In one garden book of the most precious description I read of "hellebore." Now I am writing for Ignoramuses. Do you know what "hellebore" is? No! of course not, nor did I, but it was spoken of as forming "a complete garden full of flowers in the months of February and March," so of course I wanted it. Out-door flowers are scarce in February, but I learned as time went on that most flowers announced for an early appearance generally arrive a month late, at least it is so with me.
None of the Others, not even his Reverence, had heard of hellebore. It continued to haunt me for some time. February was near and I sighed for that "complete garden."
I was encouraging my snowdrops with welcoming smiles as they pierced through the damp grass, and dreaming of hellebore, for the name attracted me strongly, when his Reverence's Young Man joined me. He has not much to do with the garden, though he often strayed into it—very often, in fact—so he ought to be mentioned. As my book is about my garden, only the people who either help or hinder there need be introduced. His Reverence's Young Man was really his curate. Our parish was not a large one, but very scattered, and a little distant hamlet with a tiny chapel necessitated a Young Man. He was a great favourite with his Reverence, who would often walk about with him, leaning on his arm, and this had caused old Master Lovell, the village wit, to call him his Young Man. Of course he had to see his Reverence occasionally, and if he did not find him in the study he generally looked for him in the garden.
"What is growing here?" he asked.
"Look!" I answered.
"Grass? It is grass, isn't it?"
"It is a comfort to find some people, and clever people withal, even more ignorant than I am. Snowdrops and scillas."
"Oh! I see, you are making progress, at least, I beg pardon, they are. I positively see some white."
"Now can you tell me what are hellebores?"
"Ask another!"
"That is worthy of Jim. You don't know?"
"But wait a bit, I have heard of them, I really have. Isn't it deadly nightshade, or something like that?"
I shook my head.
"It is worse to know wrong than not at all."
"But if you don't know, how do you know I am wrong?"
"Because they form a complete garden in February and March—there!"
"A complete garden! How wonderful. Doesn't anyone know? Doesn't Griggs?"
"I haven't asked him, of course he wouldn't know. Here he is, we will see what he says. Griggs, do you know what flower is called hellebore?"
Griggs had no spade and no mud handy; he was very much nonplussed.
"El-bore!—did you say? Whoi, el-bore? Don't seem to have 'eeurd of 'em before; not by that name leastways. You never can tell in these days; lot o' noo-fangled words they call 'em. Oi might know it right 'nuff if you could show me. Dessay it's a furriner. I must be goin'."
He wandered down the garden. There was not much I could give him to do, but I knew from my gardening books that he should be trimming trees, or marking those to come down, or cutting stakes, and lots of other useful things. I possessed no woods, or groves, or copses, however, so I gave Griggs over unreservedly to his Reverence, and he dug and banked up celery.
"Shall I write and ask my mother?" said the Young Man. "She is quite a gardener, you know; and when they divide up roots—as they do, don't they?—she would send you some, I am sure. Geraniums and fuchsias and—and lilies. They always divide them up, don't they? and throw away half."
"I don't think they throw away half, not always. But would she really? It would be awfully kind; and I might send her things when I had anything to send. Only I don't want geraniums; I can't bear them, and old Griggs has filled our one and only frame with nothing else. They seem to me a most unnecessary flower."
I spoke in my ignorance, and I learnt the use of geraniums later on.
His Reverence's Young Man never smiled when I spoke of sending things back to his mother; perhaps he did inside him, for she had a lovely garden and half a dozen gardeners, but still was chief there. I was overcome when I paid her a visit and remembered my offer; but again I spoke in my ignorance and thought it showed the right gardener's spirit, and perhaps it did.
His Reverence's Young Man grew to take the greatest interest in gardening. He was one of my first converts; but I learnt about hellebore from someone else.
And now the Master must be introduced. I cannot tell what particular month he came into my garden, but I remember when I first went into his.
He had a genius for flowers. I do not know if he looked at children and animals with that light of fatherly love in his eyes, but I think it must have been there for all things that needed his care and protection. Flowers, however, were his "dream children."
His was no ideal garden, and he had never written about it. It was scarcely larger or more blessed by fate than mine, but was as perfect as could be. He knew each flower intimately; he had planted each shrub, and I never met a weed or a stone on his borders. He had but little glass, and no groves and copses and woods, or heather, or pine, or any unfair advantages in that way; but when I looked at his herbaceous border in the autumn I could not help thinking of harvest decorations. Such a wealth of colour was piled up, it hardly seemed possible it could all be growing on the spot. From early spring to late autumn a succession of brilliant blooms reigned one after another in that border; to look upon it was indeed "seeing of the labour of one's hands and being satisfied."
And he had said, "There is no reason why you should not have it too."
I think that border sowed the first seeds of gardening love in my heart.
"But when you came here was it like this?" I asked.
"It was a pretty bad wilderness," he said with a look round.
"Oh! things take such a time," I groaned.
"I have been here twenty-five years. I have planted nearly everything you see, except the big trees."
"Twenty-five years! But I!—I can't begin planting things for twenty-five years hence. It is too bad of one's predecessors to leave one nothing but weeds and stones and Griggs!"
"Yes. Well, you have got to make things better for your successors. Not but what you can get results of some sort under twenty-five years. All this"—and he waved his hand to that wonderful border—"comes, at least comes in part, with but eighteen months' careful tending."
Even eighteen months seemed to my impatient spirit too long; I wished for a fairy wand. But fairy effects have a way of vanishing like the frost pictures on the window pane.
"Well, if ever I try to make our wilderness blossom like the rose I will just grow perennial things and pop them in and have done with it."
At which the Master laughed.
"Oh, will you? I don't think I shall come to admire your garden then. Why are you so afraid of time? You are young. But I suppose that is the reason."
After I had made the plunge we talked again on this matter.
"Most of these people who write of their gardens own them. They have lived there and will live there always. But in a Rectory garden one is but a stranger and a pilgrim. Don't you feel this?"
"No. We are growing old together, and perhaps it will be given me to stay here; anyway, my garden is better than I found it. Is not that something?"
"Oh, yes," I said discontentedly.
He laughed. "Ah! the spirit will grow; you are cultivating it just as surely as you are the seeds."
"There are plenty of weeds and stones to choke all the seeds everywhere," I answered. "Old Griggs's way of weeding is to chop off the heads, dig everything in again, and for a fortnight smile blandly over his work. Then he says that it is no use weeding, 'Just look at 'em again.'"
"Old Griggs seems to afford you plenty of parables from Nature, anyhow. He is instructive in his way. But can't he be retired?"
"Alas, no! he is a fixture."
"And you the pilgrim! Well, go ahead. And now come and see what the nurseries contain; there is always to spare in the nurseries."
Many of his spare children found their way to my garden, and it grew quite a matter of course to turn to him in any dilemma. But Ignoramuses must learn, in gardens as in everything else, to work out their own salvation. So in fear and trembling, and a good deal of hope, too, I made my own experiments; for hill and dale divided the Master's garden from mine, and I doubt if even he could grasp the utter ignorance of the absolutely ignorant.
Ice and snow and thaw, and again thaw and ice and snow had held their sway through January and early February, and my garden slept. Another year I would have violets growing in the narrow border under the verandah, and tubs—big green tubs—of Christmas roses under its shelter. Were they expensive, I wondered? And thus I found out, by the simple process of asking at a florist, that for one shilling and sixpence or two shillings a root I could buy—why, hellebores! But for me they will always be "Christmas roses." At present the verandah was bare, oh, so bare! It needed more roses to climb up the trellis and the newness of its two years' existence to be hidden. It held attraction for the birds, however, this cold winter time; crumbs and scraps were expected by them as regularly as breakfast and dinner by us. The pert sparrow came by dozens, of course, but out of our four robins one knew himself to be master of the ceremony. He came first, at a whistle, the signal for crumbs, and he allowed the sparrows to follow, really because he could not help himself. But should another robin come—his wife or their thin-legged son—he made for them and spent the precious moments pecking them away while the sparrows gobbled. His is not a beautiful disposition, I fear, but oh! how gladly one forgives him for the sake of his bold black eye, cheering red breast and persistent joyfulness of song. The colder weather brought other pensioners, chaffinch, bullfinch, even hawfinch, and, of course, the thrush and blackbird; a magpie eyed the feast from afar, but the starlings waddled boldly up, not hopping as birds, but right-left, right-left like wobbling geese; and the tom-tits and blue and black-tits, came and continued to come as long as they found a cocoa-nut swinging for their benefit. None of the other birds would touch it. Next winter they shall have hellebore for their table decoration.
Oh! how lucky men are, they have so many things we women seem forever to miss.
Very thick, sensible boots that won't get wet through; no skirts to get muddy when gardening; the morning paper first, of course, because they are men and politics are for them; voting powers, too, which on occasions give them a certain very much appreciated weight; and money, even if poor, always more money than their wives and daughters.
These reflections, and I notice you may reflect on most irrelevant matter in a garden, were called forth by a boy-man who kindly took me in to dinner one evening. I soon discovered he had a little "diggings" and was going in for gardening "like anything." Yet was my soul not drawn to him. "Bulbs, oh, rather! Had a box over from Holland the other day, just a small quantity, you know. Mine isn't a large place, but five thousand or so ought to fill it up a bit; make a mass of colour, that's what I go in for. Told my man to plant 'em in all over, thick as bees. Then I had great luck. Dropped in at an auction in the City just in the nick of time, got a box-load of splendid bulbs for half-a-crown—worth a guinea at the very least—shoved them all in too. I shall have a perfect blaze, I tell you. Like you to come and look me up in April if you go in for that kind of thing."
But I hated the boy-man. Five thousand bulbs! without a second thought. And then—according to the rule that works so invariably among material goods, "to him that hath shall be given"—this aggressive youth also buys a guinea's worth of bulbs for half-a-crown. Think what I would have given to be at that auction. But women can't "drop in" in the City.
Towards the end of February my snowdrops made their appearance. The scillas followed a little later and with less regularity. They were not quite the perfect sheet I had dreamt of, but each little bulb did its duty manfully and raised one slender stem with its bell-like head. One at every few inches over a space of some yards was not wealth; and I almost wept when some of them were sacrificed for the drawing-room. The Others said, "A garden should grow flowers for the house. Who wanted them out there in the cold, where no one would see them!" But I did, for out there in the cold they lived for weeks and in the warm room a few days faded them. I must have more and more so that we may all be satisfied. In the Master's garden I found sixteen varieties of snowdrops, not very many of each, but he has no Others. What I longed for was quantity; and as for quality, each snowdrop holds its own, I think.
Up through the softened grass came the strong, pointed leaves of the daffodils. My mass of gold promised to be very regular, but the small crocus leaves were harder to find, and they had no sign of yellow points as yet. And the anemones! What had happened to them? I nearly dug them up to see.
Were the buds on the trees swelling? The birds were twittering busily on the branches, as though they knew their covering would not be long delayed, but the little brown knobs, so shiny and sticky on the chestnuts, appeared hardly to have gained in size since they pushed off the old leaf in the autumn. For in the time of scattering wind and falling leaf it is well to remember that it is the coming bud which loosens the hold of the old leaf. Life, and not death, which makes the seasons and the world go round.
I was busy again with catalogues. "Begin things in time," preached the Master; but ah! I seem to have been born a month too late, for I never catch up time in my garden, except when there is nothing to do, and then you can do nothing. Nature has cried a "halt," and all the fidgeting in the world will not start the race before "time" is said. So I studied my catalogue and made my list in February.
Stocks. I need them in plenty, but I must walk warily amongst such luxuries with only three pounds to spend and so many other things to buy. Wallflowers, red and gold; but, alas! the Master has warned me these are for next year, as also many other things. The polyanthuses, that I long to see in masses like a fine Persian carpet, the pansies and violas, the forget-me-nots, even the Canterbury bells and campanulas and sweet-Williams must be thought of now, and will need the year round before coming to flowering time. Still, down they go on my list. And gaillardias, too, they look so handsome in the picture and promise so much: "showy, beautiful, brilliant, useful for cutting" (there were those Others to think of), and they were perennials. Blessed perennials! Then larkspur or delphinium, I should say, for I did not want the annual variety. I could not wait, however, to grow those tall, beautiful spikes of bright blue, Oxford and Cambridge in colour, from seed, I must indulge in plants. Hollyhocks must also be bought ready-made, and phlox. Oh! the poverty-stricken little specimens that grew in my garden, flowers capable of such beauty. I had seen them growing in the Lake country and marvelled at their upstanding mass of brilliant heads. They were a revelation as to what the phlox family could do.
And there were all the magnificent possibility of lilies, of gladiolas and montbresias, and ixias. These must be bought. I must have them, but oh! the years before I could make a home for all. I turned to the annuals; they sounded as easy to grow as Jack's bean-stalk. What a list! Antirrhinum—that is, snapdragon, but one gets used even to spelling the other name—red, white and yellow; the taller kind call themselves half-hardy perennials, but I don't believe they would stand my winter, and the dwarf variety do their duty nobly for one summer. Mignonette, that was a necessity; marguerites, annual chrysanthemums sounded inviting; "continuous blooming" would suit the Others.
Convolvulus and heaps of nasturtium, canariensis and other little tropoeoleum. Balsam and asters; no, though I liked the sound of balsam, still I could do without it, and I must do without something! But of sweet-peas I could not have too many, even though most of the "dukes" and "duchesses" cost a shilling a packet. I pictured hedges and hedges of sweet-peas in the garden, and bowls and bowls of blossom in the house. Sunflowers again—"golden-nigger," "æsthetic gem," "Prussian giant"—how could one help sampling such seductive names? And tagetes, the Master had said, "Get tagetes, it is a useful border." Marigolds, too, they were not a favourite of mine, but they lasted well into the autumn, and I had to think of the failing months. Zinnias I could not resist because they are so "high art" in their colouring; and salpiglosis, the Master had a lovely group of these daintily-pencilled belles.
Then I made up my list, threepence, and sixpence, and one shilling, and one shilling and sixpence. How they mounted up. Thirty shillings in seeds! and I had to buy plants and bulbs too. But I could cut out nothing, though it had been very easy to make additions.
But now to get all these thousands of seeds sown. They could not all be sown in the open; I knew so much. Those for coming on quickly would need little wooden boxes and a place in the one frame full of bothering geraniums; and when they were bigger they would need pricking out in more wooden boxes, and could only be planted out permanently the beginning of June.
Well, what for the open? Sweet-peas—thank goodness for that!—and the wallflowers, Canterbury bells—cup and saucer variety had taken my fancy—sweet-Williams, sunflowers, nasturtium, mignonette and forget-me-nots, they could all be trusted straight to Mother Earth; and I had enough of the dear brown bosom, bare of all children, down in that long desolate border. And for the boxes and pricking out and glass frame I would begin with antirrhinum, stocks, violas, tagetes, zinnia, salpiglosis, lobelias, polyanthus and columbine. That must suffice for the first year. But oh! what a lot of flowers there were to be had, and how lovely a garden might be if only—well, if only one had a real gardener, money, the sunny border, good soil, and—if they all came up!
And what flowers had I omitted? Of simple things that even an Ignoramus may have heard. There were all the poppy tribe, Iceland, Shirley, the big Orientals, Californian, though these are not poppies proper at all; verbena, the very name smelt sweet; gypsophila, a big word, but I knew the dainty, grass-like flower from London shops; penstemons, carnation, scabious, or lady's pincushions. The only way was to shut that book resolutely and go and write to Veitch.
The book said, and so did each little neat packet of seeds, "sow in pots or pans," or "sow in heat," and talked of a cool frame and compost, so, armed with this amount of knowledge, I took my seeds out to old Griggs.
"Griggs, have you any wooden boxes or pans or things in which we can sow these seeds?"
Griggs looked at me suspiciously; he did not like my energy, there was no doubt of that, but since he was a gardener he recognised that flower seeds, or such-like, ought to be in his line.
He took the packets.
"P'haps I can knock up a box or two. That frame's mostly full of janiums, though. I've a nice quantity of them saved."
"But we can't fill the garden with nothing but geraniums, you know. I want to have a great show this year; don't you? Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to you to see the garden looking nice than like a howling wilderness?"
Griggs laughed, positively.
"You've got to spend money if you wants flowers, and the old rector as was 'e never put 'is 'and in 'is pocket for no sich thing as flowers. I dunno 'bout a 'owling wilderness. My fancy is them janiums brightens up a place wonderful."
I pushed open the lights of the long frame by which we were standing and looked at the stalky, unpromising appearance of old Griggs's favourites. There were other lean and hungry-looking plantlets there, a bit yellow about the tips.
"What are those?" I asked, pointing.
"Oh, them's marguerites, white and yellow. I got Mr Wright up at the 'All to give me them cuttings. They wanted a bit of water this morning so I give it em."
I pressed my finger on the sodden soil of the box that held the drooping cuttings. "They have had too little, and now you have given them too much," I said sternly. How could I trust my precious seeds to this old murderer? "Griggs, if you would only love the flowers a bit, they would grow with you."
"Bless you! they'll grow, they 'aven't took no hurt. Let's look at your seeds. Anti—rrh—well, what's this name?"
"Snapdragon."
"Oh, and violas and polyan—thus. Well, we can get 'em in. I've a box or two."
But I grabbed all my packets quickly.
"All right, get the boxes ready and I will come and sow them myself."
The boxes were filled with a light soil, mixed with sand and leaf mould. I turned it over myself to look for worms or other beasts, and very, very thinly, as I thought, I scattered the tiny seeds over the surface and gave them a good watering. Then out with some of the scraggiest of Griggs's plants and in with my precious boxes.
I felt Griggs's hands must not touch them. He had something wrong about him, for a gardener, that is to say. He always broke the trailing branch he was supposed to be nailing up; he always trod on a plant in stepping across a border; if he picked a flower he did it with about an inch of stalk and broke some other stem; no blessing flowed from his hand when he planted out the flowers.
I sowed the end of February, and in March little tiny green heads were peeping up in most of the boxes. The violas still remained hidden. If Griggs had sown I should have said he had done it very irregularly, for the green heads came in thick patches and then again very sparingly; but I knew, of course, it must have been the seeds' own fault, since I had done it myself!
I was standing with his Reverence at the study window watching a squirrel swing himself from bough to bough, and I think we were both envying him, when my eye caught some specks of colour on the grass plot in front, that grass plot which ought to have a sun-dial in the centre and a stately bed of flowering shrubs as a background instead of laurels! What was it growing in the grass? White, yellow, purple, a touch here and there, all across, straight across, in one horrid straight line! Could it be?
"Look, Mary, there he goes! See him spring up that tree?"
"Look," I said in a tragic voice, "look at them! Do you think—can it be—are they my crocuses?"
"Where? Oh, there! Yes, I thought they looked like a rather straggly regiment this morning, marching single file. Was that your idea?"
"My idea! a straight line! Oh, how can you! That old fiend of a Griggs!" And then I rushed out to see the full extent of the horror.
It was too true. In spite of my careful scattering the old ruffian had drawn my crocus bulbs into line. I can see how he did it, striding across the grass, clutching bulbs to right and left, sticking them in under his nose, and probably sweeping up those outside his reach with the dead leaves. What a show! Many had not come up, and many had no flower, so the regiment was ragged. I could have cried.
Jim had joined me.
"Don't think much of this idea anyhow Mary."
"Don't you know how I meant it to be? Haven't you seen the Park?"
"Can't say I've given it my undivided attention lately. Shall I go and pitch into old Griggs?"
"It would be no good. I must do that."
"That isn't fair, Mary. If I'm to help you I must have some of the fun."
"Jim! It is no fun to me. You can't murder him, and nothing else would be any good. What shall I do with them?"
I looked at my poor little first-fruits. They did look so forlorn and battered. A crocus all alone, separated from its kind by a foot or so, has a most orphaned and cheerless appearance.
"Let's have 'em up," said Jim, the man of action.
"No, they mustn't be moved in flower, not even till their leaves die, and by that time the grass will be mowed and I shan't know where they are, and then it will look like this next year too."
"Oh rot!" said Jim, "something has got to be done. Can't have these stragglers roaming across the lawn and never getting home. I know," and off he was and returned with a lot of little sticks which he proceeded to plant by the side of each crocus. "Now we will locate the gentlemen and have 'em up when their poverty-stricken show is over."
Afterwards, when Jim saw in my account that crocuses were two shillings a hundred, he said I did not value his time very highly. He thought by my face we were dealing with things of value. But anyway we moved that ragged regiment on and stationed them in clumps at the foot of trees, where they will look more comfortable.
March should be a very busy month, and old Griggs found employment in the kitchen garden. I should have moved plants now, and arranged the neglected herbaceous border of the autumn, but, alas! all the new green things coming up were strangers to me, and I saw quickly that in their present state Griggs was as likely to make mistakes as I. He hazarded names with a scratch of the head and a pull at the tender green shoots that made me angry.
"Them's a phlox, and them's—oi can't quite mind, it's purple like; and them's flags, but they ain't never much to look at; too old, I reckon. That's a kind of purple flower, grows it do, and that 'ere's a wallflower." This was said with decision, and I too could recognise the poor specimen of a spring joy.
So I left well, or ill, alone until the nature of the plant should be declared, and then, if useless, out it could come later.
We prepared a long narrow bed alongside a row of cabbages, made a neat little trench some three inches deep, put in a layer of manure and mould on top, and there my first sowing of sweet-peas was placed, and carefully covered and watered and patted down. I felt like a mother who tucks her child in bed. Surely the pat did good! February, March and April were all to have their sowing, and then the summer months should have a succession of these many-coloured fragrant joys.
In March also the other annuals found resting-places; some in square patches down the long border, some in rows that looked inviting down the side and cross paths of the kitchen domain. It was encroaching, of course, but no one used the spare edges, and it seemed kind to brighten up the cabbages and onions, all now coming up in long thread-like lines of green. I had added a few more seeds to my list, so a long row of tiny seeds that were to be blue cornflowers, with another row in front of godetia, would provide, I hoped, a very bright sight and be so useful for cutting.
On Shirley poppies, too, I ventured. It seemed so easy just to sow a few seeds and trust to Nature to do the rest. I did not then appreciate the backache caused by the process "thinning out."
People may talk of sowing in February, but one cannot sow in either frozen ground or deep snow. Some Februarys may be possible, but it was the beginning of March that year before I committed my seeds to Mother Earth, and even then it seemed a very unsafe proceeding. However, a lot of tiny green pin points soon appeared, and the only havoc wrought by birds, mice and rabbits—Griggs suggested every imaginable animal—was amongst the sweet-peas. These had to be protected with a network of cotton.
So the winter slipped away very gradually, for even after the first breath of spring, which comes to us from afar and thrills us as no other fragrance of air, frost, snow, rain and biting winds triumph again, and bud and sprouting green seem to shrink up and cower away. Yet we know the winter is surely passing and the first trumpet-blast of spring's procession has blown.
SEASON II
Spring
"And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
Daffodils always make me glad. From the moment their strong, blue-green blades pierce the grass, they give one a feeling of strength, vigour, activity and determination to be up and doing, unmindful of wind or weather; in fact, using all for their own purpose, bending circumstances to their own development.
And when the big golden bell bursts its sheath of pale green it does it with fine independence, and then swings on its strong stem, ringing out lustily that the spring is here, the sun is shining, for the sun always seems to shine on the daffodils, they reflect his glory under all clouds, and depression flies before their sturdy assumption of "All's well with the world."
And so I felt very hopeful as I saw my circles, my clusters, my rows of daffodils, one by one, flashing up from the delicious blue-green blades. They none of them failed me, none, bless them! So plant daffodils, O friend Ignoramus! the single, the double, and any other of that dear family, the narcissus.
The birds were singing, and oh, so busy making late love, building and even nesting! The trees were bursting, the lilacs had a shimmer of green. The larches had colour almost too dim to be called green, they streaked the woods that still looked brown without looking bare; little catkins hung and danced, the blackthorn looked like forgotten snow, the grass was greener, and here and there a sweet primrose bud peeped up, whispering, "We are coming."
Down under the row of limes bordering the sloping field I found many pretty crumpled primrose leaves, and they gave me the idea to plant more and more, and to have my wild garden here, with snowdrops and cowslips, unseen things in our woods and fields. Ferns, too, of the common kind must be collected, and foxgloves, the seeds of which must be bought and sown. For the present there were the little wild things that grow on their own account, and are so sparklingly green and spring-like that one hardly likes to rebuke them with the name of weed.
Hope was in the air. Everything is young again once a year.
I felt obliged to begin the second division of my year in a hopeful voice, so I opened with my daffodils; but if March be taken as the first month of spring, then indeed I should not have written of that chime of golden bells. March holds February very tightly by the hand, and cannot make up her mind to hurry on with her work of opening the buds and encouraging the flowers. She blows cold winds in their faces, nips them with frosty nights, occasionally wraps them up in snow, then suddenly, repenting her of the evil, she opens up a blue sky and pours a hot sun down on them. A most untrustworthy month.
There is plenty of work to do, particularly if February has not been an open month, and for gardening purposes I really think it ought never to be so considered, and still more particularly if much has been neglected in the foregoing November. If you are an Ignoramus, and have a Griggs as gardener, the chances are much will have been neglected.
My attention was called to the subject of roses by the arrival of a rose-grower's catalogue.
Roses! I could only touch the very outer fringe of this magnificent garment, but I felt I must, positively must, have one or two of the cheaper sort of these dazzling beauties; and though they are better moved in the autumn, in early spring it is not impossible. A crimson rambler, the modest price one shilling and sixpence, tempted me to indulge in three. The deep yellow William Allen Richardson, delightful for buttonholes, which Jim assured me no garden should be without; the thought of a red Gloire de Dijon or Reine Marie Hortense was also quite overcoming. Our old yellow Gloire de Dijon was the only rose in my neglected garden that did herself proud, and she flourished up the front of the house and festooned one of the Others' windows, from which Griggs and his shears had been summarily banished. "Cut where you like, but never dare to come here," had been uttered in a voice that made even Griggs "heed." If her red sister only equalled this "glory" that half-crown would be well expended. Then two standards needed replacing, for one could not have dead sticks down so conspicuous a row; though standards were not my idea of roses, still there they were and I must make the best of them. So off went my modest order. I had indicated the whereabouts of each rose to Griggs, but was unfortunately not present on their arrival. I think even an Ignoramus might have helped Griggs on that occasion—but more of that anon.
The Others could see but little improvement in the garden, this they let me know; they were full of ideas, and I found them as trying as some Greek heroine must have found an unsympathetic chorus. "The verandah was so bare! Was it really any use putting in that silly little twig? Would it ever come to anything?" This of my new and very bare-looking crimson rambler. And then, "Why had we no violets? Surely violets were not an impossibility? They grew of themselves. Just look at the baskets full in the London streets. Such a bunch for a penny! But it would be nice not to have to go to London for one's bunch of violets!"
I took up the cudgels. They should see how that crimson rambler ramped, yes, I prophesied, positively ramped up the archway. They should be buried in a fragrant bower of ruby-coloured clusters, and they might cut and come again. As to violets, I was giving them my best consideration; the bed down the garden produced but a few—certainly not a pennyworth—of inferior quality, because neither violets nor anything else, save weeds, grew and flourished by the light of Nature alone. The violet roots were choked with weeds, and I must have new suckers and begin all over again; and that was not possible until the violet season was over; then I intended to beg, borrow or steal some good suckers, and buy others if I had any money.
"Mary, you speak like a book with pictures; but I hope there will be some result, and that the violets will be ready before they are needed for our funeral wreaths."
I entreated them to find the patience I had thoroughly lost, and hurried out to rage over the thickly weed-wedged violet plants, with here and there a feeble bloom, and to imagine myself in years to come bending over this same bed, picking one long strong stalk after another, and scarcely lessening the store by the big bunch I should carry away. Oh! a lifetime was not enough for all I should or could do in a garden.
There is a row of standard roses skirting the lawn on one side, and also a round bed of rose bushes. I had not much idea if they were any good, for roses had been to a great extent spoilt the last two years by very wet weather, still I had noticed the shoots they were sending forth with great pleasure. Anyhow they were growing right enough. One day, the middle of March, I found Griggs busy down the row with a large knife. What was he doing? Horror! All the long shoots were being ruthlessly sacrificed.
"Griggs, what are you doing?" I gasped, and afterwards I felt very glad I said nothing stronger.
Griggs paid no attention to my tone; he took the words as showing a desire for enlightenment.
"You 'as to cut 'em a bit in spring-time, you know; or p'haps you don't know, missy."
This mode of address was one of Griggs's most unpardonable sins, but I never had the strength of character to tell him not to do it.
"But do you cut off all the new growth?" I said, with an inner conviction that if Griggs were doing it it needs must be wrong.
"Well, you trims 'em round a bit, starts 'em growin' more ways than one, d'ye see."
"But those aren't suckers?" I said, still feebly fighting with my ignorance and incredulity.
Then Griggs laughed. He did not like me, and I suppose I ought not to wonder, but he enjoyed laughing at me when he got the chance.
"No-a, they ain't suckers; suckers come from the root, leastways, they start down there, and, bless yer! they be the ol' stock trying to have a look in as you may say. I cuts them off soon as I sees 'em, as they wastes the tree; but you can see suckers as 'as got the upper 'and. That rose front of the 'ouse is all sucker now. 'Twas a beautiful pink rose I mind in old Rector Wood's time."
"That is very instructive," I remarked, feeling no gratitude to Griggs for his information, as he felt no shame for the metamorphosis of the once beautiful pink rose, which was now a wild one. We had wondered how it came to be growing up with the clematis.
"And can't one cut back the suckers and let the pink rose grow again?" I added.
"'Tain't likely," was all I could get out of Griggs.
I bicycled over that very day to the Master's garden, a hot and tiring way of getting information, but a sure one, I knew, and one to which I often had recourse in desperate moments. The Master was out, but his garden was there, and all his rose trees were clipped. So I breathed again.
I had a little good luck with violets a few weeks later.
A friend who had heard of my gardening efforts sent me several dozen runners of the "Czar," and the Master spared me some others from his frame. I was full of joy, and choosing a shady spot, saw it dug, raked, helped out with a mixture of manure and leaf-mould, planted the violets at six inches apart and liberally watered them. Shade, of course, for the modest violet, I thought, carefully selecting for their home the shelter of an overhanging chestnut. Well, well! one lives to learn, or for some such purpose, I suppose.
The thick branches of that shadowing tree kept out sun as well as rain; and, doubt it not, brother Ignoramus, violets, be they ever so modest, like the sunshine and will only pine without it. So in the autumn another move took place, and again I waited, whilst the Others bought penny bunches and talked of funeral wreaths in the far future.