Evening star., 1932-08-20

What a great word it Is, and what
deeds spring from it
No amount of clever sneering at duty
and its necessity will ever remove from
humanity the intense admiration wnlcn
| is felt for q deed Of heroism motlvated
by the springs of duty.
| It was fashionable, in the early gus,
to call duty divine" an adjective Wncn
carried the idea that certain thoughts
and deeds transcend the more natural
reactions Of mankind, those paSeo solely
on our common humanity.
Wholly natural instincts, no doubt,
| call for competition in the garden, but
when a gardener fails to transmute them
into gardening for the gardens sake, he
brings in a whole brood of ugly senti-
mentS.
The basic mood Of the modern small
garden is artifictality. Home gardening
| is founded solidly on mans artifice, not
/ Natures. Nature aids, but the garden, in
essence, is perfectly artificial.
That is why competition has little
place in it, why 1t should be placed
solely for happiness, and therefore why
| ideas Of blame should be kept out OF it.
| If blame for failure must be placed,
however, the honest worker with plants
will find that 1t comes back sQuarely to
his own door, in surprisingly large
number of cases.
But whether he sees it or not, in such
instances, he may feel sure that other
! people do.
Consider the typical Spring gardener
who rusheS into the yard before the
first robin, and makes out as if he were
going to work veritable wonders.
He rakes, he digs, he plants.
That is the last you see Of him for
weeks.
Then one day he appears again,
blames everything from Nature to the
dogs for the weeds which are growing
SO abundantly, and withdraws into the
house again for another period Of weeks
When next he reappears he takes the
blame for his poor lawn from his own
shoulders, where it properly belongs
and attempts to put it somewhere else
Usually the first excuse which crops into
his head satisfies him, but no one else
One may wonder what such Dool
sport-for that Is what he really is
would do, II one would say calmly
without batting an eye, "The trouble
lies in yourself, my dear sir, and no
where else. How do you expect your
lawn to look good II you cut it only
once in two months? Even xinnias
won't grow without some care. Why
place the blame for your own negli-
gence any place but upon your truly
precious self? But why, you lunkhead
do you want to blame anything? You
have shown, by your lack of actor
over the weeks, that you honestly have
no liking for gardening, no genuine
interest in the problems Of gardening
Why attempt to throw bluff about it:
Nobody gives whoop whether you
grow good plants or not, and surely
you don't, because If you did, yol
would put a bit of work, time, intelli.
gence and money on them"
Work, time, intelligence and money
you can put them in any order vol
please but together they spell a gooC
garden, any way you look at it. II
ninety-nine cases out of hundred i
will be found that shade from som,
one elSe's trees Is not to blame for {
floral failure, but lack of work on tn,
part of the would-be gardener" Some
times one may feel inclined to thinl
that there is no gardener save he whit
wants to be such. Thus the woman
with small window box Of well-tendet
and well-grown petunias Is more Of {
gardener because she has the hope
and aspirations Of a gardener) thai
many loudspeaker who blatts glibl,
of what she would do If the sun didn'
spoil all her efforts, or If the skie
would rain more, or If they wouldn'
rain quite so much, as If Nature her
self were conspiring to wreck the eff
forts Of one who, given more sensible
creation, might show the old universe
lady and mother thing or two in he
own line