Part 23

A basket of scabious--lady's pincushions--arriving from the Master while I was planting out were also worked into my scheme, and worked in well. The dark round balls of reds, browns, blues, with tiny white pin-points, did not disturb the yellow harmony. Eventually I was proud of those beds.

When first planted they did look slightly new and stalky, but they filled out daily. His Reverence only remarked, "Well, well, have it your own way; I suppose it is æsthetic! But my idea was more cheerful."

Griggs frankly said "yeller" was never his fancy. "Now, them 'janiums, that gives a bit o' colour."

And I quite forgave the Young Man his past for his present admiration was unbounded. He had been quite unable to think, he explained.

So that great difficulty was settled.

* * * * *

Griggs's geraniums turned out one or two good dark reds among the magenta hues, and these were put in the two old stumps that hitherto had been given over to mere ramping nasturtiums, and my superior seedlings of those useful flowers were encouraged to fall over the edge and ramp downwards.

An old oil cask, cut in two, burnt out and painted green--Jim and I and the Young Man enjoyed that artistic work very much--formed two capacious tubs and were filled with more geraniums, the best and pinkest, and they brightened up the shrubbery corner where the daffodils had shone.

Stocks and other geraniums--even the mauvy-tinted ones looked quite well away from all touch of red--with a border of lobelia, were placed under the study window in a narrow bed running along the front of the house, thus helping his Reverence to realise his ideal. Then by degrees we arranged all the contents of my nursery, some in clumps, some in rows, down the herbaceous border, and others in the front border, the border which had looked so dismal and unpromising on that November day when I first took my garden in hand. There had been a brushing up of old inhabitants--Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums--but much was still left to be desired.

You cannot do everything in the first year. It is no use thinking you can.

* * * * *

One day, at the very beginning of June, I visited the potting-shed, our one and only shed, which held a collection such as may be imagined after the reign of Griggs for twenty years. In a dark corner I came across some queer-looking roots sprouting away in a most astoundingly lively fashion.

"Griggs, what on earth are these?" I called to that worthy.

"Them? Oh! them's daylers. Just stuck 'em there to keep dry for the winter. They oughter be out by now, they oughter."

"Oh! I should think so," and then I marvelled on the nature of dahlias.

"Is this a good place for them during the winter? Don't they want anything to eat or drink?"

"Bless yer! no, they takes their fill in the summer, but they oughter be out by now; some'ow I've come to overlook them."

That these dahlias forgave the overlooking has always been a wonder to me; perhaps they did not do so entirely. I believe more firmly than ever in the thoroughness of the edict which rules "that what a man soweth that shall he reap."

A child or a flower starved in infancy does not recover for some time, if ever, and though my dahlias kindly bloomed and did their best, once started in as good a bed as we could give them, they ought to have been "potted up" in the beginning of May and kept from frosty nights; then at the end of May or beginning of June they should have been placed in their flowering position. So soon as frost touches them they droop, as we all well know, in their own peculiar, utterly dejected and forlorn manner. Then cut them down, dig them up, let them dry, and place them for the winter in a dry and protected cellar or outhouse, there to sleep until the spring calls them to fresh life.

* * * * *

I watched the long herbaceous border with an anxious eye. The poppies--those dazzling papaver--opened their large green pods and shook out blazing red and rather crinkly leaves in the sunshine. They made one hot, but happy, to look at them. For that first year in my garden I think they did their duty well, but bigger clumps will look better. Some little spiky leaves that I had not recognised--how should I when no label accompanied them?--turned out to be the Iceland variety. They had one or two dainty blooms made of yellow butterflies' wings, but oh, dear! one or two! I needed a mass. The delphiniums looked healthy and promised a spiky bloom or two; the lupins were already in flower, nice, quite nice, when one has not much else, but the blue is too near purple. I must get some other varieties; the white would be prettier. The big thick leaves of the hollyhocks grew well at first, and then some beast of sorts began to fancy them and they developed a moth-eaten appearance. All Griggs could say was, "You never could do nothing with 'olly'ocks in this gardin, you couldn't." My other wiseacre, old Lovell, said, "They liked a bit o' wind through 'em." His own seemed to flourish, so mine must be moved from the sheltering hedge where I had thought they would show up.

Everywhere still grew and flourished the ever-present weeds. They needed no watering, nothing to promote their vitality, they grew apace; and I could mention other varieties beside that champion grower, the ground-elder. There is a sticky, burry kind of rapid, straggling growth with tenacious hot-feeling leaves. Its hold on the earth is not strong, but it is brittle, and eludes its death-warrant that way; also a kind of elongated dandelion, that looks straight at you as though it had a right to be there. Then the common poppy, last year's nasturtium seeds, and the offspring of last year's sunflowers are as bad as weeds, and indeed the latter gave me as much trouble. The strong tuberous roots required a vigorous pull, and were growing everywhere, through the centre of every flower; I took at least a dozen out of one clump of golden rod, and vowed I would have every sunflower up before it had a chance of seeding. Of course all such things must come up or they exhaust the feeding capacity of the border.

It is all very fine to say "must," but I believe a poor soil is composed of weed seeds.

I walked down the garden with one of the Others, one who loved flowers, only in her own way. She arranged them beautifully when everything was put ready to her hand; she loved picking one here and there and sticking it in her waist-band, or playing with its soft petals against her cheek, then, its brief duty done, it was forgotten.

I have seen people--even mothers--love children in the same way; but flowers and children need a broader love than that.

We walked down armed with scissors and with an empty basket; I had said that there were flowers.

"My dear girl, what on earth have you? when all is said and done. You show me a green bush thing and give it a name"--I had mentioned delphinium--"and it does sound aggressively knowledgeable, of course! And then another isolated and flowerless specimen and give it a name. But wherewithal am I to do the dinner-table to-night? Will you tell me that?"

"You have a most lovely bunch of poppies in the drawing-room, and I cut the copper-beech, which was wicked of me. Very soon you shall have roses and sweet-peas and all these seedlings; and next year you shall have sweet-Williams and cup and saucer Canterbury bells and foxgloves and--"