Part 9

"Most of these people who write of their gardens own them. They have lived there and will live there always. But in a Rectory garden one is but a stranger and a pilgrim. Don't you feel this?"

"No. We are growing old together, and perhaps it will be given me to stay here; anyway, my garden is better than I found it. Is not that something?"

"Oh, yes," I said discontentedly.

He laughed. "Ah! the spirit will grow; you are cultivating it just as surely as you are the seeds."

"There are plenty of weeds and stones to choke all the seeds everywhere," I answered. "Old Griggs's way of weeding is to chop off the heads, dig everything in again, and for a fortnight smile blandly over his work. Then he says that it is no use weeding, 'Just look at 'em again.'"

"Old Griggs seems to afford you plenty of parables from Nature, anyhow. He is instructive in his way. But can't he be retired?"

"Alas, no! he is a fixture."

"And you the pilgrim! Well, go ahead. And now come and see what the nurseries contain; there is always to spare in the nurseries."

Many of his spare children found their way to my garden, and it grew quite a matter of course to turn to him in any dilemma. But Ignoramuses must learn, in gardens as in everything else, to work out their own salvation. So in fear and trembling, and a good deal of hope, too, I made my own experiments; for hill and dale divided the Master's garden from mine, and I doubt if even he could grasp the utter ignorance of the absolutely ignorant.

* * * * *

Ice and snow and thaw, and again thaw and ice and snow had held their sway through January and early February, and my garden slept. Another year I would have violets growing in the narrow border under the verandah, and tubs--big green tubs--of Christmas roses under its shelter. Were they expensive, I wondered? And thus I found out, by the simple process of asking at a florist, that for one shilling and sixpence or two shillings a root I could buy--why, hellebores! But for me they will always be "Christmas roses." At present the verandah was bare, oh, so bare! It needed more roses to climb up the trellis and the newness of its two years' existence to be hidden. It held attraction for the birds, however, this cold winter time; crumbs and scraps were expected by them as regularly as breakfast and dinner by us. The pert sparrow came by dozens, of course, but out of our four robins one knew himself to be master of the ceremony. He came first, at a whistle, the signal for crumbs, and he allowed the sparrows to follow, really because he could not help himself. But should another robin come--his wife or their thin-legged son--he made for them and spent the precious moments pecking them away while the sparrows gobbled. His is not a beautiful disposition, I fear, but oh! how gladly one forgives him for the sake of his bold black eye, cheering red breast and persistent joyfulness of song. The colder weather brought other pensioners, chaffinch, bullfinch, even hawfinch, and, of course, the thrush and blackbird; a magpie eyed the feast from afar, but the starlings waddled boldly up, not hopping as birds, but right-left, right-left like wobbling geese; and the tom-tits and blue and black-tits, came and continued to come as long as they found a cocoa-nut swinging for their benefit. None of the other birds would touch it. Next winter they shall have hellebore for their table decoration.

* * * * *

Oh! how lucky men are, they have so many things we women seem forever to miss.

Very thick, sensible boots that won't get wet through; no skirts to get muddy when gardening; the morning paper first, of course, because they are men and politics are for them; voting powers, too, which on occasions give them a certain very much appreciated weight; and money, even if poor, always more money than their wives and daughters.

These reflections, and I notice you may reflect on most irrelevant matter in a garden, were called forth by a boy-man who kindly took me in to dinner one evening. I soon discovered he had a little "diggings" and was going in for gardening "like anything." Yet was my soul not drawn to him. "Bulbs, oh, rather! Had a box over from Holland the other day, just a small quantity, you know. Mine isn't a large place, but five thousand or so ought to fill it up a bit; make a mass of colour, that's what I go in for. Told my man to plant 'em in all over, thick as bees. Then I had great luck. Dropped in at an auction in the City just in the nick of time, got a box-load of splendid bulbs for half-a-crown--worth a guinea at the very least--shoved them all in too. I shall have a perfect blaze, I tell you. Like you to come and look me up in April if you go in for that kind of thing."

But I hated the boy-man. Five thousand bulbs! without a second thought. And then--according to the rule that works so invariably among material goods, "to him that hath shall be given"--this aggressive youth also buys a guinea's worth of bulbs for half-a-crown. Think what I would have given to be at that auction. But women can't "drop in" in the City.

* * * * *

Towards the end of February my snowdrops made their appearance. The scillas followed a little later and with less regularity. They were not quite the perfect sheet I had dreamt of, but each little bulb did its duty manfully and raised one slender stem with its bell-like head. One at every few inches over a space of some yards was not wealth; and I almost wept when some of them were sacrificed for the drawing-room. The Others said, "A garden should grow flowers for the house. Who wanted them out there in the cold, where no one would see them!" But I did, for out there in the cold they lived for weeks and in the warm room a few days faded them. I must have more and more so that we may all be satisfied. In the Master's garden I found sixteen varieties of snowdrops, not very many of each, but he has no Others. What I longed for was quantity; and as for quality, each snowdrop holds its own, I think.

Up through the softened grass came the strong, pointed leaves of the daffodils. My mass of gold promised to be very regular, but the small crocus leaves were harder to find, and they had no sign of yellow points as yet. And the anemones! What had happened to them? I nearly dug them up to see.

Were the buds on the trees swelling? The birds were twittering busily on the branches, as though they knew their covering would not be long delayed, but the little brown knobs, so shiny and sticky on the chestnuts, appeared hardly to have gained in size since they pushed off the old leaf in the autumn. For in the time of scattering wind and falling leaf it is well to remember that it is the coming bud which loosens the hold of the old leaf. Life, and not death, which makes the seasons and the world go round.

* * * * *

I was busy again with catalogues. "Begin things in time," preached the Master; but ah! I seem to have been born a month too late, for I never catch up time in my garden, except when there is nothing to do, and then you can do nothing. Nature has cried a "halt," and all the fidgeting in the world will not start the race before "time" is said. So I studied my catalogue and made my list in February.

Stocks. I need them in plenty, but I must walk warily amongst such luxuries with only three pounds to spend and so many other things to buy. Wallflowers, red and gold; but, alas! the Master has warned me these are for next year, as also many other things. The polyanthuses, that I long to see in masses like a fine Persian carpet, the pansies and violas, the forget-me-nots, even the Canterbury bells and campanulas and sweet-Williams must be thought of now, and will need the year round before coming to flowering time. Still, down they go on my list. And gaillardias, too, they look so handsome in the picture and promise so much: "showy, beautiful, brilliant, useful for cutting" (there were those Others to think of), and they were perennials. Blessed perennials! Then larkspur or delphinium, I should say, for I did not want the annual variety. I could not wait, however, to grow those tall, beautiful spikes of bright blue, Oxford and Cambridge in colour, from seed, I must indulge in plants. Hollyhocks must also be bought ready-made, and phlox. Oh! the poverty-stricken little specimens that grew in my garden, flowers capable of such beauty. I had seen them growing in the Lake country and marvelled at their upstanding mass of brilliant heads. They were a revelation as to what the phlox family could do.

And there were all the magnificent possibility of lilies, of gladiolas and montbresias, and ixias. These must be bought. I must have them, but oh! the years before I could make a home for all. I turned to the annuals; they sounded as easy to grow as Jack's bean-stalk. What a list! Antirrhinum--that is, snapdragon, but one gets used even to spelling the other name--red, white and yellow; the taller kind call themselves half-hardy perennials, but I don't believe they would stand my winter, and the dwarf variety do their duty nobly for one summer. Mignonette, that was a necessity; marguerites, annual chrysanthemums sounded inviting; "continuous blooming" would suit the Others.

Convolvulus and heaps of nasturtium, canariensis and other little tropoeoleum. Balsam and asters; no, though I liked the sound of balsam, still I could do without it, and I must do without something! But of sweet-peas I could not have too many, even though most of the "dukes" and "duchesses" cost a shilling a packet. I pictured hedges and hedges of sweet-peas in the garden, and bowls and bowls of blossom in the house. Sunflowers again--"golden-nigger," "æsthetic gem," "Prussian giant"--how could one help sampling such seductive names? And tagetes, the Master had said, "Get tagetes, it is a useful border." Marigolds, too, they were not a favourite of mine, but they lasted well into the autumn, and I had to think of the failing months. Zinnias I could not resist because they are so "high art" in their colouring; and salpiglosis, the Master had a lovely group of these daintily-pencilled belles.

Then I made up my list, threepence, and sixpence, and one shilling, and one shilling and sixpence. How they mounted up. Thirty shillings in seeds! and I had to buy plants and bulbs too. But I could cut out nothing, though it had been very easy to make additions.

But now to get all these thousands of seeds sown. They could not all be sown in the open; I knew so much. Those for coming on quickly would need little wooden boxes and a place in the one frame full of bothering geraniums; and when they were bigger they would need pricking out in more wooden boxes, and could only be planted out permanently the beginning of June.

Well, what for the open? Sweet-peas--thank goodness for that!--and the wallflowers, Canterbury bells--cup and saucer variety had taken my fancy--sweet-Williams, sunflowers, nasturtium, mignonette and forget-me-nots, they could all be trusted straight to Mother Earth; and I had enough of the dear brown bosom, bare of all children, down in that long desolate border. And for the boxes and pricking out and glass frame I would begin with antirrhinum, stocks, violas, tagetes, zinnia, salpiglosis, lobelias, polyanthus and columbine. That must suffice for the first year. But oh! what a lot of flowers there were to be had, and how lovely a garden might be if only--well, if only one had a real gardener, money, the sunny border, good soil, and--if they all came up!