Mabel Osgood Wright - The Garden, You, and I

M >> Mabel Osgood Wright >> The Garden, You, and I

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21

"Well, thinks I, I'll go to Meriky and see me Johnny, me youngest; most
loike they're more used to the shlapin' spells out there where all is
free; but they wasn't! Johnny's a sheriff and got money wid his woman,
and she's no place in her house fit fer the old man resting the drap
off. So he gives me money to go home first class, and says he'll sind
another bit along to Kathy fer me keepin'.

"This was come Easter, and bad cess, one o' me shlapes was due, and so
I've footed it to get a job to take me back to Kathy. If I could strike
a port just right, Hiven might get me home between times in a cattle
boat.

"I'm that well risted now I could do good work if I had full feed, maybe
till Michaelmas. Hiven rest ye, sor, but have ye ever a job o' garden
work now on yer estate, sor, that would kape me until I got the bit to
cross to Kathy?"

As Bart hesitated, I burst forth, "Have you ever tended flowers, Larry?"

"Flowers, me leddy?--that's what I did fer his Riverence, indoors and
out, and dressed them fer the shows, mem, and not few's the prize money
we took. His Riverence, he called a rose for Kathy, that is to say
Kathleen; 'twas that big 'twould hide yer face. Flowers, is it? Well, I
don't know!"

Bart, meanwhile, had made a plan, telling Larry that he would draw a cup
of tea and give him something to eat, while he thought the matter over.
He soon had the poor fellow wrapped in an old blanket and snoring
comfortably in the straw, while, as the rain had stopped and dawn began
to show the outlines of Opal Farm, Bart suggested that I had best go
indoors and finish my broken sleep, while he had a chance to scrutinize
Larry by daylight before committing himself.

When he rejoined me several hours later for an indoor breakfast, for it
had turned to rain again and promised several days of the saturate
weather that makes even a mountain camp utterly dreary, he brought me
the news that Larry was to work for me especially, beginning on the rose
bed,--that he would lodge with Amos Opie and take his meals with
Anastasia, who thinks it likely that they are cousins on the mothers'
side, as they are both of the same parish and name. The _exact_ way of
our meeting with him need not be dwelt upon domestically, for the sake
of discipline, as he will have more self-respect among his fellows in
the combination clothes we provided, "until his baggage arrives." He is
to be paid no money, and allowed to "shlape" if a spell unhappily
arrives. When the season is over, Bart agrees to see him on board ship
with a prepaid passage straight to Kathy, and whatever else is his due
sent to her! Meanwhile he promised to "fit the leddy with the tastiest
garden off the old sod!"

So here we are!

This chronicle should have a penny-dreadful title, "Their Midnight
Adventure, or How it Rained a Rose Gardener!" Tell me about the ferns
next time; we have only moved the glossy Christmas and evergreen-crested
wood ferns as yet, being sure of these.

How about our fencing? Ask Evan. You remember that we have a
picket-fence toward the road, but on three sides the boundary is only a
tumble-down stone wall in which bird cherries have here and there found
footing. We have a chance to sell the stones, and Bart is thinking of
it, as it will be too costly to rebuild on a good foundation. The old
wall was merely a rough-laid pile.

IX

FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)

_Hemlock Hills, July 3._ For nearly a week we have been sauntering
through this most entrancing hill country, practically a pedestrian
trip, except that the feet that have taken the steps have been shod with
steel instead of leather. Your last chronicle has followed me, and was
read in a region so pervaded by ferns that your questions concerning
their transplanting would have answered themselves if you could have
only perched on the rock beside me. There is a fern-lined ravine below,
a fern-bordered road in front; and above a log cottage, set in a
clearing in the hemlocks which has for its boundaries the tumble-down
fence piled by the settlers a century or two ago, its crevices now
filled by leaf-mould, has become at once a natural fernery and a
barrier. Why do you not use your old wall in a like manner? Of course
your stones may be too closely piled and lack the time-gathered
leaf-mould, but a little discretion in removing or tipping a stone here
and there, and a crowbar for making pockets, would work wonders. You
might even exchange the surplus rocks for leaf-mould, load by load; at
any rate large quantities of fern soil must be obtainable for the
carting at the reservoir woods.

Imagine the effect, if you please, of that irregular line of rocks
swathed in vines and sheltering great clumps of ferns, while it will
afford an endless shelter for every sort of wild thing that you may pick
up in your rambles. Of course you need not plant it all at once, but
having made the plan, develop it at leisure.

You should never quite finish a country place unless you expect to leave
it. The something more in garden life is the bale of hay before the
horse's nose on the uphill road. Last year, for almost a week, we
thought our garden quite as finished as the material and surroundings
would allow,--it was a strange, dismal, hollow sort of feeling. However,
it was soon displaced by the desire that I have to collect my best roses
in one spot, add to them, and gradually form a rosary where the Garden
Queen and all her family may have the best of air, food, and lodgings.
You see I feared that the knoll, hardy beds, and rose garden were not
sufficient food for your mind to ruminate, so I add the fern fence as a
sort of dessert!

[Illustration: AN ENDLESS SHELTER FOR EVERY SORT OF WILD
THING.]

"Where is the shade that ferns need?" I hear you ask, "for except
under some old apple trees and where the bird cherries grow (and they,
though beautiful at blooming time and leaf fall, attract tent
caterpillars), the stone wall lies in the sun!"

Yes, but in one of the woodland homes of this region I have seen a
screen placed by such a rustic stone fence that it not only served the
purpose of giving light shade, but was a thing of beauty in itself,
dividing the vista into many landscapes, the frame being long or upright
according to the planter's fancy.

Do you remember the old saying "When away keep open thine eyes, and so
pack thy trunk for the home-going?"

On this drive of ours I've been cramming my trunk to overflowing, and
yet the ideas are often the simplest possible, for the people of this
region, with more inventive art than money, have the perfect gift of
adapting that which lies nearest to hand.

You spoke in your last chronicle of the screen of white birches through
which you saw the sun rise over the meadows of Opal Farm. This birch
springs up in waste lands almost everywhere. We have it in abundance in
the wood lot on the side of our hill, and it is scattered through the
wet woods below our wild walk, showing that all it needs is a foothold.

Because it is common and the wood rather weak and soft, landscape
gardening has rather passed it by, turning a cold shoulder, yet the
slender tree is very beautiful. True, it has not the length of life, the
girth and strength of limb, of the silver-barked canoe birch, but the
white birch will grow in a climate that fevers its northern cousin. In
spite of its delicate qualities, it is not a trivial tree, for I have
seen it with a bole of more than forty feet in length, measuring
eighteen inches through at the ground. When you set it, you are not
planting for posterity, perhaps, but will gain a speedy result; and the
fertility of the tree, when once established, will take care of the
future.

What is more charming after a summer shower than a natural cluster of
these picturesque birches, as they often chance to group themselves in
threes, like the Graces--the soft white of the trunks, with dark
hieroglyphic shadows here and there disappearing in a drapery of glossy
leaves, green above and reflecting the bark colour underneath, all
a-quiver and more like live things poised upon the russet twigs than
delicate pointed leaves! Then, when the autumn comes, how they stand out
in company with cedar bushes and sheep laurel on the hillsides to make
beautiful the winter garden, and we stand in mute admiration when these
white birches reach from a snowbank and pencil their frosty tracery
against a wall of hemlocks.

This is the simple material that has been used with such wonderful
effect. In the gardens hereabout they have flanked their alleys with the
birches, for even when fully grown their habit is more poplar-like than
spreading, and many plants, like lilies, requiring partial shade
flourish under them; while for fences and screens the trees are planted
in small groups, with either stones and ferns, or shrubs set thick
between, and the most beautiful winter fence that Evan says he has ever
seen in all his wanderings amid costly beauty was when, last winter, in
being here to measure for some plans, he came suddenly upon an informal
boundary and screen combined, over fifty feet in length, made of white
birches,--the groups of twos and threes set eight or ten feet apart, the
gaps being filled by Japanese barberries laden with their scarlet fruit.
Even now this same screen is beautiful enough with its shaded greens,
while the barberries in their blooming time, and the crimson leaf glow
of autumn, give it four distinct seasons.

The branches of the white birch being small and thickly set, they may be
trimmed at will, and windows thus opened here and there without the look
of artifice or stiffness.

Fences are always a moot question to the gardener, for if she has a
pleasant neighbour, she does not like to raise an aggressive barrier or
perhaps cut off the view, yet to a certain extent I like being walled in
at least on two sides. A total lack of boundaries is too
impersonal,--the eye travels on and on: there is nothing to rest it by
comparison. Also, where there are no fences or hedges,--and what are
hedges but living fences,--there is nothing to break the ground draught
in winter and early springtime. The ocean is much more beautiful and
full of meaning when brought in contact with a slender bit of coast. The
moon has far more majesty when but distancing the tree-tops than when
rolling apparently at random through an empty sky. A vast estate may
well boast of wide sweeps and open places, but the same effect is not
gained, present fashion to the contrary, by throwing down the barriers
between a dozen homes occupying only half as many acres. Preferable is
the cosey English walled villa of the middle class, even though it be a
bit stuffy and suggestive of earwigs. The question should not be to
fence or not to fence, but rather _how_ to fence usefully and
artistically, and any one who has an old stone wall, such as you have,
moss grown and tumble-down, with the beginnings of wildness already
achieved, has no excuse for failure. We have seen other fences here
where bushes, wire, and vines all take part, but they cannot compete
with an old wall.

With ferns, a topic opens as long and broad and deep as the glen below
us, and of almost as uncertain climbing, for it is not so much what
ferns may be dug up and, as individual plants, continue to grow in new
surroundings, but how much of their haunt may be transplanted with them,
that the fern may keep its characteristics. Many people do not think of
this, nor would they care if reminded. Water lilies, floating among
their pads in the still margin of a stream, with jewelled dragon-flies
darting over, soft clouds above and the odour of wild grapes or swamp
azalea wafting from the banks, are no more to them than half a dozen
such lilies grown in a sunken tub or whitewashed basin in a backyard;
rather are they less desirable because less easily controlled and
encompassed. Such people, and they are not a few, belong to the tribe of
Peter Bell, who saw nothing more in the primrose by the river's brim
than that it was a primrose, and consequently yellow. Doubtless it would
have looked precisely the same to him, or even more yellow, if it had
bloomed in a tin can!

We do not treat our native ferns with sufficient respect. Homage is paid
in literature to the palm, and it is an emblem of honour, but our New
England ferns, many of them equally majestic, are tossed into heaps for
hay and mown down by the ruthless scythe of the farmer every autumn when
he shows his greatest agricultural energy by stripping the waysides of
their beauty prior to the coming of the roadmender with his awful
"turn-piking" process. If, by the way, the automobilists succeed in
stopping this piking practice, we will print a nice little prayer for
them and send it to Saint Peter, so that, though it won't help them in
this world,--that would be dangerous,--it will by and by!

In the woods the farmer allows the ferns to stand, for are they not one
of the usual attributes of a picnic? Stuck in the horses' bridle, they
keep off flies; they serve to deck the tablecloth upon which the food is
spread; gathered in armfuls, they somewhat ease the contact of the
rheumatic with the rocks, upon which they must often sit on such
occasions. They provide the young folks with a motive to seek something
further in the woods, and give the acquisitive ladies who "press things"
much loot to take home, and all without cost.

This may not be respectful treatment, but it is not martyrdom; the fern
is a generous plant, a thing of wiry root-stock and prehistoric
tenacity; it has not forgotten that tree ferns are among its ancestors;
when it is discouraged, it rests and grows again. But imagine the
feelings of a mat of exquisite maidenhair rent from a shady slope with
moss and partridge vine at its feet, and quivering elusive woodland
shade above, on finding itself unceremoniously crowded into a bed,
between cannas or red geraniums! Or fancy the despair of either of the
wide-spreading Osmundas, lovers of stream borders opulent with
leaf-mould, or wood hollows deep with moist richness, on finding
themselves ranged in a row about the porch of a summer cottage, each one
tied firmly to a stake like so many green parasols stuck in the dry loam
point downward!

It is not so much a question of how many species of native ferns can be
domesticated, for given sufficient time and patience all things are
possible, but how many varieties are either decorative, interesting, or
useful away from their native haunts. For any one taking what may be
called a botanical interest in ferns, a semi-artificial rockery, with
one end in wet ground and the other reaching dry-wood conditions, is
extremely interesting. In such a place, by obtaining some of the earth
with each specimen and tagging it carefully, an out-of-door herbarium
may be formed and something added to it every time an excursion is made
into a new region. Otherwise the ferns that are worth the trouble of
transplanting and supplying with soil akin to that from which they
came, are comparatively few. Of decorative species the Osmundas easily
lead; being natives of swampy or at least moist ground, they should have
a like situation, and yet so strong are their roots and crown of leaves
that they will flourish for years after the moisture that has fed them
has been drained and the shading overgrowth cut away, even though
dwarfed in growth and coarsened in texture. Thus people seeing them
growing under these conditions in open fields and roadside banks mistake
their necessities.

The Royal fern (_Osmunda regalis_) positively demands moisture; it will
waive the matter of shade in a great degree, but water it must have.

The Cinnamon fern, that encloses the spongelike, brown, fertile fronds
in the circle of green ones, gains its greatest size of five feet in
roadside runnels or in springy places between boulders in the river
woods; yet so accommodating is it that you can use it at the base of
your knoll if a convenient rock promises both reasonable dampness and
shelter.

The third of the family (_Osmunda Claytonia_) is known as the
Interrupted fern, because in May the fertile black leaflets appear in
the middle of the fronds and interrupt the even greenness. This fern
will thrive in merely moist soil and is very charming early in the
season, but like the other two, out of its haunts, cannot be relied
upon after August.

As a fern for deep soil, where walking room can be allowed it, the
common brake, or bracken (_Pteris aquilina_) is unsurpassed. It will
grow either in sandy woods or moist, and should have a certain amount of
high shade, else its broad fronds, held high above the ground
umbrella-wise, will curl, grow coarse, and lose the fernlike quality
altogether. You can plant this safely in the bit of old orchard that you
are giving over to wild asters, black-eyed Susan, and sundrops, but mind
you, be sure to take both Larry and Barney, together with a long
post-hole spade, when you go out to dig brakes,--they are not things of
shallow superficial roots, I can assure you.

A few years ago Evan, Timothy Saunders, and I went brake-hunting, I
selecting the groups and the menkind digging great solid turfs a foot or
more in depth, in order to be sure the things had native earth enough
along to mother them into comfortable growth. Proudly we loaded the big
box wagon, for we had taken so much black peat (as the soil happened to
be) that not a root hung below and success was certain.

When, on reaching home, in unloading, one turf fell from the cart and
crumbled into fragments, to my dismay I found that the long, tough
stalk ran quite through the clod and we had no roots at all, but that
(if inanimate things can laugh) they were all laughing at us back in the
meadow and probably another foot underground. Yet brakes are well worth
the trouble of deep digging, for if once established, a waste bit, where
little else will flourish, is given a graceful undergrowth that is able
to stand erect even though the breeze plays with the little forest as it
does with a field of grain. Then, too, the brake patch is a treasury to
be drawn from when arranging tall flowers like foxgloves, larkspurs,
hollyhocks, and others that have little foliage of their own.

The fact that the brake does not mature its seeds that lie under the
leaf margin until late summer also insures it a long season of
sightliness, and when ripeness finally draws nigh, it comes in a series
of beautiful mellow shades, varying from straw through deep gold to
russet, such as the beech tree chooses for its autumn cloak.

Another plant there is, a low-growing shrub, having long leaves with
scalloped edges, giving a spicy odour when crushed or after rain, that I
must beg you to plant with these brakes. It is called Sweet-fern, merely
by courtesy, from its fernlike appearance, for it is of the bayberry
family and first cousin to sweet gale and waxberry.

The digging of this also is a process quite as elusive as mining for
brakes; but when once it sets foot in your orchard, and it will enjoy
the drier places, you will have a liberal annex to your bed of sweet
odours, and it may worthily join lemon balm, mignonette, southernwood,
and lavender in the house, though in the garden it would be rather too
pushing a companion.

Next, both decorative and useful, comes the Silvery Spleenwort, that is
content with shade and good soil of any sort, so long as it is not rank
with manure. It has a slender creeping root, but when it once takes
hold, it flourishes mightily and after a year or so will wave
silver-lined fronds three feet long proudly before you, a rival of
Osmunda!

A sister spleenwort is the beautiful Lady fern, whose lacelike fronds
have party-coloured stems, varying from straw through pink and reddish
to brown, giving an unusual touch of life and warmth to one of the cool
green fern tribe. In autumn the entire leaf of this fern, in dying,
oftentimes takes these same hues; it is decorative when growing and
useful to blend with cut flowers. It naturally prefers woods, but will
settle down comfortably in the angle of a house or under a fence, and
will be a standby in your wall rockery.

The ferns that seem really to prefer the open, one taking to dry and two
to moist ground, are the hay-scented fern (_Dicksonia punctilobula_),
the New York fern (_Dryopteris Noveboracencis_), and the Marsh
Shield-fern. Dicksonia has a pretty leaf of fretwork, and will grow
three feet in length, though it is usually much shorter. It is the fern
universal here with us, it makes great swales running out from wood
edges to pastures, and it rivals the bayberry in covering hillsides; it
will grow in dense beds under tall laurels or rhododendrons, border your
wild walk, or make a setting of cheerful light green to the stone wall;
while if cut for house decoration, it keeps in condition for several
days and almost rivals the Maidenhair as a combination with sweet peas
or roses.

The New York fern, when of low stature, is one of the many bits of
growing carpet of rich cool woods. If it is grown in deep shade, the
leaves become too long and spindling for beauty. When in moist ground,
quite in the open, or in reflected shade, the fresh young leaves of a
foot and under add great variety to the grass and are a perfect setting
for table decorations of small flowers. We have these ferns all through
the dell. If they are mown down in June, July sees a fresh crop, and
their spring green is held perpetual until frost.

The Marsh Shield-fern of gentian meadows is the perfect small fern for a
bit of wet ground, and is the green to be used with all wild flowers of
like places. One day last autumn I had a bouquet of grass-of-Parnassus,
ladies' tresses, and gentian massed thickly with these ferns, and the
posey lived for days on the sunny window shelf of the den (for gentians
close their eyes in shade),--a bit of the September marshland brought
indoors.

The two Beech-ferns, the long and the broad, you may grow on the knoll;
give the long the dampest spots, and place the broad where it is quite
dry. As the rootstocks of both these are somewhat frail, I would advise
you to peg them down with hairpins and cover well with earth. By the
way, I always use wire hairpins to hold down creeping rootstocks of
every kind; it keeps them from springing up and drying before the
rootlets have a chance to grasp the soil.

The roots of Maidenhair should always be treated in this way, as they
dry out very quickly. This most distinctive of our New England ferns
will grow between the rocks of your knoll, as well as in deep nooks in
the fence. It seems to love rich side-hill woods and craves a rock
behind its back, and if you are only careful about the soil, you can
have miniature forests of it with little trouble. As for maidenhair, all
its uses are beauty!

Give me a bouquet of perfect wild rosebuds within a deep fringe of
maidenhair to set in a crystal jar where I may watch the deep pink
petals unfold and show the golden stars within; let me breathe their
first breath of perfume, and you may keep all the greenhouse orchids
that are grown.

Though you can have a variety of ferns in other locations, those that
will thrive best on the knoll and keep it ever green and in touch with
laurel and hemlock, are but five,--the Christmas fern, the Marginal
Shield-fern, the common Rock Polypody, the Ebony Spleenwort, and the
Spinulose Wood-fern. Of the first pair it is impossible to have too
many. The Christmas fern, with its glistening leaves of holly green, has
a stout, creeping rootstock, which must be firmly secured, a few stones
being added temporarily to the hairpins to give weight. The Evergreen
Wood-fern and Ebony Spleenwort, having short rootstocks, can be tucked
into sufficiently deep holes between rocks or in the hollows left by
small decayed stumps, while the transplanting of the Rock Polypody is an
act where luck, recklessness, and a pinch of magic must all be combined.

You will find vast mats of these leathery little Polypodys growing with
rock-selaginella on the great boulders of the river woods. As these are
to be split up for masonry, the experiment of transferring the polypody
is no sin, though it savours somewhat of the process of skin-grafting.
Evan and I have tried the experiment successfully, so that it is no
fable. We had a bit of shady bank at home that proved by the mosses that
grew on it that it was moistened from beneath the year through. The
protecting shade was of tall hickories, and a rock ledge some twenty
feet high shielded it from the south and east. We scraped the moss from
a circle of about six feet and loosened the surface of the earth only,
and very carefully. Then we spread some moist leaf-mould on the rough
but flat surface of a partly exposed rock. Going to a near-by bit of
woods that was being despoiled, as in your valley, we chose two great
mats of polypody and moss that had no piercing twigs to break the
fabric, and carefully peeled them from the rocks, as you would bark from
a tree, the matted rootstocks weaving all together. Moistening these
thoroughly, we wrapped them in a horse blanket and hurried home. The
earth and rock already prepared were sprinkled with water and the fern
fabric applied and gently but firmly pressed down, that resting on the
earth being held by the ever useful hairpin!

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21