Evening star., 1934-09-17
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES E. TRACEWELL.

fortune with them this year, except
under glass, where conditions can be
controlled.
st like what is nearest, easiest,
best" said Walt Whitman in one of
those expansive fiourishes he loved.
Probably he didn't know exactly
what he meant himself, but what
writer does?
Some only think they do.
The best writing, the best garden
ing, contains something besides the
meaning, the flowers in actual bloom.
If home gardening is not for hap
piness, what is it for?
Too many persons put up with con-
tinual disappointment, with lilies, for
instance, when all the time they
should discard them and go on with
something more satisfactory to them.
Every earnest gardener has had the
experience of having costly lily species
simply disappear.
Sometimes you can dig down for
the bulb, huge one. and And 1t gone,
just as if it had been dug up.
What became of it?
Nobody knows, not even the experts.
Then there are all the common mala-
dies that can happen to them, such
as rot, and insect ruination, and
wrong fertilizer. and wrong location,
to say nothing of wrong planting
depth.
We say that a person ought to con-
slider seriously the question of giving
away rosebusheS, or gladioluS blubS,
but if the decision is to that effect,
why, give them away with good
heart, and let some one else worry
with them for a while.
They will give him plenty Of prob
lens, and If he is able to solve them,
so much the better, and very much
to his credit, too.
The donor will laugh up his sleeve.
It is always possible to enjoy the
roses Of others, or forget them in the
sweetness of the smaller and more
easily grown flowers. Let no one be
fooled about roSes-they are highly
specialized, and their indiscriminate
growing by every Tom, Dick and Harry
who happens to have few square
feet of ground is not to be recon-
mended at all.
This is not to say that many fine
roses are not grown by strict anna
teurs, men and women with small
plots Of ground and great love for
roses. Unfortunately too many of
them begin their gardening activities
with this specialized plant, really a
shrub, instead of making 1t the seri-
GUS work Of their later years. BY the
time they have come to years of gar
dening discretion they have become
so disgusted with their poor showing
as rosarians that they are willing to
let the newcomers have their pet
specimens at any price, or at no price
at all, which is better.
y n X X
It will be noted that we have
stressed the difference between the
man who loves roses so much that
he cannot be stopped, and the flower
lover who feels that there is no use
bothering with half-success with
roses; he will leave them to the for
] mer group, and himself raise more
easily cultured things.
Wherefore we end today as we be-
gan, with the expression of the hope
that no one who really loves roses
enough-will give them up simply be-
cause last Winter did them dirt"
Not stop planting the gladiolus be-
cause the thrips have got into them,
or some other insect or blight ruined
them in their blooming.
These are sad garden events, but
the case is not hopeless. The Winters
may relent, the insects may disap-
pear. The last rose of Summer is
worth waiting for, after all.