The Northwest enterprise. [volume] (Seattle, Wash.) 1931-1952, 1947-05-28
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GREEN FINGERS
BY RUTH TAYLOR

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land where they can watch and
tend growing things. And doubly
fortunate are those with green
fingers" who have a kinship with
the elements of nature. those at
whose touch the earth blossoms
forth.
My grandmother was one of
these. Give her a plot of ground
no bigger than packet hand
kerchief and she started a garden.
IL was a haphazard sort of affair,
for flowers bordered the veget-
ables and wherever there was
spare inch of earth, she started
something growing. She was
spendthrift of time and hospitality
but a miser when it came to buy
ing anything she could grow. Her
garden was also her joy and her
comfort, for she used to say If
you had quick temper and an
inpatient disposition, there was
no cure like garden you
could watch all of life in it and
you learned to wait patiently for
the fruit of your handiwork.
This year we are again urged
to go back to the land, to plant
and tend and harvest from our
own soil the fruit of the earth,
not only that we may all be we'll
fed. but that our neighbors over
seas may have food.
We must tend our gardens care
fully this year. But in our gar
dens, both of the soil and of life,
we must take care to plant the
right seeds. We must watch over
them, watering with care, not
washing out the young plants
with floods of emotion nor letting
them damp out under the dank
chill of Indifference. We must
weed out the false growths, the
tares that choke, the hateful
smothering things that suck the
nourishment from the growing
| foods.
In our gardens let us study the
immutable laws of nature fulfilling
the destiny of life itself. Let us
weed out our unreasoning hatreds
and prejudices and throw them
on the compost heap or burn them
up. Let us grow only those plants
which nourish or give beauty -
and let us border our gardens
with the bright pinks of friendli-
ness, the fragrant mignonette of
understanding, the purple pansies
of thoughtfulness
And let us remember that a
garden blooms not for one alone,
but for all. AS Henry Van Dyke
said. let us make a garden for
our kind feelings with the gate
ever open to those who pass by.
The Tuesday, May 20. Oregonian
carried on its Editorial page an
extensive article by Paul Mallon,
on Local Plans for Reform and
Progress, as he cites the success
full results of local plans for re-
form, by the women folk in Our
Town, U. S. A.
The story is told by woma
in an Ohio suburb who said the
women in her community decided
to get away from old style meet
ing of clubs. which pass mourn
full resolutions about the atom
bomb, Russia, U. N and other
things they hear free lecturers
talk about and have turned toward
getting things done in the com
munity - things they really know
about and can do something about
They got behind bond issue
for new school, went to the
state legislature to increase teach
ers minimum pay, got after del
inquent taxes to raise some money
secured a new leader for the
boy scouts and started a Girl
Scout troop all of which is
just beginning to improve their
living. They have their usual run
of pickering and petty jealousis,
she says, but concludes from her
experience this far: Maybe this
is the way to world peace.
We are doing the same thing