Mabel Osgood Wright - The Garden, You, and I

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

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Of many annuals it is writ in the catalogues, "sow at intervals of two
weeks or a month for succession." This sounds very plausible, for are
not vegetables so dealt with, the green string-beans in our garden being
always sown every two weeks from early April until September first? Yes,
but to vegetables is usually given fresher and deeper soil for the crop
succession than falls to flower seeds, and in addition the seeds are of
a more rugged quality.

My garden does not take kindly to this successive sowing, and I have
gradually learned to control the flower-bearing period by difference in
location. Spring, and in our latitude May, is the time of universal seed
vitality, and seeds germinating then seem to possess the maximum of
strength; in June this is lessened, while a July-sown seed of a common
plant, such as a nasturtium or zinnia, seems to be impressed by the
lateness of the season and often flowers when but a few inches high, the
whole plant having a weazened, precocious look, akin to the progeny of
people, or higher animals, who are either born out of due season or of
elderly parents. On the other hand, the plant retarded in its growth by
a less stimulating location, when it blooms, is quite as perfect and of
equal quality with its seed-bed fellows who were transplanted at once
into full sunlight.

Take, for example, mignonette, which in the larger gardens is always
treated by successive sowings. A row sown early in April, in a sunny
spot in the open garden and thinned out, will flower profusely before
very hot weather, bloom itself out, and then leave room for some late,
flowering biennial. That sown in the regular seed bed early in May may
be transplanted (for this is the way by which large trusses of bloom may
be obtained) early in June into three locations, using it as a border
for taller plants, except in the bed of sweet odours, where it may be
set in bunches of a dozen plants, for in this bed individuality may be
allowed to blend in a universal mass of fragrance.

In order to judge accurately of the exact capabilities for shade or
sunlight of the different portions of a garden, one must live with it,
follow the shadows traced by the tree fingers on the ground the year
through, and know its moods as the expressions that pass over a familiar
face. For you must not transplant any of these annuals, that only live
to see their sun father for one brief season, into the shade of any tree
or overhanging roof, but at most in the travelling umbra of a distant
object, such as a tall spruce, the northeastern side of a hedge, or such
like.

In my garden one planting of mignonette in full sun goes in front of the
March-planted sweet peas; of the two transplantings from the seed, one
goes on the southwest side of the rose arbour and the other on the upper
or northeast side, where it blooms until it is literally turned into
green ice where it stands.

This manipulation of annuals belongs to the realm of the permanent
resident; the summer cottager must be content to either accept the
conditions of the garden as arranged by his landlord, or in a brief
visit or two made before taking possession, do his own sowing where the
plants are to stand. In this case let him choose his varieties carefully
and spare his hand in thickness of sowing, and he may have as many
flowers for his table and as happy an experience with the summer garden,
even though it is brief, as his wealthy neighbour who spends many
dollars for bedding plants and foliage effects that may be neither
smelled, gathered nor familiarized.

Among all the numerous birds that flit through the trees as visitors, or
else stay with us and nest in secluded places, how comparatively few do
we really depend upon for the aerial colour and the song that opens a
glimpse of Eden to our eager eyes and ears each year, for our eternal
solace and encouragement? There are some, like the wood thrush,
song-sparrow, oriole, robin, barn-swallow, catbird, and wren, without
which June would not be June, but an imperfect harmony lacking the
dominant note.

[Illustration: LONGFELLOW'S GARDEN.]

Down close to the earth, yes, in the earth, the same obtains. Upon how
few of all the species of annuals listed does the real success of the
summer garden rest? This is more and more apparent each year, when the
fittest are still further developed by hybridization for survival and
the indifferent species drop out of sight.

We often think erroneously of the beauty of old-time gardens. This
beauty was largely that of consistency of form with the architecture of
the dwelling and simplicity, rather than the variety, of flowers grown.
Maeterlinck brings this before us with forcible charm in his essay on
Old-Fashioned Flowers, and even now Martin Cortright is making a little
biography of the flowers of our forefathers, as a birthday surprise for
Lavinia. These flowers depended more upon individuality and association
than upon their great variety.

First among the worthy annuals come sweet peas, mignonette, nasturtiums,
and asters, each one of the four having two out of the three necessary
qualifications, and the sweet pea all of them,--fragrance and decorative
value for both garden and house. To be sure, the sweet pea, though an
annual, must be planted before May if a satisfactory, well-grown hedge
with flowers held on long stems well above the foliage is to be
expected, and in certain warm, well-drained soils it is practicable to
sow seed the autumn before. This puts the sweet pea a little out of the
running for the hirer of a summer cottage, unless he can have access to
the place early in the season, but sown thinly and once fairly rooted
and kept free from dead flowers and pods, the vines will go on yielding
quite through September, though on the coming of hot weather the flower
stems shorten.

I often plant seeds of the climbing nasturtium in the row with the sweet
peas at a distance of one seed to the fist, the planting not being done
until late May. The peas mature first, and after the best of their
season has passed they are supplanted by the nasturtiums, which cover
the dry vines and festoon the supporting brush with gorgeous colour in
early autumn, keeping in the same colour scheme with salvia, sunflowers,
gaillardias, and tritomas. This is excellent where space is of account,
and also where more sweet peas are planted for their early yield than
can be kept in good shape the whole season. Centaurea or cornflower, the
bachelor's button or ragged sailor of old gardens, is in the front rank
of the worthies. The flowers have almost the keeping qualities of
everlastings, and are of easy culture, while the sweet sultan, also of
this family, adds fragrance to its other qualities. The blue cornflower
is best sown in a long border or bed of unconventional shape, and may be
treated like a biennial, one sowing being made in September so that the
seedlings will make sturdy tufts before cold weather. These, if lightly
covered with salt hay or rough litter (not leaves), will bloom in May
and June, and if then replaced by a second sowing, flowers may be had
from September first until freezing weather, so hardy is this true, blue
_Kaiser-blumen_.

All the poppies are worthy, from the lovely Shirley, with its
butterfly-winged petals, to the Eschscholtzia, the state flower of
California.

One thing to be remembered about poppies is not to rely greatly upon
their durability and make the mistake of expecting them to fill too
conspicuous a place, or keep long in the marching line of the garden
pageant. They have a disappointing way, especially the great,
long-stemmed double varieties, of suddenly turning to impossible
party-coloured mush after a bit of damp weather that is most
discouraging. Treated as mere garden episodes and massed here and there
where a sudden disappearance will not leave a gap, they will yield a
feast of unsurpassed colour.

To me the Shirley is the only really satisfactory annual poppy, and I
sow it in autumn and cover it after the fashion of the cornflower, as
it will survive anything but an open, rainy winter, and in the resulting
display that lasts the whole month of June it rivals the roses in
everything but perfume.

Godetia is a good flower for half-shady places that it is difficult to
fill, and rings the colour change from white through pink to crimson and
carmine. Marigolds hold their own for garden colour, but not for
gathering or bringing near the nose, and zinnias meet them on the same
plane.

The morning-glory tribe of _ipomaea_ is both useful and decorative for
rapid-growing screens, but heed should be taken that the common
varieties be not allowed to scatter their seeds at random, or the next
season, before you know it, every plant in the garden will be held tight
in their insinuating grasp. Especially beautiful are the new Imperial
Japanese morning glories that are exquisitely margined and fringed, and
of the size and pattern of rare glass wine cups. Petunias, if
judiciously used, and of good colour, belong in the second grade of the
first rank. They have their uses, but the family has a morbid tendency
to run to sad, half-mourning hues, and I have put a black mark against
it as far as my own garden is concerned.

Drummond phlox deserves especial mention, for so wide a colour range
has it, and so easy is its growth (if only you give it plenty of water
and elbow room, and remember that a crowded Drummond phlox is an unhappy
plant of short life), that a very tasteful group of beds could be made
of this flower alone by a careful selection of colours, while by
constant cutting for the house the length of the blooming season is
prolonged.

The dwarf salvias, too, grow readily from seed, and balsams, if one has
room, line up finely along straight walks, the firm blossoms of the
camelia-flowered variety, with their delicate rosettes of pink, salmon,
and lavender, also serving to make novel table decorations when arranged
in many ways with leaves of the laurel, English ivy, or fern fronds.

Portulaca, though cousin to the objectionable "pusley," is most useful
where mere colour is wanted to cover the ground in beds that have held
early tulips or other spring bulbs, as well as for covering dry, sandy
spots where little else will grow. It should not be planted until really
warm weather, and therefore may be scattered between the rows of
narcissi and late tulips when their tops are cut off, and by the time
they are quite withered and done away with, the cheerful portulaca,
feeding upon the hottest sunbeams, will begin to cover the ground, a
pleasure to the eye as well as a decorative screen to the bulbs
beneath, sucking the fiercest sun rays before they penetrate.

Chief among the low-growing worthies comes the verbena, good for
bedding, good for cutting, and in some of the mammoth varieties subtly
fragrant. Verbenas may be raised to advantage in a hotbed, but if the
seed be soaked overnight in warm water, it will germinate freely out of
doors in May and be a mass of bloom from July until late October. For
beds grouped around a sundial or any other garden centre, the verbena
has no peer; its trailing habit gives it grace, the flowers are borne
erect, yet it requires no staking and it is easily controlled by
pinching or pinning to the soil with stout hair-pins.

One little fragrant flower, fraught with meaning and remembrance,
belongs to the annuals, though its family is much better known among the
half-hardy perennials that require winter protection here. This is the
gold and brown annual wall-flower, slender sister of _die gelbe violet_,
and having that same subtle violet odour in perfect degree. It cannot be
called a decorative plant, but it should have plenty of room given it in
the bed of sweet odours and be used as a border on the sunny side of
wall or fence, where, protected from the wind and absorbing every ray of
autumn sunlight, it will often give you at least a buttonhole bouquet
on Christmas morning.

[Illustration: THE SUMMER GARDEN--VERBENAS.]

The cosmos is counted by catalogues and culturists one of the most
worthy of the newer annuals, and so it is when it takes heed to its ways
and behaves its best, but otherwise it has all the terrible uncertainty
of action common to human and garden parvenues. From the very beginning
of its career it is a conspicuous person, demanding room and abundance
of food. Thinking that its failure to bloom until frost threatened was
because I had sown the seed out of doors in May, I gave it a front room
in my very best hotbed early in March, where, long before the other
occupants of the place were big enough to be transplanted, Mrs. Cosmos
and family pushed their heads against the sash and insisted upon seeing
the world. Once in the garden, they throve mightily, and early in July,
at a time when I had more flowers than I needed, the entire row
threatened to bloom. After two weeks of coquettish showing of colour
here and there, up and down the line, they concluded that midsummer sun
did not agree with any of the shades of pink, carmine, or crimson of
which their clothes were fashioned, and as for white, the memory of
recent acres of field daisies made it too common, so they changed their
minds and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. When they were
pinched in on top, they simply expanded sidewise; ordinary and
inconspicuous staking failed to restrain them, and they even pulled away
at different angles from poles of silver birch with stout rope between,
like a festive company of bacchantes eluding the embraces of the police.
A heavy wind storm in late September snapped and twisted their hollow
trunks and branches. Were they discouraged? Not a particle; they simply
rested comfortably upon whatever they had chanced to fall and grew again
from this new basis. Meanwhile the plants in front of them and on the
opposite side of the way began to feel discouraged, and a fine lot of
asters, now within the shadow, were attacked by facial paralysis and
developed their blossoms only on one side.

The middle of October, the week before the coming of Black Frost, the
garden executioner, the cosmos, now heavy with buds, settled down to
bloom. Two large jars were filled with them, after much difficulty in
the gathering, and then the axe fell. Sometimes, of course, they behave
quite differently, and those who can spare ground for a great hedge
backed by wall or fence and supported in front by pea brush deftly
insinuated betwixt and between ground and plants, so that it restrains,
but is at the same time invisible, may feast their eyes upon a spectacle
of billows of white and pink that, at a little distance, are reminiscent
of the orchards of May.

But if you, Mary Penrose, are leaning toward cosmos and reading in the
seed catalogue of their size and wonderful dawn-like tints, remember
that the best of highly hybridized things revert unexpectedly to the
commonest type, and somewhere in this family of lofty Mexicans there
must have been a totally irresponsible wayside weed. Then turn backward
toward the front of the catalogue, find the letter A, and buy, in place
of cosmos, aster seeds of every variety and colour that your pocket will
allow.

Of course the black golden-rod beetle may try to dwell among the aster
flowers, and the aphis that are nursery maids to the ants infest their
roots; you must pick off the one and dig sulphur and unslaked lime
deeply into the soil to discourage the other, but whatever labour you
spend will not be lost.

Other annuals there are, and their name is legion, that are pretty
enough, perhaps, and well adapted to special purposes, like the
decorative and curious tassel flower, cockscombs, gourds, four o'clocks,
etc., and the great tribe of "everlastings" for those people, if such
there be, who still prefer dried things for winter bouquets, when an
ivy-wreathed window filled with a succession of bulbs, ferns, or oxalis
is so easily achieved! It is too harsh, perhaps, to call these minor
annuals unworthy, but as they are unimportant and increase the labour
rather than add to the pleasure, they are really unworthy of admission
to the woman's garden where there is only time and room for the best
results.

But here I am rambling at large instead of plainly answering your
question, "What annuals can we plant as late as this (May 25) while we
are locating the rose bed?" You may plant any or all of them up to the
first of June, the success of course depending upon a long autumn and
late frosts. No, not quite all; the tall-growing sweet peas should be in
the ground not later than May 1 in this south New England latitude,
though in the northern states and Canada they are planted in June as a
matter of course. Blanche Ferry, of the brilliant pink-and-white
complexion, however, will do very nicely in the light of a labour-saving
afterthought, as, only reaching a foot and a half high, little, if any,
brush is needed.

[Illustration: ASTERS WELL MASSED.]

We found your rose list replete with charming varieties, but most of
them too delicate for positive success hereabouts. I'm sending you
presently the list for a fifty-dollar rose garden, which it seems is
much in demand, so that I've adapted my own experience to the simple
plan that Evan drew to enlighten amateur rose lovers and turn them from
coveting their wealthy neighbours' goods to spending their energy in
producing covetable roses of their own!

By the way, I send you my own particular list of Worthy Annuals to match
the hardy plants and keep heights and colours easily before you until
your own Garden Book is formulated and we can compare notes. (See page
387.)

You forgot to tell me whether you have decided to keep hens or not! I
know that the matter has been discussed every spring since you have
lived at Woodridge. If you are planning a hennery, I shall not encourage
the rosary, for the days of a commuter's wife are not long enough for
both without encountering nervous prostration on the immediate premises.

Some problems are ably solved by cooeperation. As I am a devotee of the
ornamental and comfortable, Martha Saunders _nee_ Corkle runs a
cooeperative hen-yard in our north pasture for the benefit of the
Cortrights and ourselves to our mutual joy!

VI

THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE

CONCERNING EVERGREENS AND HENS

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)

_June 5._ I have not dipped pen in ink for an entire week, which has
been one of stirring events, for not only have we wholly emerged from
indoor life, but we have had a hair-breadth escape from something that
not only threatened to mar the present summer, but to cast so heavy a
shadow over the garden that no self-respecting flowers could flourish
even under the thought of it. You cannot possibly guess with what we
were threatened, but I am running ahead of myself.

The day that we began _it_--the vacation--by stopping the clocks, we
overslept until nine o'clock. When we came downstairs, the house was in
a condition of cheerful good order unknown to that hour of the day.

There is such a temperamental difference in this mere setting things to
rights. It can be done so that every chair has a stiffly repellent look,
and the conspicuous absence of dust makes one painfully conscious that
it has not always been thus, while the fingers inadvertently stray over
one's attire, plucking a shred here and a thread there. Even flowers can
be arranged in a vase so as to look thoroughly and reproachfully
uncomfortable, and all the grace and meaning crushed out of them. But
Maria Maxwell has the touch gracious that makes even a plainly furnished
room hold out detaining hands as you go through, and the flowers on the
greeting table in the hall (yes, Lavinia Cortright taught me that little
fancy of yours during her first visit), though much the same as I had
been gathering for a week past, wore an air of novelty!

For a moment we stood at the foot of the stairs looking about and
getting our bearings, as guests in an unfamiliar place rather than
householders. It flitted through my body that I was hungry, and one of
the "must be's" of the vacation country was that we were to forage for
breakfast. At the same time Bart sauntered unconsciously toward the
mail-box under the hat-rack and then, suddenly putting his hands behind
him, turned to me with a quizzical expression, saying: "Letters are
forbidden, I know, but how about the paper? Even the 'Weekly Tribune'
would be something; you know that sheet was devised for farmers!"

"If this vacation isn't to be a punishment, but a pleasure, I think we
had both better 'have what we want when we want it'!" I replied, for at
that moment I spied the Infant out on the porch, and to hug her ladyship
was a swiftly accomplished desire. For some reason she seemed rather
astonished at this very usual performance, and putting her hands,
boy-fashion, into the pockets of her checked overalls, surveyed herself
deliberately, and then looking up at me rather reproachfully remarked,
"Tousin Maria says that now you and father are tumpany!"

"And what is company?" I asked, rather anxious to know from what new
point we were to be regarded.

"Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink room wif trunks, and
we play wif them and make them do somfing to amuse 'em all the time
hard, and give 'em nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves
too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat to dinner. And by
and by when they've gone away Ann-stasia says, 'Glory be!' and muvver
goes to sleep. But muvver, if you are the tumpany, you can't go to sleep
when you've gone away, can you?"

A voice joined me in laughter, Maria Maxwell's, from inside the open
window of the dining room. Looking toward the sound, I saw that, though
the dining table itself had been cleared, a side table drawn close to
the window was set with places for two, a posy of poets' narcissus and
the last lilies-of-the-valley between, while a folded napkin at one
place rested on a newspaper!

"I thought we were to get our own breakfasts," I said, in a tone of very
feeble expostulation, which plainly told that, at that particular
moment, it was the last thing I wished to do.

"You are, the very minute you feel like it, and not before! You must let
yourselves down gradually, and not bolt out of the house as if you had
been evicted. If Bart went paperless and letterless this very first
morning, until he has met something that interests him more, he would
think about the lack of the news and the mail all day until they became
more than usually important!" So saying, Maria swept the stems and
litter of the flowers she had been arranging into her apron, and
annexing the Infant to one capable finger, all the other nine being
occupied, she went down the path toward the garden for fresh supplies,
leaving Ann-stasia, as the Infant calls her, to serve the coffee, a
prerogative of which she would not consent to be bereft, not even upon
the plea of lightening her labours!

"Isn't this perfect!" I exclaimed, looking toward a gap in the hills
that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a
short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm
above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of field flowers.

"Entirely!" assented Bart, his spoon in the coffee cup stirring
vigorously and his head enveloped in the newspaper. But what did the
point of view matter: he was content and unhurried--what better
beginning for a vacation? In fact in those two words lies the real
vacation essence.

Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious irresponsibility, I
watched Maria moving to and fro between the shrubs that bounded the east
alley of the old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she had
always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with an efficiency that
was at times overpowering, whose brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way
of fixing one, as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force of
eye had become a habit. But here, her most cherished belongings given
room to breathe in the spare room that rambles across one end of the
house, while her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep
closet, Maria in two short days had become another person.

She does not seem large, but merely well built. The black gowns and
straight white collars that she always wore, as a sort of professional
garb, have vanished before a shirtwaist with an openwork neck and half
sleeves, while the flesh exposed thereby is pink and wholesome. Hair not
secured for the wear and tear of the daily rounds of school, but allowed
to air itself, requires only a few hair-pins, and, if it is naturally
wavy, follows its own will with good effect. While as to her eyes, what
in them seemed piercing at short range melted to an engaging frankness
in the soft light under the trees. In short, if she had been any other
than Maria Maxwell, music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed
family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine-looking woman
who only needed a magic touch of some sort to become positively
handsome. Coffee and paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing
at me.

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