When the seeds were in the trenches they had to be covered up, and Margery really helped at that. It is fun to do it. You stand beside the little trench and walk backward, and as you walk you hoe the loose earth back over the seeds; the same earth that was hoed up you pull back again. Then you rake very gently over the surface, with the back of a rake, to even it all off. Margery liked it, because now the garden began to look like a garden.
But best of all was the work next day, when her own little particular garden was begun. Father Brown loved Margery and Margery's mother so much that he wanted their garden to be perfect, and that meant a great deal more work. He knew very well that the old grass would begin to come through again on such soil, and that it would make terribly hard weeding. He was not going to have any such thing for his two "little girls," as he called them. So he gave that little garden particular attention. This is what he did.
After he had thrown out all the turf, he shovelled clean earth on to the garden,—as much as three solid inches of it; not a bit of grass was in that. Then it was ready for raking and fertilising, and for the lines. The little footpaths were marked out by Father Brown's feet; Margery and her mother laughed well at his actions, for it looked like some kind of dance. Mr Brown had seen gardeners do it when he was a little boy, and he did it very nicely: he walked along the sides of the square, with one foot turned a little out, and the other straight, taking such tiny steps that his feet touched each other all the time. This tramped out a path just wide enough for a person to walk.
The wider path was marked with lines and raked.
Margery thought, of course, all the flowers would be put in as the vegetables were; but she found that it was not so. For some, her father poked little holes with his finger; for some, he made very shallow trenches; and some very small seeds were scattered lightly over the top of the ground.
Margery and her mother had taken so much pains in thinking out the arrangement of the flowers, that perhaps you will like to hear just how they designed that garden. At the back were the sweet peas, which would grow tall, like a screen; on the two sides, for a kind of hedge, were yellow sunflowers; and along the front edge were the gay nasturtiums. Margery planned that, so that she could look into the garden from the front, but have it shut away from the vegetable patch by the tall flowers on the sides. The two front corners had canariensis in them. Canariensis is a pretty creeper with golden blossoms, very dainty and bright. And then, in little square patches all round the garden, were planted London pride, blue bachelor's buttons, yellow marigolds, tall larkspur, many-coloured asters, hollyhocks and stocks. All these lovely flowers used to grow in our grandmothers' gardens, and if you don't know what they look like, I hope you can find out next summer.
Between the flowers and the middle path went the seeds for that wonderful salad garden; all the things Mrs Brown had named to Margery were there. Margery had never seen anything more wonderful than the little round lettuce-seeds. They were so tiny that it did not seem possible that green lettuce leaves could come from them. But they surely would.
Mother and father and Margery were late to supper that evening. But they were all so happy that it did not matter. The last thing Margery thought of, as she went to sleep at night, was the dear, smooth little garden, with its funny footpath, and with the little sticks standing at the ends of the rows, labelled "lettuce," "beets," "helianthus," and so on.
"I have a garden! I have a garden!" was Margery's last thought as she went off to dreamland.