Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 116, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1913 — FINDING REAL JOY IN YOUR GARDEN [ARTICLE]

FINDING REAL JOY IN YOUR GARDEN

"Who dares be downcast when he is making ready for the rewards of spring? Little boy, don’t wrinkle up your face as you sit on the fence and watch me. Be cheerful; what if you did misspell a word! If you study it tonight, you will get it correctly tomorrow. The reason I plant young primroses in a row and cover them with leaves, and why I spend all my pocket money for daffodils in the fall, is because I want flowers as soon as the snow melts in the new year. All winter long, whenever I look out of this window on «the brown earth, I think of the flowers sleeping under it”

The Hollyhock Woman pulled off her gardening gloves as she finished talking and nodded brightly to the scowling boy on the fence post. He had jeered at her for working in the earth when the dull November days had come. Now he watched her go into \th6 house and come out with a plate of cookies. That in itself was a bait to draw good humor to the face of any boy. "Sure, I’ll rake the grass for you. I’ll haul a lot o’ dried leaves from the woods to scatter over everything. I’ll get some brush to prop over the rose bushes and the hardy hydrangea. My, but'that's a pretty bush with the dry flowers still hanging on.” The Hollyhock Woman agreed that his intentions were good. "Let me tell you a secret, Tommy. The folks around here do not get half the delights out of their gardens that they ought to. Just think of it—you are helping creation along. Nobody can make a flower, but we can help one grow; we can lend a hand to it” "You talk about flowers as if they were real persons," commented Tommy as he began to help by sorting the bulbs she took from a basket full on the porch. “Now, when I begin to look at them I say to myself, ’Hello, Mr. Tulip, you’re waiting for a chance to put your red head out.’ These are the red Darwins that look like soldiers In a row, ain’t they? I remember them. They come later than the others. ’Hello, Lady Narcissus, you want to nod to the robins.’ Tea, I read Narcissus was a boy, but the Narcissus in the gnyps always make me think of girls. ’Be patient. Snowdrop; your turn is coming in April.’ Don't you wonder where the hyacinths keep their sweet smells?" The Hollyhock Woman smiled, for she knew she had won a faithful helper. The fair days of November were always busy ones. She had to banish the faded plants and ragged vines of sumfner and fall from her garden, and besides going over the bulb beds at last year, to set fresh

ones in those borders where she would plant the annuals In June. However thrifty the iris and the peonies had been, she gave them a helping hand in the autumn. The tulips, living below ground In the beds belonging to the annuals, were planted deep to leave enough surface earth for the passing summer flowers, while those she planted in clumps m the perennial borders did not require deep setting.

Tommy and the Hollyhock Woman talked in whispers at the gate just as the sun was setting. Tommy agreed to be the conspirator’s aid. There was but one way to bring indifferent villagers to their senses, and that was by surprising them. "You can do it when I cannot. Tommy, but you must keep the seshe said. “Here is a basket of odd bulbs, the Glory of the Snow, l bright yellow jonquils, scillas, snow drops and stars of Bethlehem, Plant them in the flower beds where the folks are sure to see tjiem from the path or the window. You can stick in crocuses almost anywhere. Take first those houses we picked out as places where the folks did not care very much about gardens. This ought to convert them.” "I should think so,” said Tommy, out loud. “Think what?" asked a familiar voice as the Primrose Man loomed up in the dusk. “One thing I think is that her cookies are good,” said this aiding conspirator. “You are evading, young man,” said the great gardener of the village, who had more than once paid him for weeding. “Tommy cannot tell you,” said his companion conspirator. "He has a missionary deed on hand, and you know the left hand should not hear what the right hand doeth. He is going out to do good deeds, and he should not talk about them.” The Primrose Man looked toward the west where the evening star hung bright and clear. The purple veil of night was drawing slowly across the evening red.

“Tommy,” he said, "I have no secrets from this lady, though she may have secrets from me. She bakes the best cookies man or boy ever ate, and she is so industrious in her garden that she leaves me nothing to do but to give her a primrose plant now and then, which I can do, since I am the only one around here who makes an art of cultivating primroses. If we were in England, Tommy, we could pick primroses along the roadside in spring, but Americans have not discovered that they can have— * •" ‘A primrose by the river’s brim,* ” quoted Tommy. "Yes, and in the gardens and on tlfo roadside, and cowslips with them, too.” "Don’t forget the secret you wore

to tell” Tommy reminded him, still holding behind his back the basket the Hollyhock Woman had given him. "It is this: Here are a dozen of wild grape vines with good roots, in this bundle. This is a list of places where I think they will da well and become ornamental along the street fences. This first gentleman on the list will be pleased when he sees wild grape vines running along his fence, so plant his with care, but do not let him see you do it. Then you will be a real Traveler’s Joy and a missionary of flowers.” This admonition was too much for the boy’s sense of humor. The fatherly manner of the Primrose Man held him mannerly until the speaker came to his period. Then boy conduct would have its way. He grasped the bundle of wild grape vines and went shouting down the street, running and laughing wildly. The Hollyhock Woman pretended that it was by accident that the Primrose Man had stopped to talk to Tommy at her gate, and so she turned and went up the steps toward the house door. Doing good deeds by way of planting flowers was a fancy ot her own, and she did not care to discuss it with anyone. "Are you going to leave me out In the dark and the cold? A November evening, if clear, is still frosty,” said he? shivering as he spoke. “I must talk over our window gardens with you, and I have two or three fine catalogues here." “Fear the Greeks bearing gifts,” she said. "How would meat pie and a cup of coffee do with flower talk?” “It is the way of a woman, but you shall have It,” he replied, coming In. “You know we must have flower cheer for dark days.” LENA MAY M’CAULEY. (Copyright, 1912. by W. G. Chapman.) —— —u ,