St. Nicholas/Volume 40/Number 12/Far Land
GARDEN-MAKING AND SOME OF THE
GARDEN’S STORIES
VI. THE STORY OF A FAR LAND AND THE GOING HENCE
BY GRACE TABOR
“My goodness!” cried a tall young veronica, “I ’m nat half ready! When does it start, I wonder?”
“When the evening star has set,” came the answer from very close by. And right there was another herald, without a trumpet—one clad in a velvety-purple tunic—bowing before her. Indeed, they were everywhere, all among the garden-folk, rushing about, urging the importance of haste, taking charge and directing.
“Your very life depends upon it, indeed it does,” cried one, jumping up and down in a perfect fever of anxiety.
“It may not seem so now,” explained another, “but General Pine-tree and his troops only succeeded in turning the invaders back after a day and a night and almost another day's desperate fighting, as you all know. And, of course, they ‘ll return with reinforcements as soon as they can muster them.”
As a matter of fact, no one needed urging, for the sounds of that dreadful attack and repulse, and the threats and boasts that roared through it, rang in every one’s ears; and the sick terror which benumbs helpless things that can neither defend themselves against a deadly peril nor flee from it, still hung over them. So the warnings were most carefully heeded, and the preparations for departure advanced apace.
Shivering horrors! how they had raged and threatened and boasted, those two—terrible North Wind and his clever, whining ally, the sharp-tongued Jack Frost, And how the faithful pines had reeled and bent and twisted in their terrific efforts to toss them back with their giant, out-spread arms, as they hurled themselves forward, seeking the lives of the tender, terror-stricken little garden-folk beyond and below. Such memories made even the maddest haste seem slow.
But they were ready on time, after all; the weakest and tenderest, who were to go first, of course, waiting, indeed, to embark. And silently they slipped away, on the ships that no one can see, that sail on seas no one may know—out and away to the lovely, stilly Isle of Between; that isle that is bounded on the near side by this summer and on the far side by next; that isle which lies off the coast of the famous Land of Nod.
“All the columbines are dead,” said the small sage, somewhat disconsolately, as he sat down to luncheon the next day; “and some of the sweet-williams and the veronicas.”
“Oh, no,” said the big one, “they ‘ve gone on their vacations; that ’s all.”
“Well, they look dead. Their tops are dead.”
Uncle Ned laughed. “You mean,” said he, “their old clothes, I presume, Yes, those they ’ve thrown away; and every one will come back with a brand-new outfit in the spring,”
“If they ’re old clothes, and thrown away, I should think they ought to go into the rag-bag,” ventured the small sage, slyly.
“Right you are!” cried Uncle Ned, unexpectedly, with his hearty laugh again; “that ’s just the place for ’em, and we ’ll go out and put ’em there the first thing after luncheon.”
Which was rather mystifying; but I ’ll wager you don’t know, either, what a garden rag-bag is! There, what did I tell you? Well, it ’s the compost heap, of course, that pile of all kinds of vegetable rubbish which every careful gardener makes and keeps, to spread over beds and borders for protection sometimes, or to spread over his garden generally when it is forked over, thus returning to the soil of it a goodly proportion of what has been taken from it when the plants grew, Before you do any of the fall work of picking up and making ready for winter, therefore, you must do this much toward starting a compost heap: you must decide where it shall be located.
Choose a place that is not very far away, of course, and yet one that is not in plain view from the garden, for it is hardly to be expected of a rag-bag that it shall be decorative. Drive four stakes into the ground—four long stakes, let us say from thirty inches to three feet long, marking the corners of a square space of about four feet. Drive them down until each stands eighteen inches out of the ground; then stretch chicken wire of this width around them. Into the wire box thus made put all the dead leaves that are raked up, all clippings from the lawn, and all tops of plants when these are cut away, as they must be—which presently you shall hear about. Anything from the garden, indeed, providing that it is healthy growth and perfectly free from insect pests, should go into the compost heap; but usually I burn the tops of plants and use their ashes, This does away with the slightest chance of harboring a disease or a noxious creature of some kind, and ashes are particularly good in the compost.
Finally, late in the fall, after all the cleaning up is quite done, sprinkle lime liberally over the entire pile. This will leach down through it during the winter, and when spring comes, the whole mass will be the very finest kind of plant-food, ready to mix with the soil of flower beds or borders, or of the seed-bed, or that wherein house-plants are to be planted. The uses of compost, indeed, are almost too many to mention; and this garden “rag-bag” is as much a part of the complete gardener’s equipment as his spade, or hoe, or rake,
After the last passenger has gone, on the very last ship that sails to the Isle of Between, and all the old discarded livery of last summer is lying about, faded, and ragged, and brown, and rattling in the wind; after all the busy leaves have danced gaily away from every tree and shrub; after most of the birds have gone, and everything looks bare, and still, and uninteresting, then is the time to gather the “rags.” Cut away every old stem and stalk with a pair of sharp shears, right down to the ground. Rake up, and pick up, and tidy up; and then wait until the ground freezes before doing anything more.
Just as soon as it is frozen, however—right away!—put the blankets on the beds, For, of course, they must have blankets, even if they are only garden beds, This seems odd—does it not?—to blanket frozen things; but, you see, the trick is to catch Jack Frost under the blankets, once he comes in, and hold him prisoner until winter is absolutely over, and he is willing—yes, indeed, anxious—to run away and stay away, It is when he is not caught and held fast that he does his damage, for he can slip out sometimes, even in mid-winter; and then the garden-folk are likely to mistake the season, and return too soon from their long vacation. And then he rushes back upon them, the treacherous rascal, and catches and kills them in no time.
There are several kinds of blankets to use on garden beds, and some are much better than others, for some hold much less water than others. Of them all, oak leaves, raked out from under big oak-trees in the woods, or from the lawn if an oak-tree grows there, are the very best of all, because they lie loosely packed, yet are thick and dense enough to be an ideal protection. If you cannot get oak leaves, however, straw will do nicely, or hay, or marsh-grass—or even stable manure, if it is old and not steaming, and has plenty of litter and straw in it.
Whatever you use, put it evenly all over the beds to a depth of four inches. Manure will hold itself in place, and so will straw or hay; but leaves are likely to blow about unless they are anchored in some way. Branches of almost anything laid across them will keep them in place; or you can put leaves on first and hold them down with a lite manure sprinkled onto them afterward. Remember, though, that the reason they are so particularly good as a blanket is because
they do not lie close together, and consequently do not retain water. Be sure, therefore, that you do nothing in anchoring them to pack them down.
This winter blanket is really a great deal more than a protective covering to keep the cold in, and the warmth out, of the ground. You know, when you walk through the woods, how deep and “springy” the ground feels under your feet. That is because every year, for more years than you can count, the trees have shed their leaves and themselves blanketed the earth above their roots; and then, when spring has come, no one has been there to take the blanket away, so gradually it has fallen to pieces, and sifted down and made way for next year’s covering, This is really exactly what ought to happen to the garden beds, for there is nothing better for all kinds of plants than the humus which broken-up leaves become—as you will remember learning earlier. So, instead of putting on a blanket which must be taken off in spring (as hay or straw or even manure, unless it is very fine and well rotted), it is better to put on one that may be left. Oak leaves will take care of themselves, and fine manure may be forked under in spring; so I advise these.
The little plants from the seed-bed will he large enough to transplant into their permanent places by the middle of the month, so, of course, the permanent places must be made ready for them at once. If you are going to make a garden entirely of perennials, and are beginning it anew and apart from the summer garden or border of annuals, here is a little plan which you may like to follow. You will find it much easier to decide where each thing shall go by making a map of the garden first, and planting cach thing on paper. This you can take out of doors afterward, and transfer the plan to the ground very easily, if you will get some one to measure for you two strips of wood about three feet long—or perhaps you can do it for yourself. A common yardstick will be just the thing for one, of course; if you have this, take another strip, equally light and easily handled, if possible, and cut it to the yard length, marking it off into three equal parts of one foot each.
The little plan, you see, has marks crisscrossing it. Each of the squares made by these crisscross marks represents one square foot. These one-foot squares laid off on the diagram are to be laid off on the ground, either with heavy twine stretched lengthwise and crosswise between stakes driven a foot apart on the ends and sides of the garden plot, or by means of the pair of sticks I have told you about, which may he laid down upon the ground, crossed to form one-foot squares (marked at the corners by stakes driven firmly into the ground), and moved as needed. Set the plants into these squares as the plan shows. It is not necessary to measure the distances between them if you locate them in this way, for if they are not exact it does not matter. Each group of plants is indicated by a special sign, which corresponds to that given in the list below. You will find it very easy to get them in the proper places if you lay out the entire space before you begin planting. Spade up the flower space, then take one square at a time, beginning at the upper left-hand corner, and work straight across to the right. Cross out with pencil each square on your plan as soon as it is planted. An inclosure of eighteen-inch chicken wire whereon sweet-peas might climb would be very nice— or you might make a little hedge of common mint. This can be kept trimmed or not, as you choose. There were ten kinds of perennials suggested for raising in the seed-bed. These ten kinds are distributed around this little garden plan so that the very best results, in color combination and general habit and size of the plants, will be realized.
I think I have said something before about not making flower beds out in the middle of the lawn. Try and learn to think of flowers as a very wonderful kind of outdoor trimming—a jeweled trimming, indeed, or a precious embroidery, or a priceless lace. Such ornament is never dropped into the middle of a breadth of some splendid material, but is always used to embellish its edges, to finish them and enrich them or else a great mass of it is spread entirely over such material, covering it almost completely. Can you not see how this will work out in planting your flowers? How they will go into borders around the lawn, or else will be put into beds that really cover it and turn it into a little flower garden? A flower bed is truly a part of a garden, never a part of a lawn. If you have no place along which a border may run, therefore, plan a real little garden, and have several beds grouped together as the plan shows, rather than a single round one, or one shaped like a star or a half-moon.
Prepare the ground in the new garden just the same as you did that for the border of annuals early in the season, breaking it up fine and making it mellow by working it over and raking out all the stones and coarse stuff. Transplant the plants from the seed-bed very carefully, and water them and look after them just as you did the others. Of course they will go on growing for several weeks before cold weather brings their “vacation”; but they will still be not much more than babies, although they may be of fairly good size, when winter finally does come. Of course you will remember that no flowers are to be expected from them until another summer.
Blanketing the ground over these is necessary to keep them in it at all, for once let Jack Frost so much as peep out after he has worked his way in among the tender rootlets that are as yet only feebly grasping the soil particles, and he will somehow work them out along with himself, unplanting them altogether.