The new Northwest. [volume] (Portland, Or.) 1871-1887, 1874-05-08
NUMBER 50.
A Danbury Garden.

We suppose there is a time that
comes to every man when he feels he
should like to have q garden. If he
takes such a notion he will tell his wife
of it. This is the first mistake he
makes, aud the ground thus lost is never
fully recovered. She draws her chair
up to his, and lays one hand on his
knee, and purses up her lips into whis-
tie of expectation-the vixen-and tells
about her mothers garden, and how
nice it is to have vegetables fresh from
the vines every morning, and she will
go right out and plan the whole thing
herself. And so she does. He takes
his spade, and works himself into per-
spiration, and she tramps around under
frightful sun-bOnnet, and gets under
his feet and shrieks at the worms, and
loses her shoes, and makes him first
vexed, and then mad, and then fero-
cious.
After the garden is spaded he gets the
seed and finds she hes been thoughtful
enough to open the papers, and empty
thirteen varieties of different vegetables
into one dish. This leads him to step
out doors, when he eommunes with ma
ture alone for a moment. Then he
takes up the seed and 4 hoe, and q line,
and two pegs, and starts for the garden.
And then she puts on that awful bonnet,
and brings up the rear with q long
handled rake, and a pocket full of beans
and petunia seed, and dahlia bulbs.
When he is planting the corn she
stands up on the cucumber hills and
rakes over the seed pan. Then she puts
the rake. handle over her shoulder, and
the rake teeth into his hair, and walks
over the other beds. He don't find the
squash seed until she moves, and then
he digs them out of the earth with his
thumb. She plants the beet seed her
self, putting about two feet of earth and
sod upon them. Then she takes adj
vantage of his absorption in other mat
ters, and puts down the petunia seed in
one spot, and afterwards digs them up,
and puts them down in another place.
The beans she eOnceals in the earth
wherever she can fiDd a place, and puts
the bulbs I'm the cucumber hills. Then
she tips over the seed pan again, and
apologies, and steps on two of the best
tomato plants, and says, "Oh, myw
which in no way resembles what he
says.
| About this time she discovers better
place for the petunia seed, but having
/ forgotten where she last put them, she
proceeds to find them, and within an in
credibly brief space of time succeeds IL
unearthing pretty much everything
that has been put down. After confus
l ing things so there is no earthly possi'
bility of ever unraveling them again
she says the sun is killing her, and goe.
over to the fence, where she stands touI
hours, telling the woman next doOl
about an aunt of hers who was confined
to her bed for eleven years, and hat
eight doctors from the city, but nothing
could give her any relief until an ole
lady-but you have heard it before.
The next day man comes to his Of
flee to get the pay for a patent SEED
sower which his wife has ordered, ant
he no more than gets away before the
patentee of a new lawn-mOwer comes in
with an order for ten dollars, and he il
turn is followed by the corn-shellel
man, and the miserable gardener start:
for home to head off the robbers, anC
finds his wife at the gate, with his OWL
hat on, and just about to close a bargain
with a smooth-faced individual for 8
two hundred dollar mOwing-machine
and a pearl-handled, ivoTy-mounted
hay-cutter. He first knocks the agri-
cultural-implement agent on the head
and then drags the miserable woman
into the house, and, locking the door,
gives himself up to his emotions.-Daa-
bury Neics.