Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1915-03-29
GARDENS

FRAGRANCE of flowers sparkle of cham
l. pagne, smiles of fair women, all the al
Turing froth of the world, rests upon a shad-
owy background of toll and weariness.
But by one of those fortunate chances
which go to make up this curious life of
ours, there is splendid and alluring COM
pensation of the work for its own sake, in
the long to hoe. the grapes to pick and
crush, the weaving and scrubbing which enter
into the creation of our precious lilies of the
field whff of fragrance over the garden
wall makes up for n spring and summers
toll, an hour or two of smiles and beauty
in the evening give zest to long hours of
daylight drudgery With characteristic in
consistency, it is the hoers and weavers and
toilers of the world who achieve happiness,
while the lilies Of the field notoriously
bored and blase.
Let one, then, pity the gardener! Rather,
in this day of brick and paved cities, he is
to be envied his little plot of soft, crumbly,
brown soil, in which, as in a little world of
his own. he plays the part of creator, ruler
and absolute autocrat, disturbed only by the
ravages of anarchist worms and bugs.
Now that the frost is almost out of the
ground and the seed catalog season is at its
height, numerous magazines give gardening
advice, ranging from the amateur to the most
technical.
All gardeners and their wives-or husbands
will appreciate the whimsical tone of a
typical spring time dialogue by Dallas Sharpe
in The House Beautiful %:
What is it you are so interested in?" she
demanded laying down the new magazine.
"A seed Catalog."
More seed CatalogS. Why, you read moth
ing else all last night"
"This is a new one" replied, land I de-
clare I never saw turnips that could touch
this improved strain here i going to
plant"
How many catalogs have you?"
"Only six so far
only six so far? And you plant your
earliest seeds
In April. the middle of April, though
may be able to get my first peas In by the
last OF March. You see, peas'-she was back
ing away-"this new Antarctic pea will stand
a lot of cold but beans-do come here and
look at these improved Kentucky wonder
pole beans" holding out the wonderfully lith-
ographed page toward her. But she backed
still farther away and putting her hands
firmly behind her. looked at me instead very
solemnly.
1 suppose every man comes to know that
unaccountable expression In his wifes eyes
soon or late; a sad, baffled expression, de-
taChed, remote, as of things seen darkly or
deserted afar off-discernible, but very re-
mote. Two minds with but single thought,
so you start; but soon she finds, or late she
finds, that as the heavens are high above the
her thoughts. She cannot follow. On the
brink she stands and sees you, through the
starry spaces, drift from her ken In your
fleet of dreams-or seed catalogs. 1 have
never been able to explain to her the seed
catalog. Her unit of garden measure is a
meal-so many beet seeds for a meal; so
many meals for row, with never two rows
OF anything. and with all the rows of diff
ferent length Now, go by the seed catalog,
planting not after the dish, as II my only
vision were garden peeled and in the pot,
but after the bushel, peck, quart, pint, pound,
ounce, package-so many pounds to the acre
instead of so many seeds to the meal.
Vogue gives a semiofficially elite indorse-
ment Of gardening, as an occupation even for
the lilies of the field (2):
So fashionable has gardening become of
late, 1t Is strange that rural bard has taken
occasion TO play upon the susceptible theme
of "the woman with the hoe" Today II one
attempts TO make summer morning call
upon smart woman at her country place,
the powdered foOtman very likely lifts his
eyebrows that ever so little powdered foot
in her garden at this hour" Then II you
may, you wend your way to the garden TO
find madame in simple cotton frock COW
cred with capacious chintz apron, a big
shade hat, gauntlet gloves, and actually dig
ging in the soil. There have always been
really worked in them. but ii is only recently
that fashionable women have Wakened to the
fact that digging In old Mother Earth not
only gives them certain cachet, but Slim
mer walst line, and the enviable rose and
creAa complexion Of the dairy maid.
Our Kinship to the Soil
In an article on The Control OF sol Fer
tilitys (Sl, IN Harper's, Robert Bruere attacks
the popular notion that soils wear out as IN
New England ana the East;