Evening star., 1933-08-23
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL!4l

There are many good times to plan
next years garden, but perhaps none
better than the present.
Now about the best and the worst Of
the present years activities have been
achieved.
Often enough. and especially in this
gentle art, failure is better than sue
cess, and really more of an achieve
ment.
The gardener learns more from his
failures than from his successes. Per-
haps most human beings do, in all
walks of life, but 1t Is easier to see 1t
in the garden.
Especially is it easier to admit 1t.
One Of the best lessons In failure, in
an average garden, is learning what
not to plant.
There will always be flowers and
shrubs which will not do well for one
The man up the street may be sue
cessful with them. but it is otherwise
here in this particular garden, where
soil conditions may be vastly different
One great Middlewest grower of rock
garden plants declares that on his acres
he has no less than a dozen different
sorts of soils in which he is able to
grow successfully many different kinds
of plants.
These different soils may lie close
together, so that only proper analysis
can tell them apart
But varying conditions Of acidity and
alkalinity, as well as more obscure but
none the less important differentials,
mean the difference between success
and failure in plant growing.
Even more important than complete
failure in some respects is half-failure
There are more half-failureS in home
gardens than final and irrevocable ones
And unless these are made into step
ping stones to better things. they re-
main as gnawing reminders to the
gardener that he is not as good as he
would like to be. Mostly they fail to
remind him of anything except that
he has a plant which does not do we'll,
but which helps fill in spot in his
borders.
II he is not inclined to do some
thing about it. by little study, he
mostly leaves such plants alone, never
satisfied with them, but somehow be-
lieving that they are better than moth
ing These are the real failures in
gardening not the plants which refuse
to bloom at all, or which run all to
leaves. or which wither at the root
in midSeaSon.
1t is the half-failure the plant which
does fairly we'll but not good enough,
which ought to spur the gardener on
to renewed interest.
1t is easy to see these half-failures
al this time of the year.
The active work OF the garden is
about over. OF course the interested
person still finds plenty to do. But
the hand Of Autumn is visible even
now. A few optimists refuse to see
it. regarding it as an unwelcome ap-
partition, but the man or woman really
sensitive to Nature welcomes 1t as one
of the inevitable changes which carries
no heartache with it.
Autumn sad? Why. there is nothing
even melancholy about it. nothing
which ever caused tear except in a
poets eye Poets. real poets. are queer
fellows at best. They must exaggerate
moods. to feel themselves poets. They
must present a mood on a pin point
sharp enough to stick every reader
The better poets they are. especially
in the lyrical vein. the finer line they
must draw between the exaggerated
mood and the necessary restraint to
complete 1t. Hundreds of would be
poets have everything except the re-
| Straint.