Part 4

A bed of Portulacca will be so brilliant that it will almost put your eyes out when the sun shines; and it is so easy to raise, that success is no credit. Prepare a bed, say four by six feet, or larger if you choose, and rake it off smoothly. The seeds are extremely minute. Take a pinch of them as if they were snuff, and then do by them what everybody ought to do by snuff,—sift them evenly all over the ground. Then just touch the ground with the tips of the rake-teeth, stirring it very lightly. Take a spade and spat the surface gently, so as to bring the soil home to the seed. Keep weeds away, and for the rest do nothing but enjoy the labor of your hands. It will come up of itself every year, and become a weed if you wish it to.

There, we have mentioned enough flowers for a beginning. They are all hardy, profuse bloomers, and, with the exception of the aster, last all summer, and form masses of color which will charm the eye every time you look out of your window. A girl can do all that is to be done, except working the ground, and even that ought not to be so hard as it would be to go without flowers.

III.

FLOWER-FARMING.

February 29th, 1868.

I acknowledge the merits of flower-gardening, but a kind of necessity has compelled me to practice flower-farming. I do not live upon my little farm, on the Hudson, except for a few months in midsummer. To keep a professional gardener befits more ample means than mine. Yet I must have flowers; I am as set and determined to have flowers as my farmer, Mr. Turner, is to have vegetables; and there is a friendly quarrel on hand all the season, a kind of border warfare, between flowers and vegetables, which shall have this spot, and which shall secure that nook; whether in this southern slope it shall be onions or gladioluses; whether a row of lettuce shall edge that patch, or of asters. I think, on a calm review, that I have rather gained on Mr. Turner. The fact is, I found that he had me at advantage, being always on the place, and having the whole spring to himself. So I shrewdly tampered with the man himself, and before he knew what he was about, I had infected him with the flower mania (and this is a disorder which I have never known cured); so that I had an ally in the very enemy’s camp. Indeed, I begin to fear that my manager will get ahead of me yet in skill and love of flowers!

I can see many and sufficient reasons for parterres of flowers, for borders of mixed plants, for clumps and ribbons; but I can see no reason for supposing that flowers grow to advantage only in these formal methods.

In a plantation of tomatoes, if every alternate plant in the outer row is a petunia you will find a charming effect in the red fruit of the one and the profuse blossoming of the other; and on these outer rows the tomatoes may be left to ripen for seed, as being more exposed to the sun, thus adding the beauty of their rich color.

I do not know why a square plat of beets or onions may not be edged with asters, or with balsams. Sometimes I plant a few alternate rows of flowers with my root crops, and find that carrots and stocks, alternated, are admirable friends. When the main crops are in, there are always some outlying edges, some places about the walls, which would be surely filled in with cabbages, if I did not jump at the chance. I have great luck with tropealums, nasturtiums, and particularly with labias, which are as easy of culture, on a farm, as a bean. And I have a fancy that when one comes upon a heap of stones in a corner, covered over with all varieties of tropealum, he takes more pleasure in them than if found just where one would look for them, in a flower-bed.

If I should lay down a rule, it would be that, in arable land, or in shrubbery and forest, no man should have to walk more than twenty paces to find a flower. If a lady should meet you on any acre on your farm, you ought to be able then and there to make up for her an acceptable bouquet.

In an unexpected way, I am like to have my rule kept for me. For, in autumn, the stems and haulms of flowers go to the barn-yard and join all other stuff fit for compost; and when, in the spring, it is hauled out, I find, on every part of the farm, that stray seeds have shaken out, and sown themselves, and produced volunteer flowers. Indeed, the primrose family are getting too familiar; larkspurs are everywhere; coreopsis glitters all over the fields; poppies have turned vagrants; and the portulacca has fairly become a weed. Farms should be carried on for profit and pleasure; and, as I fail in the former, I am determined to make up in the latter element.

Now and then, on the outer row of Indian corn, a convolvulus, climbing to the very top and full of blossoms, will cheat nothing and enrich the eye a great deal. There is always a spot or two, amidst field crops, where a Ricinus sanguineus (castor bean) will do bravely; and I will affirm that no fancier will be able to get past it without stopping to look at its generous palms.

Where stone-walls prevail, what can be less expensive and what more beautiful than to cover them with the Chinese honeysuckles, with, now and then, the new and hardy golden-veined honeysuckle, with other hardy sorts, easily propagated? There is also our own wild clematis, and to this may be joined, at little expense, several of the new varieties in this charming family, which may be obtained of nurserymen.

If one has young evergreen trees,—say the Norway spruce,—a few of the finer kinds of morning-glory (Ipomeas), planted near and suffered to run up among the branches and peep out of the green openings, will have a beautiful effect all summer long, and the tree will suffer no harm, as it sometimes does when the bitter-sweet, the ampelopsis, and other woody vines, take possession of them.

Stumps are not deemed ornamental, and yet I have seen them turned to an admirable account. If still standing on their own roots, but decayed at the core, let them be hollowed out, deeply as may be, filled with good soil, and flowers planted in them, nasturtiums or petunias or the linums or dwarf morning-glories. Stumps that have been pulled up by the roots, and rolled into a corner, may be dressed out with ferns, vines, and mosses, and a tasteful hand will array them in such beauty that the farmer will be reluctant another season to give them up to the axe and the stove.

Flowers peeping out of unlikely spots give a surprise of pleasure. Therefore stick in a flower just where it would not be expected. No matter if it “was never done before,” or if “farmers don’t do so in these parts,” or if “flowers are a trouble, and don’t bring any money.” They bring what money often fails to bring,—refinement and pleasure. There is no use, my old friend under a rough coat, in making believe that you don’t like flowers. I know that you do. Somewhere in you is a spot, if the rubbish can be cleared away, which a flower always touches. There is no reason why rich gentlemen should own all the flowers. Hard-working farmers and mechanics have as much right to them as if they lived without working.

What shall I say of the gladiolus? It is the flower for the million! It is as easy to manage as a potato. It blossoms long, and better if cut and carried into the house than if left out doors. Its varieties of color are endless. It is healthy; multiplies its corms rapidly, can be kept in winter in a common cellar, if dried of a little first; and is calculated to return as much pleasure for a small outlay as any flower in vogue. A few dozen to start with will convince any man of the truth of my words.

Let me dissuade you, my dear readers, from too great an addiction to mere profit. Don’t wait for a regular garden of flowers, but stick them in, in nooks and corners, all about the homestead.

IV.

A LETTER FROM THE FARM.

PEEKSKILL, May 28th, 1868.

MY DEAR MR. BONNER: You must expect no article from me this week. I am engaged. I was never more busy in my life. Let me relate my occupations. At about half past three in the morning, I wake. The light is just coming. I do not care for that, as I do not propose to get up at such an hour. But the birds do care. They evidently wind up their singing apparatus over night. For, when the first bird breaks the silence, in an instant the rest go off, as if a spring had been touched which moved them all. Was ever such noise! There are robins without count, wood-thrushes, orioles, sparrows, bobolinks, meadow-larks, bluebirds, yellow-birds, wrens, warblers, catbirds (as the Northern mocking-bird is called), martins, twittering swallows. Think of the noise made by mixing all these bird-notes together! Add a rooster, and a solemn old crow to carry the bass. Then consider that of each kind there are scores, and of some kinds hundreds, within ear reach, and you will have some faint conception of the opening chant of the day.

You may not believe that I wake so early. But I do. You may be still less inclined to believe that, after listening for ten minutes to this mixture, I again go to sleep. But I solemnly do. Nor do I think of getting up before six o’clock. Whether I should emerge even then, if it were not for the savory odor that begins to steal through my cottage, I cannot tell. After breakfast, there are so many things to be done first that I neglect them all. The morning is so fine, the young leaves are so beautiful, the bloom on the orchards is so gorgeous, the sounds and sights are so many and so winning, that I am apt to sit down on the veranda, for just a moment, and for just another, and for a series of them, until an hour goes by. Do not blame me! Do not laugh at such farming and such a farmer. The soil overhead bears larger and better crops, for a sensible man, than does the soil under feet. There are blossoms in the clouds. There is fruit upon invisible trees, to those who know how to pluck it.

But then sky-gazing and this dallying with the landscape will not do. What crowds of things require the eye and hand! Flowers must be transplanted. Flower-seeds must be sown; shrubs and trees pruned; vines looked after; a walk taken over the hill to see after some evergreens, with many pauses to gaze upon the landscape, and many birds watched as they are confidentially exhibiting their domestic traits before you. The kittens, too, at the barn, must be visited, the calf, the new cow. Then every gardener knows how much time is consumed in noticing the new plants; for instance, I have some eight new strawberries that need watching, each one purporting to be a world’s wonder. I am quite anxious about eight or ten new kinds of clematis; two new species of honeysuckle; eight or ten new and rare evergreens; and ever so many other things,—shrubs and flowers. What shall I say of the new peas, new beans, rare cucumbers, early melons, extraordinary potatoes?

Speaking of potatoes, do you know anything of the Early Rose? Let me tell you. One hundred bushels were sold this spring, to one man, for eighty dollars a bushel! Since then, they have been selling by the pound, at the increasing prices of one, two, and three dollars a pound. It takes about three potatoes to make a pound.

Now for a story—true, for I had it from Timothy Titcomb’s lips. A friend sent him this potato, with injunctions to give it the utmost care. He planted it in his garden, and when it ripened, last summer, not informed of its exceeding preciousness, he proceeded to eat. In a reasonable time he consumed three barrels, which at the lowest price were worth about seven hundred dollars!

I have a very nice plat of these potatoes, and should like to sell them to you in advance. As an inducement, I offer mine at fifty dollars a bushel! But this is confidential. I do not wish to be overrun with purchasers, scrambling for a chance!

Do you not see that it is impossible for me, amid such incessant and weighty cares, to compose an article? The air is white with apple-blossoms; the trees are all singing; the steaming ground beseeches me to grant it a portion of flower-seeds; by night the whippoorwills, and by day the wood-thrush and mocking-bird, fill my imagination with all sorts of fancies, and how can I write?