There is an optional method, referred to as “cleaning up the beds.” In that case, he leaves the weeds to grow higher, more especially in beds that are full of promising seedlings; in fact, he doesn’t worry about them at all until there is sudden and urgent reason why the garden should present a kempt, well-cared-for appearance.
Then, the weeds being so healthy and luxuriant that they would raise the face of creation a couple of inches if he attempted to dig them in, he simplifies matters by removing the surface of the earth, weeds and seedlings and all; this he wheels away in a barrow, perchance to lay it down on some rough and rubbly bit of lane that the road-menders have ignored.
When she-who-pays arrives, all expectation, and inquires for the missing seedlings, the tiller of the soil shakes his head lugubriously, and refers to the recent plague of slugs (or thunderstorms, or frost, or east winds, or whatever other natural phenomena seem most convincing), and says he had a hard job to save what is left in the garden—this last in a martyr-like tone of voice, indicating that though all his self-sacrificing labour is passed over unrecognised, he himself has the virtuous consciousness of having at least done his simple duty, and what man can do more!
Now I come to think of it, there are many different ways of gardening; that must be why it is always interesting to go round the garden with the gardener. When I say different ways, I don’t mean such trifling divergencies of method as landscape gardens versus intensive culture, or tomatoes under glass versus gloxinias. These primarily concern the pocket; the differences that interest me are temperamental.
There is Miss Bretherton, for instance, a most diligent and vigilant gardener. And yet she never seems to me to get much genuine, unalloyed pleasure out of her garden; she never basks in its beauty—though for the matter of that Miss Bretherton never basks anywhere! A middle-aged woman who does her duty by a scattered parish, conscientiously and thoroughly and unremittingly, never has time for that sort of dissipation! Miss Bretherton deals with her garden much as she deals with the parish. At best it is a case of striving to lead reluctant feet in the paths of virtue, while by far the greater part of her efforts is an unflagging wrestle with original sin.
A walk round the rectory garden is usually like this. Miss Bretherton always picks up a pair of gardening scissors and a basket mechanically as she steps out.
“What a wonderful glow of colour!” I exclaim, as I bury my nose in a magnificent Gloire de Dijon.
“But it is such a wretched thing for sending up suckers,” Miss Bretherton replies. “I’m always digging them up. Why, I declare there is one a foot high,” giving it a drastic prod with the scissors. “I thought I’d cut them all away yesterday”; more prods till the sucker is finally unearthed.
“And aren’t those hollyhocks tall!”
“Not nearly so fine as they would have been if that red-spotty blight hadn’t attacked them. Just look at these leaves!”