MAY
I
SWEET-PEASE HAVE TO BE PUT DOWN PRETTY DEEP
IT was May and the apple-trees were in bloom. In the garden outside was the Chief Gardener, with Prue and Davy—one on each side—hoeing and digging and raking. The early plantings, like radishes and lettuce and pease, were already well along, but it was just time, now, for a second planting of these things, and for the first planting of such things as corn and beans, and most of the kinds of flowers.
Some sweet-pease, it is true, little Prue had planted earlier, one warm day in April, when the Chief Gardener had dug for her a trench along the fence, and she had put in the pease, one at a time, and just so far apart, so that they wouldn't crowd, she said, or get in each other's way. The trench was quite deep—most too deep, Prue thought, but then sweet-pease have to be put down pretty deep, and the soil dragged up to the vines as they grow, to give them strength. Now, she planted some sweet-williams, and pansies, and mignonettes, and alyssum, and had brought most of her pots from the house, and set the things in a little row by themselves, so that they might still be company as they had been through the long winter and late spring.
Davy, too, had made a fine garden, with six hills of sweet-corn, one hill of cantaloupes, a row of pease, a little row of onions, lettuce, and radishes, besides a very small row of sweet herbs, such as marjoram, fennel, and thyme. Each garden was fully eight feet square, which is really quite a good-sized garden, when you remember that it must be kept nicely tilled and perfectly clean of weeds.
"I think I will have a hill of cucumbers, too," said Davy. "I like cucumbers."
"But they won't do, near your cantaloupes," said the Chief Gardener. "You see, cucumbers and cantaloupes belong to the same family, and one of the most twining, friendly families I know of. Each member left to itself is very good in its way, and often ornamental, but let them run together ever so little and before you know it they begin to mix up and look like one another, and even have tastes alike. A cucumber-hill there, Davy, would spoil the taste of your cantaloupes, and the cucumbers would not be good either. It's the same way with watermelons, and citrons, and pumpkins, and all the rest of the gourds."
"Gourds!"