Part 6

There were hours of deep dejection after all my planting was done. It was December, and so much ought to have been done in November, October, and even September. In fact, I ought to have begun nine months ago. And those nine months could not be caught up for another year, depressing thought! Wallflowers, polyanthus, forget-me-nots, sweet-Williams, all the dear, simple things of which I wanted masses, instead of the one or two stalky bushes that grew down a long herbaceous border, all these should have begun their career, it appeared, last February or March if I wanted them to flower next spring. I must wait. I had not set out on my gardening experience to learn patience, it is always being rubbed into one; but I warn you, O brother or sister Ignoramus! that of all stocks you will need patience the most.

My garden was now a white world. Snow buried everything: hopes and depressions were equally hidden. A fine time for castle-building, for hurrying through the seasons and imagining how many treasures ought to be, might be, should be hidden beneath that cold, pure coverlid and warmly, snugly nestling in Mother Earth's brown bosom. What energy must be at work, what pushing, struggling, expanding of little points of life downwards, upwards, until they burst into resurrection with little green hands folded as in thanksgiving.

In the meantime I turned to books, on gardening, of course. My new "fad," as the Others called it, having announced itself in plenty of time for Christmas, my pile of gifts presented a most learned appearance. This was my first taste of that fascinating literature. His Reverence had handed over to me a brown-clad work on gardening--somewhat ancient I must say--at the beginning of my enterprise. I had scanned it critically and compared it to an ordinary cookery-book in which recipes are given, and unless you are already familiar with the art you are continually faced with difficulties. The cookery-books tell one to "make a white sauce of flour, butter and milk," but how? Wherein lies the mystery of that delicately-flavoured, creamy substance or that lumpy kind of paste? Just so my regular handbook to gardening. For example:--

"They vary very much in habit, but should be of easy cultivation. The compost required is rich, deep and moist. Any sourness in the soil will be fatal to flowering. When planting supply liberally with manure, and occasionally mulch in dry weather."

But what did it all mean? How test the soil and the sourness which would be fatal to flourishing? The proof of the pudding would be in the eating, but how prevent any tragic consequences?

But these other books, this literature on gardening! They are generally better than the garden itself. Practical they are not, but why ask it of them? They are the seductive catalogue turned into finest art. One wanders with some sweet, madonna-like lady of smooth fair hair, mild eyes and broad-brimmed hat, or with a courtly parson of the old school, in a garden where the sun always shines. Green stretches of lawn (no plantains), trees grouped from their infancy to adorn and shade and be the necessary background to masses of flowering shrubs. Through rockeries, ferneries, nut-groves, copses we wander as in a fairy dream. Borders laid out to catch the sun, sheltered by old red brick walls where fruit ripens in luscious clusters. Rose gardens, sunk gardens, water gardens lead on to copses where all wild things of beauty are met together to entrance the eye. Broad walks between herbaceous borders, containing every flower loved from the time of Eve; sheltered patches where seedlings thrive, a nursery of carefully-reared young. And in this heaven of gardening land gardeners galore flit to and fro, ever doing their master's behest, and manure and water, and time and money may be considerations but are not anxieties. I ought to have begun years ago; seven, nine, fifteen, and even twenty-five years are talked of but as yesterday. I felt out of it in every sense. My garden lay out there in the cold, grey mist; it had been neglected, it held no rippling stream, no nut-grove, it ran upward into no copse or land of pine and bracken and heather. It had a hedge one side and a sloping field the other. The straight kitchen garden was bounded by no red brick wall, and the birds from the convenient hedges ate all the fruit, unless gooseberries and currants were so plentiful that we also were allowed a share. Griggs talked of an 'urbrageous' border. But what a border! Evening primroses, the common yellow marigold, a few clusters of golden-rod, and other weed-like flowers that persist in growing of themselves, with Griggs, five pounds a year and an Ignoramus to work it!

Oh! why had I so cheerfully undertaken such an apparently hopeless task?

But my honour was now at stake. I had said I would have flowers on five pounds a year, and I could not draw back. Let me clear away the mists that had arisen. After all, that tree down there was a pink chestnut, and beneath it lay my sheet of snowdrops and blue scillas. Before it burst into beauty they would have done their share of rejoicing the eye. At that corner, where the field sloped so prettily downwards, daffodils were hidden, and under the clump just over the fence more and more daffodils. A row of stately limes, dismally bare now, carried the eye down to the next field. There, where it was always shady, I pictured future ferns and early wild-flowers, and maybe groups of foxgloves.

I turned again to my gardening books. I too would have a garden "to love," to "work in"; if not a "Gloucestershire garden," or a "German garden," or a "Surrey" one, still a garden. Months with me, also, should be a successive revelation of flowers; though I knew not a Latin name I would become learned in the sweet, simple, old-fashioned flowers that cottagers loved, and though I could not fit poetry on to every plant, I would have a posy for the study table right through the year.

That was my dream!

* * * * *

The first, the very first produce of the opening year in my garden was a winter aconite.

The little dead-looking roots had been planted in a sunny shrubbery border and had quickly thrust up their golden crowns, circled with the tender green collar. Have you ever noticed how a winter aconite springs from its bed? Its ways are most original. The sturdy little stem comes up like a hoop; at one end is the root, at the other the blossom, with its green collar drooped carefully over the yellow centre. Gradually it raises itself, shakes off the loosened mould--you may help it here if you like--lays back its collar and opens its golden eye.

I picked every one I could find. It seemed sinful, but occasionally pride overcomes the most modest of us.

"There," I cried, "my garden is beginning already. Just look at them! Are they not lovely?"

"What, buttercups?" asked one of the Others.

"No, oh, ignorant one! they are not buttercups. They are winter aconite; note the difference."

"Let's look!" and the brown little fist of one of the youngest of the Others was thrust forth.

"All that fuss about those! You wait a minute!"

He ran off, returning shortly with quite a big bunch of my yellow treasures in his hand.

"Where did you get them? Jim, you bad boy! you must not pick my flowers," I exclaimed.

"Your flowers! and you hadn't an idea that they grew there. These are from my garden, and no one has given me a fiver to raise them with. Come, Mary, I shall cry halves. You had better square me!"

"Oh, Jim, where did you find them?" was all I could gasp.

I did square Jim, but it was in "kind," and then he showed me much winter aconite hidden away in an unfrequented shrubbery, where his quick little eyes had spied it. I thought of moving it to where it would show. Everything with me was for show in those early days; but these surprises hold their own delight, and I learnt to encourage them.

I suffered many things at the hands of the Others for spending five pounds on winter aconite when already the garden held "such heaps "--that was their way of putting it.

I began to hope that more surprises of such sort might be in store for me. It is wonderful how one may avoid seeing what is really just under one's nose. The Others might laugh, but I doubt if they even knew winter aconite as the yellow buttercup-looking thing before that morning.

Another yellow flower tried to relieve the monotony of that dead season of the year. Struggling up the front of the house, through the virginian creeper and old Gloire de Dijon rose, were the bare branches of a yellow jasmine. From the end of December on through January and February it did its poor best to strike a note of colour in the gloom. But why was it not more successful? Judging from its performance, I had formed the meanest opinion of its capabilities, until one bright day in January my eye had been caught by a mass of yellow--I say advisedly a mass--thrown over the rickety porch of old Master Lovell's abode. Yellow jasmine! yes, there was no mistake about it, but the bare greenish stems were covered with the brilliant little star-flowers, shining and rejoicing as in the full tide of summer. I thought of my bare straggling specimen and stopped to ask for the recipe for such blossoming. Old Lovell and old Griggs had both lived in Fairleigh all their lives, and there was an old-timed and well-ripened feud between the pair.

"A purty sight I calls that," said old Lovell, surveying his porch, "an' yourn ain't loike it, ain't it? Ah! and that's not much of a surprise to me. Ever see that old Griggs up at th' Rectory working away wi' his shears? Lor' bless you, he's a 'edging and ditching variety of gardener, that's wot I calls 'im. Clip it all, that's 'is motive, autumn and spring, one with another, an' all alike, and then you 'spects winter blooming things to pay your trouble! But they don't see it, they don't."