My Summer in a Garden | Page 7

out well.

FIRST WEEK
Under this modest title, I purpose to write a series of papers, some of
which will be like many papers of garden-seeds, with nothing vital in
them, on the subject of gardening; holding that no man has any right to
keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hoping that those who come
after me, except tax-gatherers and that sort of person, will find profit in
the perusal of my experience. As my knowledge is constantly
increasing, there is likely to be no end to these papers. They will pursue
no orderly system of agriculture or horticulture, but range from topic to
topic, according to the weather and the progress of the weeds, which
may drive me from one corner of the garden to the other.
The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is not to
give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better and cheaper
done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and
philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred and expectations
blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimes to alienation.
The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test of character, as it was in
the beginning. I shall keep this central truth in mind in these articles. I
mean to have a moral garden, if it is not a productive one,--one that
shall teach, O my brothers! O my sisters! the great lessons of life.
The first pleasant thing about a garden in this latitude is, that you never

know when to set it going. If you want anything to come to maturity
early, you must start it in a hot-house. If you put it out early, the
chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost; for the
thermometer will be 90 deg. one day, and go below 32 deg. the night of
the day following. And, if you do not set out plants or sow seeds early,
you fret continually; knowing that your vegetables will be late, and that,
while Jones has early peas, you will be watching your slow-forming
pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When you have planted
anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire to see it above
ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see the young plants;
but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremble lest the seeds
have burst their bands. Your spring is passed in anxious doubts and
fears, which are usually realized; and so a great moral discipline is
worked out for you.
Now, there is my corn, two or three inches high this 18th of May, and
apparently having no fear of a frost. I was hoeing it this morning for the
first time,--it is not well usually to hoe corn until about the 18th of
May,--when Polly came out to look at the Lima beans. She seemed to
think the poles had come up beautifully. I thought they did look well:
they are a fine set of poles, large and well grown, and stand straight.
They were inexpensive, too. The cheapness came about from my
cutting them on another man's land, and he did not know it. I have not
examined this transaction in the moral light of gardening; but I know
people in this country take great liberties at the polls. Polly noticed that
the beans had not themselves come up in any proper sense, but that the
dirt had got off from them, leaving them uncovered. She thought it
would be well to sprinkle a slight layer of dirt over them; and I,
indulgently, consented. It occurred to me, when she had gone, that
beans always come up that way,--wrong end first; and that what they
wanted was light, and not dirt.
Observation.--Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a
garden.
I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries. Splendid berry
the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone. This patch has grown into
such a defiant attitude, that you could not get within several feet of it.
Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast out long, prickly arms in all
directions; but the bushes were pretty much all dead. I have walked into

them a good deal with a pruning-knife; but it is very much like fighting
original sin. The variety is one that I can recommend. I think it is called
Brinckley's Orange. It is exceedingly prolific, and has enormous stalks.
The fruit is also said to be good; but that does not matter so much, as
the plant does not often bear in this region. The stalks seem to be
biennial institutions; and as they get about their growth one year, and
bear the next year, and then die, and the winters here nearly