The Geraniums

by Ernest Bramah

 

THE GERANIUMS

By Ernest Bramah

Irene let me in for it, of course. Still, it would have been ungracious to chide her in the circumstances.

"I promised Mrs. Capping that you would attend to the garden while we were here," she explained to me when we were irrevocably installed in the furnished house. "She asked me if you understood the treatment of geraniums, and I said 'Of course.'"

"Of course," I said also.

"You do, don't you?" demanded Irene, with a flash of unworthy doubt.

"In a certain sense I do," I replied guardedly. "Still, we must remember that there are many varieties of this prolific esculent, some of which are new to horticulture since my old geraniuming days."

Irene was obviously impressed.

"Well, here they are," she said, stopping at a bed. "What kind are these?"

I don't admit that I could have absolutely made a mistake as to their identity, because it was the only bed the garden possessed, and the garden itself is only in the nature of a full-sized billiard table. But, frankly, up to that moment I had been thinking of asparagus. I had to readjust my whole line of ideas. I looked at the geraniums, and Irene continued to look at me.

"Well?"

"These," I said, when I had privately satisfied myself that the labels to which I was accustomed had been thoughtlessly removed, "these, Irene, are—er—pink geraniums."

I don't pretend to understand the depths of Irene's nature fully yet, although we have been married several months. Sometimes she prattles consecutively, at others she is strangely silent, and occasionally she develops a curious irrelevance.

"Suppose we go and look at the kitchen sink," was her next remark.

The following day I secretly bought a hand-book on gardening. I knew by instinct—the primeval woodcraft of generations of arboreous ancestors breaking through the thin veneer of suburban artificiality—that some day the geraniums would require watering. For the more exact details I relied on my handbook. And this is what it told me:—

"Geraniums, Watering.—Watering plays no inconsiderable part in the successful culture of geraniums, nor is there any detail of their treatment in which the beginner is more liable to go wrong and perhaps by a single error destroy the fair promise of months. Hard and fast rules cannot be given, as the time of the year, the state of the weather, the varying conditions of plant life, have all to be taken into account. A little experience will soon teach the careful gardener what course to adopt, and as a golden rule we would observe that it is better to err on the side of restraint than of excess, whether the question involved is that of using the hose-pipe or of withholding it."

Of course, it was then too late to take the book back. I decided to water the geraniums, and, in fact, spent the greater part of the evening directing Irene how to use the can. We had just finished, when a shower drove us in, and for the remainder of the night it poured.

Two days later Irene called my attention to a curious phenomenon. All the lower leaves of the geraniums had turned yellow. Irene stood by in that attitude of faithful expectancy that I was beginning to regret. That is the worst of knowing everything: you are called on to explain so much.

"This is very interesting," I remarked. "Mrs. Capping is evidently in the very forefront of the geranium movement. Here we have one of the present season's most striking novelties...." At this point I unfortunately touched one of the leaves. It fell off. Irene touched another. It did the same.

The gardening book has an excellent index, and I had no difficulty in finding—I won't exactly say in finding what I wanted, but in finding the following reference:—

"Yellow, Leaves of Geraniums Turning—This frequently indicates an excess of moisture at the roots of the plants. Should it arise from this cause, immediate steps should be taken to remedy the fault. On the other hand, the geraniums may be suffering from insufficient liquid nourishment. A little experience...."

On the way to the station there is a small greenhouse which appears to constitute the business premises of John H. Nukes. Mr. Nukes is generally about the place, and he has the outward manner of being a friendly man. We exchanged nods this morning, and on my way back, an hour ago, I stopped to comment on the weather. Somehow the conversation got round to geraniums.

"The difficulty I find," I remarked in my best Covent Garden expert manner, "is that I am unable to gather from books just when to water the plants and exactly how much wa—I mean aqueous nutriment, to give."

He smiled, under the impression, I believe, that I was a humorist. Then he became serious.

"You can't learn that from books," he said, "because those that write them don't know."

"That's a difficulty that doesn't trouble you, I imagine, eh?" I ventured. I wondered if I was becoming perhaps too friendly, but I was also getting desperate.

This time he smiled quite naturally. "Well, I introduced 'Mrs. O. K. Barling' to the trade. I think that ought to be enough."

I agreed supinely, although even then it did not seem quite good taste for the man to turn the conversation to his social exploits.

"But about geraniums," I persisted, "how often should you say that I ought to water them?"

"Do they happen to be mulched?" he demanded.

At this sudden counter-stroke I broke into a cold perspiration. If I confessed absolute ignorance, it might get round to Mrs. Capping. Irene would then hear of it, and upbraid me with duplicity. And then, by a wonderful inspiration, I seemed to remember having heard of mulch cows. Probably mulching was a sort of botanical inoculation. I struck boldly out.

"They have been," I replied, meeting his eye steadily, "but it didn't take."

"Well, then," he advised thoughtfully, "I should let them have a nice drop of water now and then."

"About a...?" I prompted.

"A goodish drench," he nodded.

"Every...?"

"About every so often."

"In fact," I suggested darkly, "just as much as they require whenever they want it?"

"That's it," he agreed, with the pleased look of one whose exact meaning is grasped. "Not too much and not too little."

"A few canfuls?" I hazarded.

"About that—more or less."

"To how many plants?"

"You might say to a fairish breadth of ground."

"Look here," I said, "let us get the matter absolutely cut and dried. You would recommend, for a medium-sized bed of average-grown plants set at proportionate distances, an adequate amount of water supplied at necessary intervals?"

He nodded sympathetic agreement. "You can't go far wrong at that," he said.

I don't intend to. I haven't mentioned it to Irene yet, but John H. Nukes is coming to-morrow to water the geraniums, and he will continue to do so as often as they require it until Mrs. Capping returns. That, I suspect, is largely in the nature of his snug suburban business.