Mabel Osgood Wright - The Garden, You, and I

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

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"'If it was anything possible, I'd hump my back and do it, but it
isn't!' he jerked, knocking his pipe against the chimney-side before it
was half empty and then refilling it; 'it's either a vacation _or_ the
knoll--which shall it be?

"'I don't hanker after leaving home, but that's what a complete change
means, I suppose, though I confess I should enjoy a rest for a time from
travelling to and fro, like a weaver's shuttle! Mary hates to leave home
too; she's a regular sit-by-the-fire! Come, which shall it be? This
indecision makes the cure worse than the disease!' and Bart fingered a
penny prior to giving it the decisive flip--'head, a vacation; tail, an
attack on the knoll!' The penny spun, and then taking a queer backward
leap fell into the ashes, where it lay buried.

"'That reads like neither!' said Bart, sitting up with a start.

"'No, both!' replied _The Man from Everywhere_, opening his eyes and
gazing first at Bart and then at me with a quizzical expression.

"Instantly curiosity was piqued, for compared to this most domestic of
travelled bachelors, the Lady from Philadelphia was without either
foresight or resources.

"'You said that your riddle was to take three from two and have four. My
plan is very simple; just add three to two and you have not only four
but five! Take a vacation from business, but stay at home; do your own
garden improvements with your head and a horse and cart and a pair of
strong hands with a pick and spade to help you out, for you can't, with
impunity, turn an office man, all of a sudden, into a day labourer. As
to hewing the knoll into terraces up and down again, tear up that
confounded plan. Restore the ground on nature's lines, and you'll have a
better windbreak for your house and garden in winter than the best
engineer could construct, besides having a retreat for hot weather where
you can sit in your bones without being observed by the neighbours!'

"He spoke very slowly, letting the smoke wreaths float before his eyes,
as if in them he sought the solution he was voicing.

"'A terrace implies closely shorn turf and formal surroundings, out of
keeping with this place; besides, young people with only a general maid
and a useful man can't afford to be formal,--if they would, the game
isn't worth the strain.' (Did I not tell you that he observes?)

"'Let us take a look at the knoll to-morrow and see what has grown there
and guess at what may be coaxed to grow, and then you can spend a couple
of months during this summer and autumn searching the woods and byways
for native plants for the restoration. This reservoir building is your
opportunity; you can rob the river valley with impunity, for the
clearing will begin in October, consequently anything you take will be
in the line of a rescue. So there you are--living in the fresh air,
improving your place, and saving money at both ends.'

"'By George! It sounds well, as far as I'm concerned!' ejaculated Bart,
'but how will such a scheme give Mary a vacation from housekeeping and
the everlasting three meals a day? She seldom growls, but the last month
she too has confessed to feeling tired.'

"'I think it's a perfectly fascinating idea, but how will it give Bart
a "complete change, away from the sound of the beat of time," as the
doctor puts it?' I asked with more eagerness than I realized, for I
always dislike to be far away from home at night, and you see there has
been whooping cough in the neighbourhood and there are also green apples
to be reckoned with in season, even though the Infant has long ago
passed safely through the mysteries of the second summer.

"_The Man from Everywhere_ did not answer Bart at all, but, turning to
me with the air of a paternal sage and pointing an authoritative
forefinger, said, somewhat sarcastically, I thought, 'What greater
change can an American have than leisure in which to enjoy his own home?
For giving Time the slip, all you have to do is to stop the clocks and
follow the sun and your own inclinations. As to living out of doors, the
old open-sided hay barn on the pasture side of the knoll, that you have
not decided whether to rebuild or tear down, will make an excellent
camp. Aside from the roof, it is as open as a hawk's nest. Don't hurry
your decision; incubate the idea over Sunday, Madam Penrose, and I'll
warrant by Monday you will have hatched a really tangible plan, if not a
brood of them.'

"I looked at Bart, he nodded back approvingly, so I slipped out, first
to see that the Infant was sleeping properly, head up, and not down
under the clothes, as I had once found her, and then to walk to and fro
under the budding stars for inspiration, leaving the pair to talk the
men's talk that is so good and nourishing for a married man like Bart,
no matter how much he cares for the Infant and me.

"Jumbled up as the garden is, the spring twilight veils all deficiencies
and releases persuasive odours from every corner, while the knoll, with
its gnarled trees outlined against the sky, appealed to me as never
before, a thing desirable and to be restored and preserved even at a
cost rather than obliterated.

"'Oh, Mrs. Evan, I wish I could tell you how _The Man's_ plan touches me
and seems made for me especially this spring. I seem fairly to have a
passion for home and the bit of earth about and sky above it that is all
our own. And unlike other times when I loved to have my friends come and
visit me, and share and return the hospitality of neighbours, I want to
be alone with myself and Bart, to spend long days under the sky and
trees and have nothing come between our real selves and God, not even
the ticking and dictation of a clock! There is so much that I want to
tell my husband just now, that cannot be put in words, and that he may
only read by intuition. When I was younger and first married, I did not
feel this need so much, but now life seems to take on so much deeper a
meaning! Do you understand? Ah, yes, I know you do! But I am wandering
from the point, just as I yearn to wander from all the stringencies of
life this summer.

"Evidently seeing me, the Rural Delivery man whistled from his cart,
instead of leaving the evening mail in its wren box, as usual. I went to
the gate rather reluctantly, I was so absorbed in garden dreams, took
the letters from the carrier, and, as the men were still sitting in the
dark, carried them up to the lamp in my own sitting room, little
realizing that even at that moment I was holding the key to the 'really
tangible plan' in my hand.

* * * * *

"_The next morning._ Two of the letters I received on Saturday night
would have been of great importance if we were still planning to go away
for a vacation, instead of hoping to stay at home for it. The first,
from mother, told me that she and my brother expect to spend the summer
in taking a journey, in which Alaska is to be the turning-point. She
begs us to go with them and offers to give me her right-hand-reliable,
Jane McElroy, who cared for me when a baby, to stay here with the
Infant. The second letter was from Maria Maxwell, a distant cousin of
Bart's. She has also heard of our intended vacation,--indeed the
rapidity with which the news travels and the interest it causes are good
proofs of our stay-at-home tendencies and the general sobriety of our
six years of matrimony!

"Maria is a very bright, adaptable woman of about thirty-five, who
teaches music in the New York public schools, is alone in the world, and
manages to keep an attractive home in a mere scrap of a flat. When she
comes to visit us, we like her as well the last day of her stay as the
first, which fact speaks volumes for her character! Though forced by
circumstances to live in town, she has a deep love for the country, and
wishes, if we intend to leave the house open, to come and care for it in
our absence, even offering to cook for herself if we do not care to have
the expense of a maid, saying, 'to cook a real meal, with a real fire
instead of gas, will be a great and refreshing change for me, so you
need feel under no obligation whatever!'

"Thinking of the pity of wasting such tempting offers as these, I went
to church with my body only, my mind staying outside under a
horse-chestnut tree, and instead of listening as I should, I looked
sidewise out of the window at my double in the shade and wondered if,
after all, the stay-at-home vacation was not a wild scheme. There being
a Puritan streak in me, via my father, I sometimes question the right of
what I wish to do simply because I like to do it.

"At dinner I was so grumpy, answering in monosyllables, that sensitive
Bart looked anxious, and as if he thought I was disappointed at the
possible turn of affairs, but _The Man from Everywhere_ laughed, saying,
'Let her alone; she is not through incubating the plan, and you know the
best of setting hens merely cluck and growl when disturbed.'

"Immediately after dinner Bart and _The Man_ went for a walk up the
river valley, and I, going to the living room, seated myself by the
window, where I could watch the Infant playing on the gravel outside, it
being the afternoon out of both the general maid Anastasia and Barney
the man, between whom I suspect matrimonial intentions.

"The singing of the birds, the hum of bees in the opening lilacs, and
the garden fragrance blending with the Infant's prattle, as she babbled
to her dolls, floated through the open door and made me drowsy, and I
turned from the light toward the now empty fireplace.

"A snap! and the air seemed suddenly exhilarating! Was it an electric
spark from the telephone? No, simply the clarifying of the thoughts that
had been puzzling me.

"Maria Maxwell shall come during our vacations,--at that moment I
decided to separate the time into several periods,--she shall take
entire charge of all within doors.

"Bart and I will divide off a portion of the old hay-barn with screens,
and camp out there (unless in case of very bad thunder or one of the
cold July storms that we sometimes have). Anastasia shall serve us a
very simple hot dinner at noon in the summer kitchen, and keep a supply
of cooked food in the pantry, from which we can arrange our breakfasts
and suppers in the opposite side of the barn from our sleeping place,
and there we can have a table, chairs, and a little oil stove for making
tea and coffee.

"Maria, besides attending to domestic details, must also inspect the
mail and only show us letters when absolutely necessary, as well as to
say 'not at home,' with the impenetrable New York butler manner to every
one who calls.

"Thus Bart and I will be equally free without the rending of heart
strings--free to love and enjoy home from without, for it is really
strange when one comes to think of it, we learn of the outside world by
looking out the windows, but we so seldom have time to stand in another
view-point and look in. Thus it occurred to me, instead of taking one
long vacation, we can break the time into three or four in order to
follow the garden seasons and the work they suggest. A bit at the end of
May for both planning and locating the spring wild flowers before they
have wholly shed their petals, and so on through the season, ending in
October by the transplanting of trees and shrubs that we have marked and
in setting out the hardy roses, for which we shall have made a garden
according to the plan that Aunt Lavinia says is to be among the early
Garden, You, and I records.

"_May 15._ Maria Maxwell has joyfully agreed to come the twenty-first,
having obtained a substitute for her final week of teaching, as well as
rented her 'parlor car,' as she calls her flat, to a couple of students
who come from the South for change of air and to attend summer school at
Columbia College. It seems that many people look upon New York as a
summer watering place. Strange that a difference in climate can be
merely a matter of point of view.

"Now that we have decided to camp out at home, we are beginning to
realize the positive economy of the arrangement, for as we are not going
among people,--neither are they coming to us,--we shall need no new
clothes!

"We, a pair of natural spendthrifts, are actually turning miserly for
the garden's sake.

"Last night Bart went to the attic with a lantern and dragged from
obscurity two frightful misfit suits of the first bicycle
cuff-on-the-pants period, that were ripening in the camphor chest for
future missionary purposes, announcing that these, together with some
flannel shirts, would be his summer outfit, while this morning I went
into town and did battle at a sale of substantial, dollar shirt-waists,
and turning my back upon all the fascinations of little girls' frills
and fur-belows, bought stout gingham for aprons and overalls, into which
I shall presently pop the Infant, and thus save both stitches and
laundry work.

"Mother has sent a note expressing her pleasure in our plan and
enclosing a cheque for $50, suggesting that it should be put into a
birthday rose bed--my birthday is in two days--in miniature like the old
garden at her home on the north Virginia border. I'm sending you the
list of such roses as she remembered that were in it, but I'm sure
many, like Gloire de Dijon, would be winter killed here. Will you revise
the list for me?

"Bart has arranged to shut off the back hall and stairs, so that when we
wish, we can get to our indoor bedroom and bath at any hour without
going through the house or disturbing its routine.

"Anastasia has been heard to express doubts as to our entire sanity
confidentially to Barney, on his return from the removal of two cots
from the attic to the part of the barn enclosed by some old piazza
screens, thereby publicly declaring our intention of sleeping out in all
seasonable weather.

"_May 20._ The Blakes, next door below, are going to Europe, and have
offered us their comfortable family horse, the buggy, and a light-work
wagon, if we will feed, shoe, pet, and otherwise care for him (his name,
it seems, is Romeo). Could anything be more in keeping with both our
desires and needs?

"To-day, half as a joke, I've sent out P.P.C. cards to all our formal
friends in the county. Bart frowns, saying that they may be taken
seriously and produce like results!

"_May 22._ Maria has arrived, taken possession of the market-book,
housekeeping box, and had a satisfactory conference with Anastasia.

"Hurrah for Liberty and outdoors! _It_ begins to-morrow. You may label
it Their Garden Vacation, and admit it to the records of The Garden,
You, and I, at your own risk and peril; but as you say that if you are
to boil down the practical part of your garden-boke experiences for the
benefit of Aunt Lavinia and me and I must send you my summer doings, I
shall take this way of accomplishing it, at intervals, the only regular
task, if gossiping to you can be so called, that I shall set myself this
summer.

"A new moon to-night. Will it prove a second honeymoon, think you, or
end in a total eclipse of our venture? I'm poppy sleepy!

"_May 23._ 10 A.M. (A postal.) Starting on vacation; stopped bedroom
clock and put away watches last night, and so overslept. It seems quite
easy to get away from Time! Please tell me what annuals I can plant as
late in the season as this, while we are locating the rose bed.

"MARY PENROSE."

V

ANNUALS--WORTHY AND UNWORTHY

THE MIDSUMMER GARDEN

_Oaklands, May 25._ A garden vacation! Fifty dollars to spend for roses!
What annuals may be planted now to tide you easily over the summer?
Really, Mary Penrose, the rush of your astonishing letter completely
took away my breath, and while I was recovering it by pacing up and down
the wild walk, and trying to decide whether I should answer your
questions first, and if I did which one, or ask you others instead,
Scotch fashion, about your unique summer plans, Evan came home a train
earlier than usual, with a pair of horticultural problems for which he
needed an immediate solution.

Last evening, in the working out of these schemes, we found that we were
really travelling on lines parallel with your needs, and so in due
course you shall have Evan's prescription and design for A Simple Rose
Garden (if it isn't simple enough, you can begin with half, as the
proportions will be the same), while I now send you my plans for an
inexpensive midsummer garden, which will be useful to you only as a part
of the whole chain, but for which Evan has a separate need.

Over at East Meadow, a suburb of Bridgeton that lies toward the shore
and is therefore attractive to summer people, a friend of Evan's has put
up a dozen tasteful, but inexpensive, Colonial cottages, and Evan has
planned the grounds that surround them, about an acre being allotted to
each house, for lawn and garden of summer vegetables, though no
arbitrary boundaries separate the plots. The houses are intended for
people of refined taste and moderate means who, only being able to leave
town during the school vacation, from middle June to late September, yet
desire to have a bit of garden to tend and to have flowers about them
other than the decorative but limited piazza boxes or row of geraniums
around the porch.

The vegetable gardens consist of four squares, conveniently intersected
by paths, these squares to be edged by annuals or bulbs of rapid growth,
things that, planted in May, will begin to be interesting when the
tenants come a month later.

But here am I, on the verge of rushing into another theme, without
having expressed our disappointment that you cannot bear us company
this summer, yet I must say that the edge of regret is somewhat dulled
by my interest in the progress and result of your garden vacation, which
to us at least is a perfectly unique idea, and quite worthy of the
inventive genius of _The Man from Everywhere_.

Plainly do I see by the scope of this same letter of yours that the
records of The Garden, You, and I, instead of being a confection of
undistinguishable ingredients blended by a chef of artistic soul, will
be a home-made strawberry shortcake, for which I am to furnish the
necessary but uninspired crust, while you will supply the filling of
fragrant berries.

With the beginning of your vacation begin my questions domestic that
threaten to overbalance your questions horticultural. If the Infant
should wail at night, do you expect to stay quietly out "in camp" and
not steal on tiptoe to the house, and at least peep in at the window?
Also, you have put a match-making thought in a head swept clean of all
such clinging cobwebs since Sukey Crandon married Carthy Latham and,
turning their backs on his ranch experiment, they decided to settle near
the Bradfords at the Ridge, where presently there will be another garden
growing. If you have no one either in the family or neighbourhood likely
to attract _The Man from Everywhere_, why may we not have him? Jane
Crandon is quite unexpectedly bright, as frank as society allows, this
being one of his requirements, besides having grown very pretty since
she has virtually become daughter to Mrs. Jenks-Smith and had sufficient
material in her gowns to allow her chest to develop.

But more of this later; to return to the annuals, I understand that you
have had your hardy beds prepared and that you want something to
brighten them, as summer tenants, until early autumn, when the permanent
residents may be transplanted from the hardy seed bed.

Annuals make a text fit for a very long sermon. Verily there are many
kinds, and the topic forms easily about a preachment, for they may be
divided summarily into two classes, the worthy and the unworthy, though
the worth or lack of it in annuals, as with most of us humans, is a
matter of climate, food, and environment, rather than inherent original
sin. The truth is, nature, though eternally patient and good-natured,
will not be hurried beyond a certain point, and the life of a flower
that is born under the light cloud shelter of English skies, fed by
nourishing mist through long days that have enough sunlight to stimulate
and not scorch, has a different consummation than with us, where the
climate of extremes makes the perfection of flowers most uncertain, at
least in the months of July and August when the immature bud of one day
is the open, but often imperfect, flower of the next. As no one may
change climatic conditions, the only thing to be done is to give to this
class of flowers of the summer garden room for individual development,
all the air they need to breathe both below ground, by frequent stirring
of the soil, and above, by avoidance of over-crowding, and then select
only those varieties that are really worth while.

This qualification can best be settled by pausing and asking three
questions, when confronting the alluring portrait of an
above-the-average specimen of annual in a catalogue, for _Garden Goozle_
applies not only to the literature of the subject, but to the pictures
as well, and a measurement of, for instance, a flower stalk of Drummond
phlox, taken from a specimen pot-grown plant, raised at least partly
under glass, is sure to cause disappointment when the average border
plant is compared with it.

First--is the species of a colour and length of flowering season to be
used in jungle-like masses for summer colour? Second--has it fragrance
or decorative quality for house decoration? Thirdly, has it the
backbone to stand alone or will the plant flop and flatten shapelessly
at the first hard shower and so render an array of conspicuous stakes
necessary? Stakes, next to unsightly insecticides and malodorous
fertilizers, are the bane of gardening, but that subject is big enough
for a separate chronicle.

By ability to stand alone, I do not mean is every branchlet stiff as if
galvanized, like a balsam, for this is by no means pretty, but is the
plant so constructed that it can languish gracefully, petunia fashion,
and not fall over stark and prone like an uprooted castor bean.
Hybridization, like physical culture in the human, has evidently infused
grace in the plant races, for many things that in my youth seemed the
embodiment of stiffness, like the gladiolus, have developed suppleness,
and instead of the stiff bayonet spike of florets, this useful and
indefatigable bulb, if left to itself and not bound to a stake like a
martyr, now produces flower sprays that start out at right angles,
curve, and almost droop, with striking, orchid-like effect.

For making patches of colour, without paying special heed to the size of
flower or development of individual plants, annuals may be sown thinly
broadcast, raked in lightly, and, if the beds or borders are not too
wide for reaching, thinned out as soon as four or five leaves appear.
Portulaca, sweet alyssum, Shirley poppies, and the annual gaillardias
belong to this class, as well as single petunias of the inexpensive
varieties used to edge shrubberies, and dwarf nasturtiums.

Sweet peas, of course, are to be sown early and deep, where they are to
stand half an inch apart, like garden peas, and then thinned out so that
there is not less than an inch between (two is better, but it is usually
heartbreaking to pull up so many sturdy pealets) and reenforced by brush
or wire trellising. Otherwise I plant the really worthy, or what might
be called major annuals, in a seed bed much like that used for the hardy
plants, at intervals during the month of May, according to the earliness
of the season, and the time they are wanted to bloom. Later, I
transplant them to their summer resting places, leaving those that are
not needed, for it is difficult to calculate too closely without
scrimping, in the seed bed, to cut for house decoration, as with the
perennials. Of course if annuals are desired for very early flowering,
many species may be started in a hotbed and taken from thence to the
borders. Biennials that it is desired shall flower the first season are
best hurried in this way, yet for the gardenerless garden of a woman
this makes o'er muckle work. The occasional help of the "general useful"
is not very efficient when it comes to tending hotbeds, giving the
exact quantity of water necessary to quench the thirst of seedlings
without producing dropsy, and the consequent "damping off" which, when
it suddenly appears, seems as intangible and makes one feel as helpless
as trying to check a backing horse by helpless force of bit. A frame for
Margaret carnations, early asters, and experiments in seedling Dahlias
and chrysanthemums will be quite enough.

The woman who lives all the year in the country can so manage that her
spring bulbs and hardy borders, together with the roses, last well into
July. After this the annuals must be depended upon for ground colour,
and to supplement the phloxes, gladioli, Dahlias, and the like. By the
raising of these seeds in hotbeds they are apt to reach their high tide
of bloom during the most intense heat of August, when they quickly
mature and dry away; while, on the other hand, if they are reared in an
open-air seed bed, they are not only stronger but they last longer,
owing to more deliberate growth. Asters sown out-of-doors in May bloom
well into October, when the forced plants barely outlast August.

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