Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-01-02

The home gardening of 1881, on the
average place. is going to be more ditti-
cult, even, than that of 1880, for no
one knows yet exactly what effects
the drought-Still continuing-has had,
or will have.
Trees, shrubs, evergreens, perennials.
which went through the Summer with
only partial hurt, will find conditions
not quite to their liking in the Spring.
Unless, of course, the gardener Is
something of a student as well, and is
able to diagnose conditions as they
grow-for plant conditions grow-and
to prescribe remedies.
Every gardener, therefore, must be
something of plant physician In
1881. This much appears clear to the
aspiring prophet. He will have to be
able to keep his fingers on the pulse
of his plants, to listen to them breathe,
to count their vegetative heartbeats, as
it were.
Right now he can begin by survey
ing such stock as he possesses, in the
hope that his eagle eye will detect in
advance what is going to happen.
Then he can look around at the gen.
eral clay of his land, and try to decide,
probably for the tenth time, whether IL
would be better to let a certain shrub
stay where it is or be removed to an
other situation
4 X
Fireside gardening, the annual de-
light, is peculiarly in order this month.
The first of the seed catalogues has
come in, the advance guard of gay
battalions. Huge tomatoes, of unsur-
passed redness, flaunt themselves from
covers. They vertically make the mouth
water. Surely some one should praise
the advance made in color printing.
Surely a few years ago no color plates
managed to get such lifelike quality
in their presentation. To-Day choco-
late cake in an advertisement fairly
nlelts in the mouth. The hot biscuits OF
the baking powder people cause butter
to yearn.
Here one greets many old friends to-
matoeS, peas, beans, radishes, endive,
melons, asparagus, corn, beets; petu-
Mas. zinnias, Towering tobacco, bleed
ing heart, scapiosa, begoniaS. etc. Some
of them one has been intending to plant
for years, but somehow has never got
around to it, as the saying is. Well, this
year, one muses., one will get round to
it. It has been a long path, these five
years, these seven years, a long path, in
deed, with many windings and turnings.
Looking back over that path, one is in
clined to believe that it was precisely
because of the twistings and turnings,
the doubts and the hesitations, that the
path seems pleasant in retrospect. Sup
pose one had, with terrible efficiency,
hewed very straight path through the
wilderness of the years. Looking back
along it now, would it not seem bare?
Where would be the little hooks of free
dom, the happy nothings which adorn
life? The crUdity of the straight has
been EMPOWERED with pleasing failures, so
that 1t blooms in the memory, colors
ac toy a
rosy tint when read in front of an open
FIRE. Perhaps the world of men has gone
q bit too far in attempting to Guido
Nature in fecundity. Man calls it
mass proc .ction,' but Nature invented
it millions of years ago, when she car
peted the floors of the forests with mil
lions of pine cones, only a few thou
sands OF which were to flourish. She
knew her lean times as well as fertile
and took no hurt from them, viewed
from the standpoint Of the years. Maybe
man still has a lesson to learn from her.