But we did not lose faith in our catalogues. We believe what they say just as the small boy believes he will see a lion eat a man at the circus, because the billboard pictures him doing it.
If we ordered all the seeds we mark in the catalogue in January, we would require a township for a garden, a Rockefeller to finance it and an army to hoe it. We did not understand the purpose of a catalogue for a long time. A catalogue is a stimulus. It's like an oyster cocktail before a dinner, a Scotch high-ball before the banquet and the singing before the sermon. Salzer knows no one ever raised such a crop of cabbages as he pictures or the world would be drowned in sauer kraut. If the Himalaya-berry bore as the catalogues say it does we should all be buried in jam. You horticulturists never expect to raise such an apple as Lindsay describes; if you did, they would be more valuable than the golden apples of Hesperides.
But when we get a catalogue we just naturally dream that what we shall raise will not only be as good but will excel the pictures. Alas, of such stuff are dreams made! We could not do our gardening without catalogues, but they are not true to life as we find it in our garden. We never got a catalogue that showed the striped bug on the cucumber, the slug on the rose bush, the louse on the aster, the cut worm on the phlox, the black bug on the syringa, the thousand and one pests, including the great American hen, the queen of the barnyard, but the Goth and vandal of the garden.
But the best part of summer in our garden is the work we do in winter. Then it is that our garden is most beautiful, for we work in the garden of imagination, where drouth does not blight, nor storms devastate, where the worm never cuts nor the bugs destroy. No dog ever uproots in the garden of imagination, nor doth the hen scratch. This is the perfect garden. Our golden glow blossoms in all of its auriferous splendor, the Oriental poppy is a barbaric blaze of glory, our roses are as fair as the tints of Aurora, the larkspur vies with the azure of heaven, the gladioli are like a galaxy of butterflies and our lilies like those which put Solomon in the shade. Every flower is in its proper place to make harmony complete. There is not a jarring note of color in our garden in the winter time.
Then comes the spring in our garden, a time of faith, vigilance and hard work. Faith that the seed will grow, vigilance that it is planted deep enough and has the right conditions in which to grow. Vigilance against frost, weeds and insects. Planting, sowing, hoeing, transplanting, coaxing, hoping, expecting, working—we never do half that we planned to do in the springtime—there are not enough days, and the days we have are too short.
Then comes summer, real summer in our garden. Then flowers begin to bloom, and our friends tell us they are lovely. But we see the flaws and errors. We feel almost guilty to have our garden praised, so many glaring faults and shortcomings has it. The color scheme is wrong, there are false notes here and there. There are tall plants where short plants should be. There are spaces and breaks and again spots over-crowded. We water and hoe, train vines, prop plants, and kill the bugs, but we know the weak spots in our garden and vow that next summer we shall remedy every mistake.
Mrs. Gertrude Ellis Skinner among her gladoli.
Then "summer in our garden" has an autumn. The garden is never so beautiful as when the first frost strikes it. Pillow-cases, sheets, shawls, aprons, coats and newspapers may for a brief time hold at bay the frost king, but he soon laughs at our efforts, crawls under the edges of the unsightly garments with which we protect our flowers, nips their petals, wilts their stems and blackens their leaves. We find them some morning hopelessly frozen. But the earth has ceased to give forth its aroma, the birds are winging southward, the waters of the brook run clear and cold, and the voice of the last cricket sounds lonesome in the land. We say to nature, "Work your will with our garden; the summer is over, and we are ready to plan for another season."
And what have we learned from the "summer in our garden?" That no one can be happy in his garden unless he works for the joy of the working. He who loves his work loves nature. To him his garden is a great cathedral, boundless as his wonder, a place of worship. Above him the dome ever changing in color and design, beautiful in sunshine or storm and thrice beautiful when studded with the eternal lamps of night. The walls are the trees, the vines and the shrubs, waving in the distant horizon and flinging their branches on the sky line, or close at hand where we hear the voice of the wind among the leaves.