Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1871-01-12

ABOUT GARDENING.-I hold that no
man has right (whatever his sex, of
course) to have a garden for his own sell
fish uses. He ought not to please himself,
but every man to please his neighbor. l
tried to have garden that would give
moral satisfaction. 1t seemed to me that
nobody could object to potatoes "a most
useful vegetable); and began to plant
them freely. But there was a chorus of
protests against them. "You don't want
to take up your ground with potatoes"
the neighbors said; ''you can buy potatoes"
1.-THE very thing | wanted to avoid doing is
buying things). "What you want is the
perishable things that you cannot get fresh
in the market" But what kind OF perish
able things A horticulturist of eminence
wanted me to SOW lines of strawberries
and raspberries right over where | had
put my potatoes in drills. I had about
five hundred strawberry plants in another
part of my garden; but this fruit fanatic
wanted me to turn nay whole patch into
vines and runners. suppose l could
raise strawberries enough for all my neigh
bors, and perhaps ought to do it. | had
little space prepared for melons musk
melons which / showed to an experience
ed friend. "You are not going to waste
your ground on muskmelons O. he asked.
They rarely ripen in this climate thor
oughly before frost" He had tried for
years without luck l resolved to not go
into such foolish experiment. But the
next day another neighbor happened in.
"Ah | see you are going to have melons.
My family would rather give up anything
else in the garden than muskmelons = Of
the nutmeg variety. They are the most
grateful things we have on the table"
So there it was. There was no COM
promise; it was melons, or no melons, and
somebody offended in any case. | halt
resolved to plant them little late, so that
they would, and they wouldn't. But I
had the same difficulty about string beans
(Which l detest,) and squash (Which /
tolerate and parsnips, and the whole
round of green things.
do not know that chemistry, search
ing for protoplasm, is able to discover the
tendency of vegetables. 1t can only be
found out by outward observation. ]
confess that l am suspicious of the bean
for instance. There are signs in it of an
unregulated life. 1 put up the most at
tractive sort of poles for my Limas. They
stand high and straight, like church-spires,
in my theological garden-lifted up; and
some of them have even budded, like
Aaron's rod. No church-steeple in a
New England village was ever better
fitted to draw to it the rising generation
on Sunday than those poles to lift up my
beans toward heaven. Some OF them did
run up the sticks seven feet, and then
struggled off into the air in wanton man
ner but more than half of them went
galivanting off into the neighboring grape
trellis, and wound their tendrils with the
tendrils of the grape, with disregard Of
the properties of life, which is a satire
upon human nature.
Talk about the Darwinian theory Of
development, and the principle of natural
selection! I should like to see a garden
let to run in accordance with it. fl had
left my vegetables and weeds to free
fight, in which the strongest specimens
only should come to maturity, and the
weaker go to the wall, | can clearly see
that / should have pretty mess of it. 1t
would have been a scene of passion and
license and brutality From My Sum-
mer IN q Garden"