN IRIS AND CANDY-TUFT 44

LONGFELLOW'S GARDEN 81

THE SUMMER GARDEN--VERBENAS 86

ASTERS 90

THE PICTORIAL VALUE OF EVERGREENS 102

"MY ROSES ARE SCATTERED HERE, THERE,
AND EVERYWHERE" 119

MADAME PLANTIER AT VAN CORTLAND MANOR 128

A CONVENIENT ROSE-BED 138

"THE LAST OF THE OLD ORCHARD" 156

THE SCREEN OF WHITE BIRCHES 166

"AN ENDLESS SHELTER FOR EVERY SORT
OF WILD THING" 184

SPECIOSUM LILIES IN THE SHADE 270

THE POET'S NARCISSUS 278

A BED OF JAPAN PINKS 296

SINGLE AND DOUBLE PINKS 314

"THE SILVER MAPLE BY THE LANE GATE" 326

"A CURTAIN TO THE SIDE PORCH" 328

AN IRIS HEDGE 358

DAPHNE CNEORUM 360

A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE 362

"THE LOW SNOW-COVERED MEADOW" 372

"PUNCH ... HAS A CACHE UNDER THE
SYRINGA BUSHES" 374

THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I

I

THE WAYS OF THE WIND

"Out of the veins of the world comes the blood of me;
The heart that beats in my side is the heart of the sea;
The hills have known me of old, and they do not forget;
Long ago was I friends with the wind; I am friends with it yet."

--GERALD GOULD.

Whenever a piece of the land is to be set apart for a garden, two mighty
rulers must be consulted as to the boundaries. When this earth child is
born and flower garnished for the christening, the same two must be also
bidden as sponsors. These rulers are the Sun and the Wind. The sun, if
the matter in hand is once fairly spread before him and put in his
charge, is a faithful guardian, meeting frankness frankly and sending
his penetrating and vitalizing messengers through well-nigh inviolable
shade. But of the wind, who shall answer for it or trust it? Do we
really ever learn all of its vagaries and impossible possibilities?

If frankness best suits the sun, diplomacy must be our shield of
defence windward, for the wind is not one but a composite of many moods,
and to lure one on, and skilfully but not insultingly bar out another,
is our portion. To shut out the wind of summer, the bearer of vitality,
the uplifter of stifling vapours, the disperser of moulds, would indeed
be an error; therefore, the great art of the planters of a garden is to
learn the ways of the wind and to make friends with it. If the soil is
sodden and sour, it may be drained and sweetened; if it is poor, it may
be nourished; but when all this is done, if the garden lies where the
winds of winter and spring in passing swiftly to and fro whet their
steel-edged tempers upon it, what avails?

What does it matter if violet or pansy frames are set in a sunny nook,
if it be one of the wind's winter playgrounds, where he drifts the snow
deep for his pastime, so that after each storm of snow or sleet a
serious bit of engineering must be undergone before the sashes can be
lifted and the plants saved from dampness; or if the daffodils and
tulips lie well bedded all the winter through, if, when the sun has
called them forth, the winds of March blight their sap-tender foliage?
Yet the lands that send the north winds also send us the means to deter
them--the cold-loving evergreens, low growing, high growing, medium,
woven dense in warp and woof, to be windbreaks, also the shrubs of
tough, twisted fibre and stubborn thorns lying close to the earth for
windbuffers.

Therefore, before the planting of rose or hardy herbs, bulbs or tenderer
flowers, go out, compass in hand, face the four quarters of heaven, and,
considering well, set your windbreaks of sweeping hemlocks, pines,
spruces, not in fortress-like walls barring all the horizon, but in
alternate groups that flank, without appearing to do so heavily, the
north and northwest. Even a barberry hedge on two sides of a garden,
wedge point to north, like the wild-goose squadrons of springtime, will
make that spot an oasis in the winter valley of death.

A wise gardener it is who thinks of the winter in springtime and plants
for it as surely as he thinks of spring in the winter season and longs
for it! If, in the many ways by which the affairs of daily life are
re-enforced, the saying is true that "forethought is coin in the pocket,
quiet in the brain, and content in the heart," doubly does it apply to
the pleasures of living, of which the outdoor life of working side by
side with nature, called gardening, is one of the chief. When a garden
is inherited, the traditions of the soil or reverence for those who
planned and toiled in it may make one blind to certain defects in its
conception, and beginning with _a priori_ set by another one does as one
can.

But in those choosing site, and breaking soil for themselves,
inconsistency is inexcusable. Follow the lay of the land and let it
lead. Nature does not attempt placid lowland pictures on a steep
hillside, nor dramatic landscape effects in a horizonless meadow,
therefore why should you? For one great garden principle you will learn
from nature's close companionship--consistency!

You who have a bit of abrupt hillside of impoverished soil, yet where
the sky-line is divided in a picture of many panels by the trees, you
should not try to perch thereon a prim Dutch garden of formal lines;
neither should you, to whom a portion of fertile level plain has fallen,
seek to make it picturesque by a tortuous maze of walks, curving about
nothing in particular and leading nowhere, for of such is not nature.
Either situation will develop the skill, though in different directions,
and do not forget that in spite of better soil it takes greater
individuality to make a truly good and harmonious garden on the flat
than on the rolling ground.

I always tremble for the lowlander who, down in the depth of his nature,
has a prenatal hankering for rocks, because he is apt to build an
undigested rockery! These sort of rockeries are wholly separate from the
rock gardens, often majestic, that nowadays supplement a bit of natural
rocky woodland, bringing it within the garden pale. The awful rockery of
the flat garden is like unto a nest of prehistoric eggs that have been
turned to stone, from the interstices of which a few wan vines and ferns
protrude somewhat, suggesting the garnishing for an omelet.

Also, if you follow Nature and study her devices, you will alone learn
the ways of the winds and how to prepare for them. Where does Spring set
her first flag of truce--out in the windswept open?

No! the arbutus and hepatica lie bedded not alone in the fallen leaves
of the forest but amid their own enduring foliage. The skunk cabbage
raises his hooded head first in sheltered hollows. The marsh marigold
lies in the protection of bog tussocks and stream banks. The first
bloodroot is always found at the foot of some natural windbreak, while
the shad-bush, that ventures farther afield and higher in air than any,
is usually set in a protecting hedge, like his golden forerunner the
spice-bush.

If Nature looks to the ways of the wind when she plants, why should not
we? A bed of the hardiest roses set on a hill crest is a folly. Much
more likely would they be to thrive wholly on the north side of it. A
garden set in a cut between hills that form a natural blowpipe can at
best do no more than hold its own, without advancing.

But there are some things that belong to the never-never land and may
not be done here. You may plant roses and carnations in the shade or in
dry sea sand, but they will not thrive; you cannot keep upland lilies
cheerful with their feet in wet clay; you cannot have a garden all the
year in our northern latitudes, for nature does not; and you cannot
afford to ignore the ways of the wind, for according as it is kind or
cruel does it mean garden life or death!

"Men, they say, know many things;
But lo, they have taken wings,--
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows."

--THOREAU.

II

THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I

_April 30._ Gray dawn, into which father and Evan vanished with their
fishing rods; then sunrise, curtained by a slant of rain, during which
the birds sang on with undamped ardour, a catbird making his debut for
the season as soloist.

It must not be thought that I was up and out at dawn. At twenty I did so
frequently, at thirty sometimes, now at thirty-five I _can_ do it
_perfectly well_, if necessary, otherwise, save at the change of
seasons, to keep in touch with earth and sky, I raise myself
comfortably, elbow on pillow, and through the window scan garden, wild
walk, and the old orchard at leisure, and then let my arm slip and the
impression deepen through the magic of one more chance for dreams.

_9 o'clock._ The warm throb of spring in the earth, rising in a potent
mist, sap pervaded and tangible, having a clinging, unctuous softness
like the touch of unfolding beech leaves, lured me out to finish the
transplanting of the pansies among the hardy roses, while the first
brown thrasher, high in the bare top of an ash, eyes fixed on the sky,
proclaimed with many turns and changes the exact spot where he did not
intend to locate his nest. This is an early spring, of a truth.

Presently pale sunbeams thread the mist, gathering colour as they filter
through the pollen-meshed catkins of the black birches; an oriole
bugling in the Yulan magnolias below at the road-bend, fire amid snow; a
high-hole laughing his courtship in the old orchard.

Then Lavinia Cortright coming up to exchange Dahlia bulbs and discuss
annuals and aster bugs. She and Martin browse about the country,
visiting from door to door like veritable natives, while their garden,
at first so prim and genteel, like one of Lavinia's own frocks, has
broken bounds and taken on brocade, embroidery, and all sorts of lace
frills, overflowed the south meadow, and only pauses at the stile in the
wall of our old crab-apple orchard, rivalling in beauty and refined
attraction any garden at the Bluffs. Martin's purse is fuller than of
yore, owing to the rise in Whirlpool real estate, and nothing is too
good for Lavinia's garden. Even more, he has of late let the dust rest
peacefully on human genealogy and is collecting quaint garden books and
herbals, flower catalogues and lists, with the solemn intent of writing
a book on Historic Flowers. At least so he declares; but when Lavinia is
in the garden, there too is Martin. To-day, however, he joined my men
before noon at the lower brook. Fancy a house-reared man a convert to
fishing when past threescore! Evan insists that it is because, being
above all things consistent, he wishes to appear at home in the company
of father's cherished collection of Walton's and other fishing books.
Father says, "Nonsense! no man can help liking to fish!"

[Illustration: "THE MAGNOLIAS BELOW AT THE ROAD-BEND."]

Toward evening came home a creel lined with bog moss; within, a rainbow
glimmer of brook trout, a posy of shad-bush, marsh marigolds, anemones,
and rosy spring beauties from the river woods,--with three cheerfully
tired men, who gathered by the den hearth fire with coffee cup and pipe,
inside an admiring but sleepy circle of beagle hounds, who had run free
the livelong day and who could doubtless impart the latest rabbit news
with thrilling detail. All this and much more made up to-day, one of red
letters.

Yesterday, Monday, was quite different, and if not absolutely black, was
decidedly slate coloured. It is only when some one of the household is
positively ill that the record must be set down in black characters, for
what else really counts? Why is it that the city folk persist in judging
all rural days alike, that is until they have once really _lived_ in the
country, not merely boarded and tried to kill time and their own
digestions at one and the same moment.

Such exceptional days as yesterday should only be chronicled now and
then to give an added halo to happy to-morrows,--disagreeables are
remembered quite long enough by perverse human nature.

Yesterday began with the pipe from the water-back bursting, thereby
doing away with hot water for shaving and the range fire at the same
time. The coffee resented hurry, and the contact with an oil stove
developed the peanutty side of its disposition, something that is latent
in the best and most equable of brands.

The spring timetable having changed at midnight Sunday, unobserved by
Evan, he missed the early train, which it was especially important that
he should take. Three other men found themselves in the same
predicament, two being Bluffers and one a Plotter. (These are the names
given hereabout to our two colonies of non-natives. The Bluffers are the
people of the Bluffs, who always drive to the station; the Plotters,
living on a pretty tract of land near the village that was "plotted"
into house-lots a few years ago, have the usual newcomer's hallucination
about making money from raising chickens, and always walk.)

After a hasty consultation, one of the Bluffers telephoned for his
automobile and invited the others to make the trip to town with him. In
order to reach the north turnpike that runs fairly straight to the city,
the chauffeur, a novice in local byways, proposed to take a short cut
through our wood road, instead of wheeling into the pike below
Wakeleigh.

This wood road holds the frost very late, in spite of an innocent
appearance to the contrary; this fact Evan stated tersely. Would a
chauffeur of the Bluffs listen to advice from a man living halfway down
the hill, who not only was autoless but frequently walked to the
station, and therefore to be classed with the Plotters? Certainly not;
while at the same moment the owner of the car decided the matter by
pulling out his watch and murmuring to his neighbour something about an
important committee meeting, and it being the one day in the month when
time meant money!

Into the road they plunged, and after several hair-breadth lurches, for
the cut is deep and in places the rocks parallel with the roadway, the
turnpike was visible; then a sudden jolt, a sort of groan from the
motor, and it ceased to breathe, the heavy wheels having settled in a
treacherous spot not wholly free from frost, its great stomach, or
whatever they call the part that holds its insides, wallowed hopelessly
in the mud!

The gentlemen from the Bluffs deciding that, after all, there was no
real need of going to town, as they had only moved into the country the
week previous, and the auto owner challenged to a game of billiards by
his friend, they returned home, while the Plotter and Evan walked back
two miles to the depot and caught the third train!

At home things still sizzled. Father had an important consultation at
the hospital at ten; ringing the stable call for the horses, he found
that Tim, evidently forgetting the hour, had taken them, Evan's also
being of the trio, to the shoer half an hour before. There was a
moment's consternation and Bertel left the digging over of my hardy beds
to speed down to the village on his bicycle, and when the stanhope
finally came up, father was as nearly irritable as I have ever seen him,
while Tim Saunders's eyes looked extra small and pointed. Evidently
Bertel had said things on his own account.

Was an explosion coming at last to end twelve years of out-of-door
peace, also involving my neighbour and domestic standby, Martha Corkle
Saunders?

No; the two elderly men glanced at each other; there was nothing of the
domineering or resentful attitude that so often renders difficult the
relation of master and man--"I must be getting old and forgetful," quoth
father, stepping into the gig.

"Nae, it's mair like I'm growin' deef in the nigh ear," said Tim, and
without further argument they drove away.

I was still pondering upon the real inwardness of the matter, when the
boys came home to luncheon. Two hungry, happy boys are a tonic at any
time, and for a time I buttered bread--though alack, the real necessity
for so doing has long since passed--when, on explaining father's absence
from the meal, Ian said abruptly, "Jinks! grandpa's gone the day before!
he told Tim _Tuesday_ at 'leven, I heard him!"

But, as it chanced, it was a slip of tongue, not memory, and I blessed
Timothy Saunders for his Scotch forbearance, which Evan insists upon
calling prudence.

My own time of trial came in the early afternoon. During the more than
ten years that I have been a gardener on my own account, I have
naturally tried many experiments and have gradually come to the
conclusion that it is a mistake to grow too many species of
flowers,--better to have more of a kind and thus avoid spinkiness. The
pink family in general is one of those that has stood the test, and this
year a cousin of Evan's sent me over a quantity of Margaret carnation
seed from prize stock, together with that of some exhibition single
Dahlias.

Late in February I sowed the seed in two of the most protected hotbeds,
muffled them in mats and old carpets every night, almost turned myself
into a patent ventilator in order to give the carnations enough air
during that critical teething period of pinks, when the first grasslike
leaves emerge from the oval seed leaves and the little plants are apt to
weaken at the ground level, damp off, and disappear, thinned them out
with the greatest care, and had (day before yesterday) full five hundred
lusty little plants, ready to go out into the deeply dug cool bed and
there wax strong according to the need of pinks before summer heat gains
the upper hand.

The Dahlias had also thriven, but then they are less particular, and if
they live well will put up with more snubs than will a carnation.

Weather and Bertel being propitious, I prepared to plant out my pets,
though of course they must be sheltered of nights for another half
month. As I was about to remove one of the props that held the sash
aloft, to let in air to the Dahlias, and still constitute it a
windbreak, I heard a violent whistling in our grass road north of the
barn that divides the home acres from the upper pastures and Martha's
chicken farm. At first I thought but little of it, as many people use it
as a short cut from the back road from the Bluffs down to the village.
Soon a shout came from the same direction, and going toward the wall, I
saw Mr. Vandeveer struggling along, his great St. Bernard Jupiter, prize
winner in a recent show and but lately released from winter confinement,
bounding around and over him to such an extent that the spruce New
Yorker, who had the reputation of always being on dress parade from the
moment that he left bed until he returned to it in hand-embroidered pink
silk pajamas, was not only covered with abundant April mud, but could
hardly keep his footing.

At the moment I spied the pair, a great brindled cat, who sometimes
ventures on the place, in spite of all the attentions paid her by the
beagles, and who had been watching sparrows in the barnyard, sprang to
the wall. Zip! There was a rush, a snarl, a hiss, and a smash! Dog and
what had been cat crashed through the sash of my Dahlia frame, and in
the rebound ploughed into the soft earth that held the carnations.

The next minute Mr. Vandeveer absolutely leaped over the wall, and
seeing the dog, apparently in the midst of the broken glass, turned
almost apoplectic, shouting, "Ah, his legs will be cut; he'll be ruined,
and Julie will never forgive me! He's her best dog and cost $3000 spot
cash! Get him out, somebody, why don't you? What business have people
to put such dangerous skylights near a public road?"

Meanwhile, as wrath arose in my throat and formed ugly words, Jupiter, a
great friend of ours, who has had more comfortable meals in our kitchen
during the winter than the careless kennel men would have wished to be
known, sprang toward me with well-meant, if rough, caresses,--evidently
the few scratches he had amounted to nothing. I forgave him the cat
cheerfully, but my poor carnations! They do not belong to the grovelling
tribe of herbs that bend and refuse to break like portulaca, chickweed,
and pusley the accursed. Fortunately, just then, a scene of the past
year, which had come to me by report, floated across my vision. Our
young hounds, Bob and Pete, in the heat of undisciplined rat-catching
(for these dogs when young and unbroken will chase anything that runs),
completely undermined the Vandeveers' mushroom bed, the door of the pit
having been left open!

When Mr. Vandeveer recovered himself, he began profuse apologies. Would
"send the glazier down immediately"--"so sorry to spoil such lovely
young onions and spinach!"

"What! not early vegetables, but flowers?" Oh, then he should not feel
so badly. Really, he had quite forgotten himself, but the truth was
Julie thought more of her dogs and horses than even of himself, he
sometimes thought,--almost, but not quite; "ha! ha! really, don't you
know!" While, judging by the comparative behaviour of dog and man, the
balance was decidedly in favour of Jupiter. But you see I never like men
who dress like ladies, I had lost my young plants, and I love dogs from
mongrel all up the ladder (lap dogs excepted), so I may be prejudiced.

After Bertel had carefully removed the splintered glass from the earth,
so that I could take account of my damaged stock, about half seemed to
be redeemable; but even those poor seedlings looked like soldiers after
battle, a limb gone here and an eye missing there.

At supper father, Evan, and I were silent and ceremoniously polite,
neither referring to the day's disasters, and I could see that the boys
were regarding us with open-eyed wonder. When the meal was almost
finished, the bell of the front door rang and Effie returned, bearing a
large, ornamental basket, almost of the proportions of a hamper, with a
card fastened conspicuously to the handle, upon which was printed "With
apologies from Jupiter!" Inside was a daintily arranged assortment of
hothouse vegetables,--cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant eggs,
artichokes,--with a separate basket in one corner brimming with
strawberries, and in the other a pink tissue-paper parcel, tied with
ribbon, containing mushrooms, proving that, after all, fussy Mr.
Vandeveer has the saving grace of humour.

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