The Complete Writings, vol 1 | Page 8

happened in. "Ah! I
see you are going to have melons. My family would rather give up
anything else in the garden than musk-melons,--of the nutmeg variety.
They are the most grateful things we have on the table." So there it was.
There was no compromise: it was melons, or no melons, and somebody
offended in any case. I half resolved to plant them a little late, so that
they would, and they would n't. But I had the same difficulty about
string-beans (which I detest), and squash (which I tolerate), and
parsnips, and the whole round of green things.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put
your foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of my
friends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-day but
weeds. And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait. Her
mind is made up. She knows just what she will raise; and she has an
infinite variety of early and late. The most humiliating thing to me
about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature
is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants with a vigor
and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the plant, the more
rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it early and late, and all night;

never tiring, nor showing the least sign of exhaustion.
"Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is a motto that I should put
over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it is not wholly
true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The man who undertakes a
garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himself that, when he gets
it once planted, he will have a season of rest and of enjoyment in the
sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is a green anticipation. He has
planted a seed that will keep him awake nights; drive rest from his
bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardly is the garden planted, when he
must begin to hoe it. The weeds have sprung up all over it in a night.
They shine and wave in redundant life. The docks have almost gone to
seed; and their roots go deeper than conscience. Talk about the London
Docks!--the roots of these are like the sources of the Aryan race. And
the weeds are not all. I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden
will wake a person up two hours before he ought to be out of bed) and
think of the tomato-plants,--the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to
black bugs that skip around, and can't be caught. Somebody ought to
get up before the dew is off (why don't the dew stay on till after a
reasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves. I wonder if it is I.
Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they are disgusted, and go
away. You can't get up too early, if you have a garden. You must be
early due yourself, if you get ahead of the bugs. I think, that, on the
whole, it would be best to sit up all night, and sleep daytimes. Things
appear to go on in the night in the garden uncommonly. It would be
less trouble to stay up than it is to get up so early.
I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,--a silver and a
gold color. How fine they will look on the table next year in a cut-glass
dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set them four and five feet
apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apart also. The reason is, to give
room for the cows to run through when they break into the garden,--as
they do sometimes. A cow needs a broader track than a locomotive; and
she generally makes one. I am sometimes astonished, to see how big a
space in, a flower-bed her foot will cover. The raspberries are called
Doolittle and Golden Cap. I don't like the name of the first variety, and,
if they do much, shall change it to Silver Top. You never can tell what

a thing named Doolittle will do. The one in the Senate changed color,
and got sour. They ripen badly,--either mildew, or rot on the bush.
They are apt to Johnsonize,--rot on the stem. I shall watch the
Doolittles.

THIRD WEEK
I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable total
depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it. It is the
bunch, or joint, or snakegrass,--whatever it is called. As I do not know
the names of all the weeds and plants,