The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1910-04-07
@ermunt aatthman.
THE GARDEN FEVER.

the season for making gardens is APP |
preaching although our pessimistic |
friends wisely shake their heads and |
predict that snow plows will be need
ed before May Day. The garden sea-
son really opens in midwinter with
the receipt of the gorgeous seed cata-
logues. There IL nothing in this
world more persistently optimistic
than a seed catalogue. Our better |
Judgment tells us that no such vege-
tables ever fourished lin the heav-
YHs above Or the earth beneath, or
the waters under the earth as those
pictured so entieihglS and OF such al
Turing size and perfection, in the
gorgeous seed catalogues. But these
publications come when the memoir
les of perennial failures are half for
gotten, when we are longing for the
breaking of the iron bound rule OF
winter and we listen to the eternal
voice of hope and assure ourselves
(although we really know better)
that perhaps this year we may have a
garden that will come up to the pic
lures before us. There really ought
to be law to compel the issuing OF
such literature in the fall, when we
are in a mood to know just what a
garden really can do A persons Vi
tally is too low and his hopes are
too high in the month of February
to enable him successfully to resist
the wiles of the seed catalogue and
at this season the optimist falls an
easy prey. This process of delusion
frequently continues throughout a
long life. Nevertheless, garden is
most desirable feature of life, even
though the products fail to reach
that degree of perfection advertised
in highly colored illustrations, and
Notwithstanding the fact that our
First Parents are supposed to have
fallen into grievOus error in ii
garden by yielding to an overweening
curiosity.
Every man and woman who has
welded a hoe, or is interested i'll cul-
tivating the soil, ought to read
Charles Dudley Warmers delightful
book My Summer in a Garden Mr.
Warner was a master of the most
delicious humor, never boisterous OF
coarse, but always genuinely funny
and his brightest sayings often ap-
pear where they are least expected II
Americans read more of Warmers
writings and fewer psychological and
problem novels, their enjoyment
would be greater and their lives mors
sane and wholesome.
MI. Warner says: The man who
has planted a garden feels that hi
has done something for the good o
the world. He belongs to the pro
ducers. 1t is pleasure to eat o
more than a head of lettuce or AZ
ear of corn. " Is To dig in tn,
mellow soil-to dig moderately, TO
all pleasure should be taken spar
ingly--is q great thing. One get
strength out Of the ground as Otter
as one really touches it with a hoe
a 1t Is not simply beets an,
potatoes and corn and string bean
that one raises in his livelihood gard
ems, it is the average Of human life
There is life in the ground; 1t goe
into the seeds; and It also when it
stirred up, goes into the man VIII
stirs It. The hot sun on his back a
he bends to his shovel and hoe, o
contemplatively rakes the warm al
fragrant loan, is better than niue
medicine. The buds are coming OF
on the bushes round about; the blo
SONS of the fruit trees begin to show
the blood is running up the graz
VINES III STREAMS, YOU Can Slhcil III
wild flowers on the near bank; an
the birds are flying and glancin
everywhere. To the open kitche
door comes the busy housewife
shake white something, and stant
a moment to look, quite transfiXed
the delightful sights and sound
Hoeing in the garden on a brigl
soft May day, when you are not o.
liged to, is nearly equal to Il
delight Of going trouting
Blessed be agriculture! if one do
not have too much of it.
In order to enjoy agriculture you {
not want too much of it and "
want to be poor enough to have Ii
tie inducement to work moderate
yourself. Hoe while it is spring, al
enjoy the best anticipations. 1t
not much matter if things do n
turn out WE'LL
Turning from the advice of
eminent author to that of Governme
experts, we learn that careful stat
tics prove that "a well kept gard
will yield ten to fifteen Tins as mu
as will average farm land, The a