V.
THE COST OF FLOWERS.
June 18th, 1868.
The charms of flowers have been sung ever since letters have existed. But in our day the passion for flowers has wonderfully increased, and the cultivation of them, which is a thing very different from the sentiment of admiration, has become so common that it is considered as an evidence of bad taste for one having any ground not to have flowers about the dwelling-house.
But how few who only receive flowers as gifts, or purchase them, know the pains and penalties of flower-raising! It may be imagined that one has only to scratch open the ground, bury the seed, and then patiently wait for nature to do the rest. Listen! First comes the seed-buying. We do not think seedsmen any less honest than other men. Indeed, the conduct of those with whom we have dealt for ten years past leads us to think that they are honorable and honest in intent. But that does not insure good seeds.
They buy of other seedsmen, in foreign lands, who may not be honest, or are obliged to trust seed-raisers. And so it comes to pass that seeds, like thousands of other articles in this wicked and adulterous generation, are adulterated. Italian carnation seed come up miserable single pinks, of very poor colors; balsams are not half so choice as is the price at which the seed is sold; not one in ten of this year’s ipomea seed (convolvulus) will stir out of the ground,—and so of stock, sweet-william, etc.
But, that past, and our seed well planted, there often comes a deluge, and washes the seed-beds to pieces, or a long wet spell rots the seed in the ground.
At length we gather up what we can, and transplant the remnant, and patiently wait for the flowers. But we are not the only ones waiting for them. A legion of various insects seem to think that all our flowers were planted for them. We have been often asked why were insects created? If it is fair to say that the cause of their existence may be learned from the effects which they produce, we boldly aver that they were made to humble man’s arrogance, and to teach him how much mightier is insect weakness than human power. A grasshopper is contemptible. The farmer can crush him at a step. But let the plague of grasshoppers be let loose, and all his fields be deluged with them; and how easily do myriads of creatures that are individually weak overwhelm him and destroy all his labor!
We have a realizing sense of the unequal war which is waged between man and insects. It seems in late years as if horticulture might as well be abandoned. Cherries and plums go down before the curculio; apples before the canker-worm, the tent-worm, and the apple-worm; currants before a worm peculiar to itself; melons before half a dozen kinds of enemies (not including roguish boys).
Among flowers the destruction is equally great. As soon as the rose fairly shakes out its leaves it is attacked: one bug cuts circles out of the leaves, as if busy with a pair of scissors making diagrams; then comes the thrip, that can neither be caught, nor wet with soapsuds, nor dusted with lime, nor pinched with the fingers,—a nimble fellow, minute as a speck of flour, but numerous as dust. Close upon its heels comes the slug, whose remorseless appetite leaves nothing behind it but the ribs and frame of the leaf. Next come the rose-bugs proper, of a finer appetite, disdaining anything less delicate than rose-petals. Of these the number is surpassing; their devastation pitiable. There stand my bushes stripped of leaves and blighted in flowers.
Of course there are remedies enough. One rose-bush may be treated with hand-picking, or pinching, or washes, but one or two hundred rose-bushes would require formidable engineering.
Year by year the number of insects increases. New flowers come into the blighted circle. Aphides, grubs, worms, moles, flies—at the root, or on the top—resist your labor at every step. They never tire. They seem never to be full. They get up before you do, and eat on all night, after you are asleep.
Well, we are born into a world which pays few premiums to lazy men. Whatever is worth having is worth working for. At any rate, Providence seems to design that no man shall gather who does not sow and tend. Of every lazy man it may well be said, What does he in this world? This is a place for workers. “He that will not work shall not eat,” is an inspired command. It is as true of the garden as of the field, of flowers as of fruit and grain. God sends millions of insects over all our gardens and flower-beds, saying, “We are sent to make you work.” Every insect is some malignant enchanter, and every fair-faced flower, like a maiden lost in the wilderness, beseeches us to deliver it from its enemies!