But there is another kind of garden manners—a kind that subtly soothes, cheers, perhaps inebriates. It is the manner of the friend who may, indeed, have a garden, but who looks at mine with the eye of adoption, temporarily at least. She walks down its paths, singling out this or that for notice. She suggests, she even criticizes, tenderly, as one who tells you an “even more becoming way” to arrange your little daughter’s hair. She offers you roots and seeds and seedlings from her garden, and—last touch of flattery—she begs seeds and seedlings from yours.
For garden purposes, give me the manners of this third class. And, indeed, not for garden purposes alone. They are useful as applied to many things—children, particularly, and houses.
Undoubtedly the demand that I make upon my friends is a form of vanity, yet I cannot seem to feel ashamed of it. I admit at once that not the least part of my pleasure in [pg 100] my flowers is the attention they get from others. Moreover, it is not only from friends that I seek this, but from every passer-by along my country road. There are gardens and gardens. Some, set about with hedges tall and thick, offer the delights of exclusiveness and solitude. But exclusiveness and solitude are easily had on a Connecticut farm, and my garden will none of them; it flings forth its appeal to every wayfarer. And I like it. I like my garden to “get notice.” As people drive by I hope they enjoy my phlox. I furtively glance to see if they have an eye for the foxglove. I wonder if the calendulas are so tall that they hide the asters. And if, as I bend over my weeding, an automobile whirling past lets fly an appreciative phrase—“lovely flowers—” “wonderful yellow of—” “garden there,”—my ears are quick to receive it and I forgive the eddies of gasolene and dust that are also left by the vanishing visitant.
About few things can one be so brazen in one’s enjoyment of recognition. One’s house, one’s clothes, one’s work, one’s children, all these demand a certain modesty of demeanor, [pg 101] however the inner spirit may puff. Not so one’s garden. I fancy this is because, while I have a strong sense of ownership in it, I also have a strong sense of stewardship. As owner I must be modest, but as steward I may admire as openly as I will. Did I make my phlox? Did I fashion my asters? Am I the artificer of my fringed larkspur? Nay, truly, I am but their caretaker, and may glory in them as well as another, only with the added touch of joy that I, even I, have given them their opportunity. Like Paul I plant, like Apollos I water, but before the power that giveth the increase I stand back and wonder.
But it is not alone the results of my stewardship that give me joy. Its very processes are good. Delight in the earth is a primitive instinct. Digging is naturally pleasant, hoeing is pleasant, raking is pleasant, and then there is the weeding. For I am not the only one who sows seeds in my garden. One of my friends remarked cheerfully that he had planted twenty-seven different vegetables in his garden, and the Lord had planted two hundred and twenty-seven other kinds of things.
This is where the weeding comes in. Now a good deal has been said about the labor of weeding, but little about the gratifications of weeding. I don’t mean weeding with a hoe. I mean yanking up, with movements suited to the occasion, each individual growing thing that doesn’t belong. Surely I am not the only one to have felt the pleasure of this. They come up so nicely, and leave such soft earth behind! And intellect is needed, too, for each weed demands its own way of handling: the adherent plantain needing a slow, firm, drawing motion, but very satisfactory when it comes; the evasive clover requiring that all its sprawling runners shall be gathered up in one gentle, tactful pull; the tender shepherd’s purse coming easily on a straight twitch; the tough ragweed that yields to almost any kind of jerk. Even witch-grass, the bane of the farmer, has its rewarding side, when one really does get out its handful of wicked-looking, crawly, white tubers.
Weeding is most fun when the weeds are not too small. Yes, from the aspect of a sport there is something to be said for letting weeds grow. Pulling out little tender ones is poor [pg 103] work compared with the satisfaction of hauling up a spreading treelet of ragweed or a far-flaunting wild buckwheat. You seem to get so much for your effort, and it stirs up the ground so, and no other weeds have grown under the shade of the big one, so its departure leaves a good bit of empty brown earth.
Surely, weeding is good fun. If faults could be yanked out of children in the same entertaining way, the orphan asylums would soon be emptied through the craze for adoption as a major sport.
One of the pleasantest mornings of my life was spent weeding, in the rain, a long-neglected corner of my garden, while a young friend stood around the edges and explained the current political situation to me, and carted away armfuls of green stuff as I handed them out to him. The rain drizzled, and the air was fragrant with the smell of wet earth and bruised stems. Ideally, of course, weeds should never reach this state of sportive rankness. But most of my friends admit, under pressure, that there are corners where such things do happen.
Naturally, all this is assuming that one is one’s own gardener. There may be pleasure in having a garden kept up by a real gardener, but that always seems to me a little like having a doll and letting somebody else dress and undress it. My garden must never grow so big that I cannot take care of it—and neglect it—myself.