A Little Garden Calendar for Boys and Girls

SEPTEMBER

I

A FLOWER REALLY HAS CLOTHES

THE little gardens were in quite a bad way when Davy and Prue came back from the seashore. Everything had done well, even to the weeds, and that was just the trouble. It took two whole days, working when the sun was not so very hot, to get the beds in shape, and the Chief Gardener had to work, too, very hard. But by and by everything was clean and beautiful again, and the seat under the peach-tree was a finer place than ever, because there were more things in bloom, and everything had become more beautiful.

One day Davy came to the seat, where little Prue and the Chief Gardener were resting, with a double carnation in his hand.

"I wish you would look at this," he said. "I can't tell petals from stamens."

The Chief Gardener took the flower, and slowly pulled it to pieces.

"Well, no," he said; "it isn't the easiest thing to do, though, of course, those anther-looking things must belong to stamens."

"But the filaments are like petals," objected Davy.

"Yes, and here are others like them, though they have no anthers. Those are supposed to be stamens, too, or, at least, they were stamens, once."

Davy looked puzzled.

"You remember I told you once, Davy, that a flower was only one form of a leaf—a leaf intended to make the plant beautiful, and to make it bear seed. Well, in some plants, especially cultivated ones, the flower-leaves seem to get rather mixed in their parts."

The Chief Gardener picked a scarlet canna that grew near.

"Here is a flower which has three little petals and four large flower-leaves which you would think were petals, wouldn't you? But the stamens and petals and sepals are so mixed that even botanists can hardly decide which is which. In a water-lily, too, the petals gradually become stamens, so, perhaps, the leaf came first, ages and ages ago, and little by little it has changed, first to sepals, then petals, then to stamens and pistils, so that it could make seeds and scatter them to the wind. Gardeners make double flowers out of single ones by a process of turning stamens and even pistils into petals. The double flower is sometimes very beautiful, but it is not the most perfect flower. The wild rose is more perfect than the finest double American Beauty. Perhaps double flowers came before single ones, a long time ago, when the leaves were turning to blossoms, so that the gardeners who make the wonderful double blooms now are really going backward instead of forward. But that is all too hard. I'm afraid—especially for a little girl who likes very double carnations."

"I know everything you're talking about, just as well as Davy does," said the little girl, sitting up quite straight. "And I like single flowers, 'specially lilies, and wild roses; but I think double flowers are nice, too, because they seem dressed up, like folks—queens and princesses, all with nice dresses—velvet and chiffon and lacey stuff."

"Why, that is just what they are, Prue. They are dressed up, and, of course, the more anything, or anybody, is dressed up the less they are really like themselves. The petals and sepals of a flower are really fine clothes, you know, just as you sometimes play they are, when you make hollyhock dolls, and it wears them for just about the same reason that we wear ours. It might grow and be useful without them, but it would not be very attractive, and some of its friends and servants might pass by without seeing it."

"Servants! But flowers don't really have servants. That must be just a story."

"No—at least, it is all very true. Flowers are like people in very many ways. They really have servants and friends, and some of them live off other flowers and plants, and some of them eat and sleep, very much as we do. I will tell you something about that another time."

II

THE FLOWER HAS MANY SERVANTS

It was about a week after this that little Prue was picking some sweet-pease for the table when Davy came along with the Chief Gardener.

"The servants are busy this morning," said the Chief Gardener.

"Do you mean me?" asked little Prue. "I am trying to pick some flowers, but there are so many bees around that I'm afraid."

"Those are the servants I mean. I do not think they will hurt you if you are careful. They are only collecting their wages, and working at the same time."

Davy and Prue looked close.

"What do you mean by their working?" asked Davy. "Do you mean for the flower, or for themselves?"

"For both. Watch this bee. You see, he pushes open the flower for honey, but to get it he has to cover his legs with the pollen from the anthers, which are placed down in this little lower part called a keel, just where his legs and body will be covered. Then he comes out and goes to another flower and carries this pollen, and really rubs it on the stigma there as he crawls in and out, and takes more pollen, and so goes on from one to another—a real servant, doing a real duty and getting his pay as he goes."

"But he doesn't have to do it. The pollen would fall on the stigma anyway, wouldn't it?"

"It might with the sweet-pea, but even if it did, the pollen from the same flower is not as good as the pollen from another flower from a different plant, and the seed would be poor and the plants would grow weaker every year. There are many insects that act as servants to the flowers, and the wind is one of the servants, too. It shakes the corn-tassel so that the pollen falls on the silk and makes the ear, and it carries the pollen of one stalk to the silk of another—sometimes from one field to another."

"But, of course, the bee doesn't know that he does it," said Prue, who was still very intently watching the little servants of the sweet-pease.

"I am not so certain of that," the Chief Gardener said musingly. "The flower must know, for it dresses in bright colors so that the bee may see it, and offers honey as pay for his work. And if the flower knows, why shouldn't the bee?"

"But don't you think it might all just happen so?" asked Davy.

"I don't think anything in nature just 'happens so,' Davy, and I am sure that the bee's work for the flower doesn't, for there are too many flowers that would have no seed and would die out if it were not for the bees that carry the pollen, and most of these flowers have grown just to fit in every way the especial little bee, or big bee, or insect, that comes to work for them. There are some flowers, like the sweet-pea, that the bee cannot get into without getting pollen on his legs, and there are others that drop it upon his back. Some flowers have stamens that wither before the pistil is ready for the pollen. In such flowers the little servants go from one to the other—from a new flower to an old one—carrying the pollen which would not be of any use in the flower where it grew."

"And is that really all that the flower's pretty color and sweet smell and delicious honey are for?" asked little Prue, "just to get bees to work for it?"

"No, Prue, I don't think so. I think all the world of nature is harmony, like sweet music, and the flowers with their beauty and sweetness are part of it, but I think that just as we may attract friends and good servants by kindness and offering something in return, so the flowers attract the bees and butterflies, and even a little girl and boy to keep the weeds away. The more a flower depends on an insect to carry its pollen, the gayer or sweeter that flower always is. The orchids, which are almost the finest flowers in the world, seem to be made especially for the insects, and they could not do without them, any more than the insects could do without the flowers."

"And is that what makes some flowers such funny shapes, too?"

"I think it is. The foxglove, and the horse mint, and many others, have curious shapes and forms, just to fit their little helpers, and the milkweed has a funny little saddle-bag which it hangs to the bee's feet, so that he can carry it to another plant. There is another kind of a milkweed which is very cruel, for it attracts small insects by its odor, and when they come they are caught by a sticky substance and held until the weed sucks them down and really eats them, much as we eat our food. So, you see, plants are a good deal like people, just as I told you the other day."

"You said they could sleep, too."

"Yes, your rose-moss closes up every night, shuts its eyes just as you do, and rests. Many flowers close at night, and some even droop their heads quite low, like the bird, which sleeps with its head beneath its wing."

III

A FLOWER MAY REALLY REASON

How beautiful was the September garden! The wild sunflowers were all in bloom like a wall of gold. A bunch of black-eyed Susans at the corner of the house seemed trying to imitate its large cousins, and was just as bright and yellow, too, in a small way. The little Susans had not been planted, but had strayed in out of the field somewhere, perhaps longing to be with people. A row of bright red cockscombs made a crimson line of plumes down one side of a garden-path, and just beyond them Davy's third planting of beans was in full bearing. Prue's pinks and sweet-pease bloomed on and on, and her alyssums and the other sweets became sweeter every day.

"Do you think all these things like to be together?" Prue asked, one afternoon, as they sat looking at them from the shade of the peach-tree.

"I think those that grow well do," said Davy. "They seem to, anyway."

"And they do, Davy," said the Chief Gardener. "A plant that doesn't like a place will not grow in it, and in the woods and fields we only find those plants together which like that particular spot. Down below the hillside yonder you will find golden-rod and several kinds of tall blue and white daisies and grasses that all belong there, and seem very happy together. They would not grow well in the wet woods, and would soon die out, but there are other plants that grow and tangle and are happiest where the ground is damp and the shade overhead. So, you see, there we have another way that plants are like people—they have their proper company, and, perhaps, their societies and friendships. I am sure they have their friendships, for there are certain little plants, and big ones, too, that you will nearly always find together. Violets and spring-beauties and adder-tongues must love each other, I am sure, for you seldom see one without the others, and there are certain vines, like the Virginia creeper and the poison-ivy, that are nearly always together, though why the Virginia creeper should care for the poison-ivy I don't see. Perhaps it doesn't seem poison to the creeper, but only to us."

"It seemed poison enough to me," said Davy, "when I got a dose of it last year. It nearly itched me to death."

"Yes, it is terrible stuff, and little folks, and big ones, too, have to be very careful, for it looks very much like its friend, the creeper, only that its compound leaf is divided into three parts instead of five. You can always tell by that, and you must always beware of the vine with the three-part leaf."

"Do poison-ivy and Virginia creeper belong to the same family?" asked Davy.

"No, though they look so much alike. The poison-ivy belongs to the Sumach family, while the creeper belongs to the Grape family. The families are quite close together, but are separate. Often members of different families are better friends than members of the same family, and that is still another way that plants are like people."

"Do you suppose the poison-ivy knows that it is poison?" asked Prue, who liked to believe that plants were really just like people.

"Perhaps it does. We can never be quite sure how much a plant knows. I told you once how I believed they could feel and hear, and even see. I am almost sure that the dandelion can reason."

Davy looked interested, and the Chief Gardener went on.

"You will remember, Davy, how when the dandelions first bloomed they had quite tall stems. Then we mowed the lawn, and when they tried to bloom again the stems were shorter. We mowed again, and the stems grew still shorter, and so they became shorter and shorter each time, until they bloomed flat against the ground, so low that we could not mow them. They were bound to bloom, and they did bloom, and then all at once almost in a day they shot up long pale stems with balls of white-winged seeds that were ready when we mowed again to float away at a touch or a puff, to be ready to sprout and grow another year. The dandelion is bound to spread its seed. By and by it learns that the lawn-mower cannot cut below a certain level. So it blooms below the lawn-mower's cutting-wheel, and then when it is ready to seed, it pops up as high as ever it can, and stands waiting for the mower to come around and help scatter its seed. Perhaps it doesn't really reason, but it does something exactly like it, and there are people in the world who would be happier if they could do the same thing."

And just then big Prue came out into the garden, and they all sat on the bench under the peach-tree, and watched the sun going down, away off over the purple hills. And they thought how the summer was nearly over, and how soon the glory of the little garden would be fading, and how the snow would be sifting down among the withered leaves.

IV

SOME FLOWERS LIVE OFF OTHER FLOWERS AND PLANTS

So summer with its song and its blossom came to an end. Autumn clad in gold and purple came across the land, and the gentle haze of Indian summer lay upon the fields. From the banks of golden-rod below the hill, Prue and Davy filled jars and vases, and one day they brought in great bunches all linked and bound together with something like a tangle of golden thread.

The Chief Gardener was not at home that day, so they brought their discovery to big Prue to explain.

"Why," she said, "that is dodder, or love-vine. It is what is called a parasite, for it has no root in the ground, but lives from the plant it grows on."

Then she showed them where the small, tough little rootlets were really embedded in the stalk of the golden-rod from which it drew its strength and life.

"Oh," said Prue, "that is what Papa meant when he told us once that some flowers lived off other flowers and plants, just as some people live off other people."

Big Prue nodded.

"There are a good many such plants," she said. "The mistletoe we get for Christmas grows on several sorts of trees. Its seed lodges under the bark and sprouts there, just as it would in the ground. Then the wood grows up around the root, and the mistletoe becomes almost a part of the tree. Then there are many kinds of mosses, and the Indian pipe—that white, waxy flower which you found in the woods not long ago, and thought you had found a flowering mushroom. It is a sort of a relation of the mushroom, for it springs from damp, decaying leaves, and has no real root, but it is more of a parasite, for it feeds mainly on roots of living trees and plants. This dodder blooms and drops its seeds to the ground, where they sprout, but as soon as it finds a weed to cling to, the root dies and it lives only on the weed."

"Why do they call it love-vine?" asked little Prue.

Her mother took the long golden tendril and twined it about her slender white finger. Then she told them the story of

V

THE PRINCE AND THE THREAD OF GOLD

"There was once a prince," she began, "who lived in a far country between blue seas. And all the land the prince owned, and a great palace, but he was not happy, because there was a little fisher girl more beautiful than the sunrise, who would not come and dwell in his palace and be his princess.

"When this fisher girl saw the prince coming toward her, she would dance away laughing, like a ripple of sunlight on the water, and there were some who said she was not a real child, but a sea-fairy, for she had been found as a babe by the fisher's wife, cast up on the sand, after a great storm.

"But the prince did not care whether she was a human being or not. He thought only of her, as each day she grew taller and always more beautiful. He went every morning to the fisher's hut to beg that they would give her to him, and this they would have been glad to do had Dodora been willing, but always she laughed and danced away when they spoke of it, and sometimes they did not see her again until evening.

"But one morning, when she was eighteen years old, and they spoke to her, she said, laughing:

"'Tell the prince to tie a knot in the thread of love. If he will tie a knot in the thread of love it will hold me fast,' and again she danced away, while her laugh came as the tinkle of the tide among the pebbles on a still evening.

"So when the prince came that day they told him, and he went away sadly, for he thought she was only playing with him for her amusement.

"But that night, as he walked alone in the moonlight by the shore, he suddenly saw on the sand in front of him a radiant fairy, spinning on a silver spinning-wheel a wonderful thread of gold. Without daring to breathe he stood and looked at her, and then he saw that it was from the rays of moonlight that she was spinning the thread. All at once she rose and came to where he was standing.

"'Here is the thread of love,' she said to him, and then she showed him how to tie the true lover's knot in it. 'With this you may win our Dodora,' the fairy added, and then suddenly like a breath of perfume she was gone, leaving the thread of gold in the prince's hands.

"And all that night the prince tied and retied the true lover's knot, as the fairy had showed him, and next morning he hurried with it to the fisherman's cottage where Dodora lived. And when Dodora saw him coming, she did not dance away as she had always done before, but went forward to meet him, and took his hand. Then suddenly she snatched the golden thread from him and ran, with the prince after her. She ran fast, but he was about to overtake her, when Dodora dropped the knot into the weeds, and then all at once she stopped, for the wonderful thread had suddenly become a great tangle of gold that held Dodora fast, and she could not get away. So the prince overtook her, and led her to his palace, where they lived happily for a long time. And the thread of love grew as a wonderful vine that had no root in the earth, but twined about the weeds and spread over the country in many places. Some called it Dodora, after the princess, and this was changed at last to 'dodder' by those who did not know. Others called it golden thread, and still others called it love-vine, and tied true lover's knots in it which they threw over their shoulders on moonlight nights. If these knots grew they won their sweethearts. They did not always grow, but about the palace of the prince the vine flourished in a golden mass, and the prince, never forgetting the wonderful night when it had been spun for him out of moonbeams, let it grow through all the world, to become the golden thread of love."