SOME VERSES AND THEN GOOD-BY
And these are the rhymes that were read and recited after dinner on New Year's day, just a year after the first little window-garden was started. I shall not tell you whose they were.
Of course, you will all remember little Prue's:
"The kinds of plants are these,
Herbs and shrubs, and trees,"
and the Chief Gardener's:
"The annuals we plant each spring—
They perish in the fall;
Biennials die the second year,
Perennials not at all,"
but the writers of the others you will have to guess.
THE PLANT
The parts of every plant are three—
The root, and stem, and leaf they be.
The flowers are only leaves more fair,
Which nature makes, to bloom and bear.
THE ROOT
Most roots are hidden in the ground,
As they should always be, by rights,
But some in other plants are found,
And these belong to parasites.
THE STEM
The stem may be a stalk or vine
To stand erect, or creep, or twine—
For frailest plant, or firmest oak
That's ne'er by storm of winter broke.
THE LEAF
A leaf has a stem, and of stipules a pair,
Though the stipules are often quite small, or not there.
A leaf has a blade, and of ribs one or more;
While of veins and of veinlets it has many score.
A leaf may be simple, or it may be compound,
And a million small pores for its breathing are found.
THE FLOWER
The blossom has a calyx
That is very often green,
And just above the sepals
The corolla bright is seen.
And above the pretty petals
May be stamens eight or nine—
Slender filaments, and anthers,
To hold the pollen fine.
While in the blossom's center
Doth the sturdy pistil grow,
With stigma and with style that lead
To seed-cups just below.
HOW PLANTS INCREASE
From seed and from runner, from stolon bent low—
From sucker and slip and from layer they grow—
From bulb and from bulblet—from tuber and root,
They give us the flower and the grain and the fruit.
All thanks to the plants for the clothes that we wear—
The food that we eat and the home that we share—
For the air that we breathe and the fuel we burn—
All thanks to the plants, 'tis our only return.
Davy rather objected to the last line of these verses. He said that it was some return to take good care of plants, especially in the hot summer-time, when it was ever so much nicer to sit in the shade. So another little rhyme was made, like this:
A plant should have the sun and air
And water, and the proper care.
If it has these, and doesn't die,
We'll reap the harvest, by and by.
Then to end the day they all sang a little song about the snowflakes, that Jack Frost sends out of his gardens of winter-time:
THE SNOWFLAKES
Jack Frost, he makes the snowflakes,
He paints the snowflakes white.
He sent them Christmas morning
To make our landscape bright.
For in the deepest winter
The world is bleak and bare—
Jack Frost, he sends the snowflakes
To make our winter fair.
And so ends the story of a year, and of its little gardens. Also of Prue and Davy, who owned the little gardens, and of her who was called big Prue and of him who was called the Chief Gardener. Other years will bring other gardens, and other summers. Prue and Davy will grow older, and learn more and more with each year that passes. But no year will ever be happier and no gardens ever brighter than those to which we are now saying good-by.
Transcriber's Notes
Minor punctuation errors corrected on pages [16], [68], [104], [105], [214], [219], [276], [285], [294], [297], [328].
Slight discrepancies in some of the titles given in the Table of Contents and those given at the beginning of each section have been retained here.
Original spellings and hyphenation have been retained except in the cases of these apparent typographical errors:
Page [23], "lovelly" changed to "lovely." (I never saw anything so lovely...)
Page [60], "no" changed to "not." (...not to look at their garden...)