Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1873-08-07
The Pleasures of the Garden.

THE chief charm of having a garden
OF your own is the fresh state of the veg
etables which daily garnish your table.
Any one who has always depended upon
a store for his supply does not have the
faintest conception of the superior flavor,
tone, and elasticity Of vegetables gathered
fresh every morning from your own gar
den. Aside from this benefit, gardening
is the most health giving occupation
known to man, unless we except that of a
physician. Which we don't. There is
man who lives on the other side of our
street who has a garden, and has fresh
vegetables every day, our folks say. We
don't know anything about that, but we
do know he has garden, because we see
him out in it every morning, in shirt
sleeves and slippers, picking cucumber
and squash bugs. We know when he gets
hold of one by the way he shuts up his
mouth and fingers. Sometimes he doesn't
catch the one he is after, and sometimes
he makes a half-dozen passes at one bug.
Every time he makes one Of those passes
he says something The first remark is
not very plainly heard, but the next is
quite SO, and the observation that follows
after the sixth unfortunate pass, appears
to go completely through our head. He
jumps around this way for about an hour
and having got his blood up to fever heat,
goes in and drinks a cup of boiling coffee,
and then goes to business. At noon he
goes out to kill a couple more bugs, but
doesn't do it. He finds two hens, from
the next house, in the cucumber patch.
They have scratched down to the cool
earth, and thrown the parched soil Of two
cucumber-hills over their backs, and with
one eve closed in speculative
way, are thinking of the intense
heat and the short grass crop.
When they see him, and the prepare
tons of welcome he has hastily got to-
gether, they get up and leave. The first
thing he throws at them knocks limb
from a choice pear tree, and the next
thing, which is generally pail, goes
through a glass cover to some choice
flower seeds, and loses its bail He then
goes into the house and gets some more
boiling coffee, and says the man next door
is something we never put in print, and
goes to business again. At night he
comes home and kills bugs until supper
time, and then goes in with his fingers
smelling as if he had shaken hands with
twelve hundred bed bugs. He keeps his
boy home from school to watch the gar
den and guard it against the encrOach-
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several other boys to come over and help
him. They take half dozen sheets out
of the wash, and put up a circus in the
back part of the yard, and some vicious
boy who hasn't pins enough to get in,
leaves the front gate open, and when the
circus is in the midst of its glory, the cry
Of "a COW in the garden!'' breaks up the
performance, and sends both artists and
audience in pursuit of the beast When
our neighbor comes home that night to
gather vegetables fresh from the garden,
and smash bugs with his finger and
thumb, and goes out and looks at the de-
struction, it is altogether likely the first
thing he thinks of is the danger of eating
store vegetables which have been picked
some days before, and allowed to swelter
and wither in noxious barrels, and how
much better it is to have everything fresh
from the garden. But we are not certain
Neither is the proprietor of the circus
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