The frost will soon come; the grass will be brown. I will be
charitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolences
must soon be turned to other and more distant objects,–the
amelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education of
theological young men in the West, and the like.
never know when to set it going
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.
Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world.
You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you. Does gardening
in a city pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or a
trotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, or
your hair cut. It is as you like it. In a certain sense, it is a
sort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set a
money-value upon my delight in it. I fear that you could not put it in
money. Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, ‘Is there any
taste in the white of an egg?’ Suppose there is not! What! shall I
set a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which made
the sweet spring a reality? Shall I turn into merchandise the red
strawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, the
sanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did not
waste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweet
rill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engaging
bean in a pool of succotash? Shall I compute in figures what daily
freshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the large
crop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got above
ground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that which
pays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in his
trial-balance. Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to make
such a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.
There are 15 weekends between now and Labor Day. It’s not too late after a long winter and cool spring to plan how to spend at least a few of these summer weekends away from yard work, cleaning the garage and rearranging patio furniture.
It can be hard to tell anymore where the living room ends and the outdoors begin. This summer’s patio furniture blurs the lines with weather-resistant materials and sophisticated color schemes that would look right at home indoors.
Police say an arsonist may be to blame for a fire at the Northgate Village Mall on Saturday night. The blaze began in a storage trailer parked at the Jysk loading dock.
sometimes in a way that I had not expected
It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, though
sometimes in a way that I had not expected. I have never read of any
Roman supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my own
vegetables; when everything on the table is the product of my own
labor, except the clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, and
the chickens, which have withdrawn from the garden just when they
were most attractive. It is strange what a taste you suddenly have
for things you never liked before. The squash has always been to me
a dish of contempt; but I eat it now as if it were my best friend. I
never cared for the beet or the bean; but I fancy now that I could
eat them all, tops and all, so completely have they been transformed
by the soil in which they grew. I think the squash is less squashy,
and the beet has a deeper hue of rose, for my care of them.
my garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they are
barbarians
As for children (and it sometimes looks as if the chief products of
my garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they are
barbarians. There is no exception among them to this condition of
barbarism. This is not to say that they are not attractive; for they
have the virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people. It is
held by some naturalists that the child is only a zoophyte, with a
stomach, and feelers radiating from it in search of something to fill
it. It is true that a child is always hungry all over: but he is
also curious all over; and his curiosity is excited about as early as
his hunger. He immediately begins to put out his moral feelers into
the unknown and the infinite to discover what sort of an existence
this is into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungry
as his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his other
appetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story which
will make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious,
and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savage
races. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknown
is marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that children
must be governed through their stomachs. I think they can be
controlled quite as well through their curiosity; that being the more
craving and imperious of the two. I have seen children follow about
a person who told them stories, and interested them with his charming
talk, as greedily as if his pockets had been full of bon-bons.
I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate ‘pusley.’ I set
a little of it one side, and gave it some extra care. It did not
thrive as well as that which I was fighting. The fact is, there is a
spirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow the
more, the more it is interfered with. I am satisfied of that. I
doubt if any one has raised more ‘pusley’ this year than I have; and
my warfare with it has been continual. Neither of us has slept much.
If you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression that will be
understood by many, like the devil. I have a neighbor, a good
Christian man, benevolent, and a person of good judgment. He planted
next to me an acre of turnips recently. A few days after, he went to
look at his crop; and he found the entire ground covered with a thick
and luxurious carpet of ‘pusley,’ with a turnip-top worked in here
and there as an ornament. I have seldom seen so thrifty a field. I
advised my neighbor next time to sow ‘pusley’ and then he might get a
few turnips. I wish there was more demand in our city markets for
‘pusley’ as a salad. I can recommend it.
Some of these items need explanation. I have charged nothing for my
own time waiting for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing,
fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been a
little more. Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks while
hoeing. I leave this out from principle, because I always recommend
water to others. I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my own
wages. It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what I
thought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of it
for once. I figured it right down to European prices,–seventeen
cents a day for unskilled labor. Of course, I boarded myself. I
ought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or I
might have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me at
four dollars a day. They lay in the shade and slept the sleep of
honest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away. I
have reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised to
eight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all: they
will merely send their cards.
and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative
anatomy and comparative philology,–the science of comparative
vegetable morality
I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,
and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative
anatomy and comparative philology,–the science of comparative
vegetable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, if
life-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purpose
to begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I am
responsible. I will not associate with any vegetable which is
disreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moral
growth. I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or the
dead-beets. Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like with
the hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin in so doing than the
Christians did in hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages.
natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it
Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle of
natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have
had a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and
license and brutality. The ‘pusley’ would have strangled the
strawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty
beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries,
would have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the
snake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground;
and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a
firm hand, I have had to make my own ‘natural selection.’ Nothing
will so well bear watching as a garden, except a family of children
next door. Their power of selection beats mine. If they could read
half as well as they can steal awhile away, I should put up a notice,
‘Children, beware! There is Protoplasm here.’ But I suppose it would
have no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm as quick as
anything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is going to be a
cholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that would let
my apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the fruit;
but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much
‘life-matter,’ full of crude and even wicked vegetable-human
tendencies, pass into the composition of the neighbors” children,
some of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be a
public meeting about this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake.
At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong.
his grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviest
clusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of a
group of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of the
leaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, ‘How sweet!’ ‘What nice
ones!’ and the like,–remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder
There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder in
his grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviest
clusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of a
group of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of the
leaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, ‘How sweet!’ ‘What nice
ones!’ and the like,–remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder.
It is great pleasure to see people eat grapes.
Posted on 5/3/08 and Expires on 5/31/08.
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