Driven Back to Eden

by Edward Payson Roe

"Seems to me we had better have a little less corn, if room can be made for melons," was Merton's suggestion.

"I'll tell you what we'll do," I continued. "We've had such good fortune in accomplishing our early work, and you have helped so nicely, that you shall try your hand at melons. Drive your mother and Mousie down to the village this morning, and get some seeds of the nutmeg musk-melon and Phinney's early watermelon. I'll take two rows in the early corn on the warm garden slope, pull up every third hill, and make, in their places, nice, warm, rich beds for the seed which we will plant as soon as you come back. I don't believe the corn will shade the melon vines too much; and as soon as we have taken off the green ears we will cut away the stalks. Thus we shall get two crops from the same ground."

This plan was carried out, and the melon seed came up in a very promising way.

CHAPTER XXX

WEEDS AND WORKING FOR DEAR LIFE

The beautiful transition period of spring passing into summer would have filled us with delight had we not found a hostile army advancing on us—annual weeds. When we planted the garden, the soil was brown and clean. The early vegetables came up in well-defined green rows, the weeds appearing with them, too few and scattered to cause anxiety. Now all was changed. Weeds seemed created by magic in a night. The garden was becoming evenly green throughout; and the vegetables, in some cases, could scarcely be distinguished from the ranker growth of crowding, unknown plants among and around them. I also saw that our corn and potato field would soon become, if left alone, as verdant as the meadow beyond. I began to fear that we could not cope with these myriads of foes, little now, but growing while we slept, and stealing a march on us in one part of the place while we destroyed them in another.

With something like dismay I called Mr. Jones's attention to these silent forces, invading, not only the garden and fields, but the raspberries and, indeed, all the ground now devoted to fruit.

He laughed and said: "The Philistines are on you, sure enough. I'm busy whackin' them over myself, but I guess I'll have to come and give you a lift, for you must get these weeds well under before hayin' and raspberry-pickin'-time comes. It's warm to-day, and the ground's middlin' dry. I'll show you what can be done in short metre. By the way, I'll give you a little wrinkle worth knowin'. I've observed that you didn't bring the children to the country to be like weeds—just ter grow and run ter seed, ye know. It's 'stonishin' how soon weeds, whether they're people or pusley, get seedy. Well, now, call the children and come with me to the garden."

We were all soon there, including my wife, who shared my solicitude.

"You see," resumed Mr. Jones, "that these weakly little rows of carrots, beets, and onions would soon be choked by these weeds, not an inch high yet. The same is true of the corn and peas and other sags. The pertaters are strong enough to take care of themselves for a time, but not long. I see you and Merton have been tryin' to weed and hoe them out at the same time. Well, you can't keep up with the work in that way. Take now this bed of beets; the weeds are gettin' even all over it, and they're thicker, if anywhere, right in the row, so that it takes a good eye to see the beets. But here they are, and here they run across the bed. Now look at me. One good showin' is worth all the tellin' and readin' from now to Christmas. You see, I begin with my two hands, and pull out all the weeds on each side of the little row, and I pull 'em away from the young beets so as not to disturb them, but to leave 'em standin' straight and saucy. Careless hands will half pull out the vegetables at the same time with the weeds. I had to strap Junior once before he learned that fact, and it was amazin' how I helped his eyesight and trained his fingers through his back. Well, now, you see, I've cleared out this row of beets half across the bed and the ground for an inch or two on each side of it. I drop the weeds right down in the spaces between the rows, for the sun will dry 'em up before dinner-time. Now I'll take another row."