Part 12

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.