Part 18

Nasturtiums also I placed as a border to a lonely shrubbery. Some of the seeds had been got forward in the impromptu frame, but those were for my tree stumps and for creeping up the verandah. Canariensis the same; the convolvulus also were planted freely to cover up deficiencies wherever a creeping thing could grow.

It is wise to sow your perennial seeds early; they get settled in life before they are called upon to face their first winter. So in another spot, judiciously cribbed from cabbage-room--crib I had to for my nursery ground--I sowed in like fashion the perennials, those which had not already begun their career in wooden boxes and frame. There were the big Oriental poppies, red and orange, for my impatience had so far succumbed to the gardening spirit that I could bear to contemplate sowing seeds with the hope of no immediate return, Brompton stocks, penstemons, foxgloves and gaillardias; campanulas, too, short and tall, white and blue; and those already started in boxes, the polyanthus and columbines, nice sturdy little plants by now, were moved to this division a little later, when frosty nights were a thing of the past.

These for my first batch of perennials; others would surely follow with succeeding years. The thought of their permanence delighted me. Dear, nice things! they would not need sowing year by year, but would yearly grow more and more "in favour with God and man." So I hoped, even as a mother hopes it for her children.

That long herbaceous border should one day be full of good stuff, one day blooming with a succession of flowers; but face the fact, one day is not to-morrow. The plants must grow; so, patience, patience, though mine was threadbare.

* * * * *

My other nursery of annuals sown in early March were growing apace and the sweet peas needed sticking. It certainly spoils their appearance for a time but is very necessary. I noticed all my seedlings growing in bits of kitchen garden filched from his Reverence's province grew with greater vigour than those down my own borders.

I suspected that amongst much neglect the vegetable ground had suffered least, and so, in spite of his Reverence's outcry that I was robbing him of at least a sack of potatoes, I continued to make little inroads on his property. And thus I was brought in contact with the fruit-trees bordering the pathways. They had been renewed, many of them, when first his Reverence came to Fairleigh. They looked healthy enough, but very few blossoms and no fruit ever accounted for their existence. I pointed this out to his Reverence, and, full of newly-acquired knowledge, asked him if he had heard of tap-roots. "Griggs planted them, so you may depend that is what is the matter with them, and in the autumn we will have them up."

"You are poaching," said his Reverence.

"You ought to be full of gratitude, but I can't take them in hand myself, I only give you some of my overflowing knowledge. And we should all like to eat our own apples and pears!"

Jim was much interested in tap-roots; he promised himself quite a good time hacking away at them in the autumn. He wondered if the barren fig-tree had a tap-root, but I could not enlighten him.

Everything was growing, we had had some good rain. I can feel for the farmers now; I know what it is to want rain. One of the Others said she wished we would keep quiet, all we gardeners and farmers who hankered after rain. She thought perhaps if we ceased the weather might get a little settled and the sun shine week in week out. To her mind that was far better than fields of corn or beds of even luxuriant flowers. There were sure to be some corn and some flowers anyhow, "so do let other people enjoy the sunshine in peace." Certainly if the English climate is the result of conflicting desires, it would be a good thing to have a national creed on the subject and make it obligatory.

After the rain, however, in that particular month of April, came the sun, and things grew apace.

Though not only my seeds and flowers. The enemy, who for many a long year had sown, or allowed to be sown, weeds in my garden, had his crop likewise.

"They're overmastering us agin," said Griggs, who had his friendly moments; and sometimes, if we were working hard, quite enjoyed standing near and pretending to help us.

"It's your fault that, you know," said Jim, who minced matters with nobody. He was doubled up over the border surrounded with all kinds of implements, for Jim liked everything handy. There was a big clasp knife and a spade and rake, a trowel and little fork, and then he generally used his hands. He was now "tracking home," as he said, that evil-minded weed called, I believe, the ground-elder, and pointed out with some heat, quite excusable under the circumstances, that Griggs, who had just calmly and coolly cut off the head of the plant, had done not a "blooming bit of good."

If you should ever want a really good back-aching job, take a trowel or a little hand fork and begin a fight with those innocent-looking, many-fingered leaves growing in and out in so friendly a fashion with your flowers. You turn up the root, but its hold is still on the earth; you pull a bit and find it belongs to that other cluster of leaves some little distance off. You attack that, very careful not to lose your underground connection, it also has sent long stringy branches in all directions. Then you pull and tear and say "Oh, bother!" and "What a brute of a weed!" Jim and I are careful not to say anything stronger, though he has been known to indulge in "hang," but I feel sure Griggs gives us the character of using "most horful languidge you never heard." Still it goes on, and quite a heap of potato-like roots will be out and yet its hold is not slackened. Finally it lands you in an iris or lily root; it is not particular, but I find it prefers a solid root, and there you get sadly mixed as to what is root and what is weed. But if the job is to be done finally, these roots must be all taken up and carefully disentangled, for all are twined together. This radical measure is best, or rather least injurious to lilies and irises, when their flowering time is over--July and August--and moving or dividing does not disturb them.

Never in all old Griggs's reign of twenty years had he tracked a ground-elder weed home; but I now know the look of those potato-like roots better than any other in my garden.

I cannot say I like doing it. Boys are more invertebrate and do not get so red in the face; and this I pointed out to Jim, suggesting a division of labour.

"You do get jolly red," said Jim, "but really, you know, I expect it's your stays."

"Jim!"

"Well, you needn't get up the steam. I only know when I was dressed up for those theatricals as a beastly, I mean, as a girl, the fellows got hold of some stays, I suppose they bagged their sister's, a precious tight pair, too! and I just tell you, in confidence, they made me absolutely sick. I had to retire looking like an unripe lemon. My! never again!"

"You squeezed too much, Jim."

"That girl must have squeezed more; and you all do, that's my private opinion."

In consideration, therefore, of the infirmities to which a rigorous convention condemns my sex, Jim said he would do the thinning out for me.

My promising annuals, designed for grand duty in the cutting line, godetias and larkspurs and chrysanthemums and Shirley poppies, were all most flourishing, but coming much too thick. They ought to have been thinned out sooner, of course, but we had been too busy, so Jim devoted his early morning hours to them, before the five minutes' rush on his bicycle which took him to the station for Gatley, where he and some other fellows were being crammed to pass the examination for the Royal Navy.

Jim's days were always filled. He never neglected cricket, nor, in its good time, football and hockey; but he was going to see me through with my garden for the first year, he said, and his help and ideas were never-failing.

On the thinning-out mornings Jim got up early; very early it seemed to me when he bounced into my room and sent a flood of light full on my face, or placed a damp sponge there.

"Now I am going to thin, and I can't do it with any satisfaction if you are asleep. What you have to do is to think out any blooming thoughts for this blooming essay on courage. Why the blooming idiot gives us such rotten subjects I can't think. But you must jot down some headings and be ready with them when I come back."