SEPTEMBER IN MY GARDEN.
There are few things I find so sorrowful as to sit and smoke and reflect on the splendid deeds that one might have been doing if one had only had the chance. The Prime Minister feels like this, I suppose, when he remembers how unkind people have prevented him from making a land fit for heroes to live in, and I feel it about my garden. There can be no doubt that my garden is not fit for heroes to saunter in; the only thing it is fit for is to throw used matches about in; and there is indeed a certain advantage in this. Some people's gardens are so tidy that you have to stick all your used matches very carefully into the mould, with the result that next year there is a shrubbery of Norwegian pine.
The untidiness of my garden is due to the fault of the previous tenants. Nevertheless one can clearly discern through the litter of packing-cases which completely surrounds the house that there was originally a garden there.
I thought something ought to be done about this, so I bought a little book on gardening, and, turning to September, began to read.
"September," said the man, "marks the passing of summer and the advent of autumn, the time of ripening ruddy-faced fruits and the reign of a rich and gloriously-coloured flora."
About the first part of this statement I have no observation to make. It is probably propaganda, subsidised by the Meteorological Office in order to persuade us that we still have a summer; it has nothing to do with my present theme. But with regard to the ripening ruddy-faced fruits I should like to point out that in my garden there are none of these things, because the previous tenants took them all away when they left. Not a ruddy-faced fruit remains. As for the rich and gloriously-coloured flora, I lifted the edges of all the packing-cases in turn and looked for it, but it was not there either. It should have consisted, I gather, of "gorgeously-coloured dahlias, gay sunflowers, Michaelmas daisies, gladioli and other autumn blossoms, adding brightness and gaiety to our flower-garden."
"Gaiety" seems to be rather a strong point with this author, for a little further on he says, "The garden should be gay throughout the month with the following plants," and then follows a list of about a hundred names which sound like complicated diseases of the internal organs. I cannot mention them all, but it seems that my garden should be gay throughout with Lysimachia clethroides, Kniphofia nobilis and Pyrethrum uliginosum. It is not. How anything can be gay with Pyrethrum uliginosum I cannot imagine. An attitude of reverent sympathy is what I should have expected the garden to have. But that is what the man says.
Then there is the greenhouse. "From now onwards," he writes, "the greenhouse will meet with a more welcome appreciation than it has during the summer months. The chief plants in flower will be Lantanas, Campanula pyramidalis, Zonal Pelargoniums," and about twenty more. "Oh, they will, will they?" I thought, and opened the greenhouse door and looked in. Against the wall there were two or three mouldering peach-trees, and all over the roof and floor a riot of green tomatoes, a fruit which even when it becomes ruddy-faced I do not particularly like. In a single large pot stood a dissipated cactus, resembling a hedgehog suffering from mange.
But what was even more bitter to me than all this ruin and desolation was the thought of the glorious deeds I might have been doing if the garden had been all right. Phrases from the book kept flashing to my eye.
"Thoroughly scrub the base and sides of the pots, and see that the drainage-holes are not sealed with soil." How it thrilled the blood!
"Damp the floors and staging every morning and afternoon, and see that the compost is kept uniformly moist." What a fascinating pursuit!
"Feed the plants once a week with liquid manure." It went like a clarion call to the heart.
And here I was condemned to ennui and indolence when I might have been sitting up all night dosing the Zonal Pelargoniums with hot beef-tea and taking the temperature of the Campanula pyramidalis. Even with the ruddy-faced fruits there would have been plenty to do.
"Wooden trays with open lath bottoms made to slide into a framework afford the best means of storing apples and pears. The ripening of pears may be accelerated by enclosing them in bran or dry clean sand in a closed tin box." It did not say how often one was to clean out the cage, nor whether you put groundsel between the bars.
I told the man next door of my sorrows.
"Well, there 's plenty to do," he said. "Get a spade and dig the garden all over."
Dig it all over indeed when I ought to be plucking nosegays of Lysimachia clethroides and Pyrethrum uliginosum to put in my buttonhole! I prefer to dream my dreams.
Evoe.
Mistress. "So it's the chauffeur that's going to be the lucky man, Mary? I was under the impression that the butler was the favoured one."
Cook. "That was so, Mum; but Mr. Willoughby let me slip through his fingers."