The Idyl of Twin Fires

  Chapter XXI

  AUTUMN IN THE GARDEN

  I SPENT considerably more money in July and August. Some of the itemswould be regarded as necessities even by our rural standards; somemy farming neighbours would deem a luxury, if not downright folly. Iwas a green farmer then; I am a green farmer still; but as I beganto get about the region a little more that first summer, especially athaying time, I was struck with the absurd waste of machinery broughtabout by insufficient care and lack of dry housing, and I began to dosome figuring. All my rural neighbours, even Bert, left their ploughs,harrows, hay rakes, mowers, and even their carts, out of doors inrain and sun all summer, and many of them all winter. A soaking rainfollowed by a scorching sun seemed to me, in my ignorance, a mosteffective way of ruining a wagon, of shrinking and splitting hubs, ofloosening the fastenings of shafts even in iron machinery. Neitherdo rusted bearings wear so long as those properly protected. I began tounderstand why our farmers are so poor, and I sent for Hard Cider.

  Just behind the barn he built me a lean-to shed, about seventy-five feetlong, open toward the east, and shingled rainproof. It cost me $500, butevery night every piece of farm machinery and every farm wagon wentunder it, and the mowing-machine was further covered with a tarpaulin.For more than a year my shed was the only one of the kind in Bentford,and that next winter I used to see machinery standing behind barns,half buried in snow and ice, going to pieces for want of care. I verilybelieve that the New England farmer of to-day is the most shiftlessmortal north of the Mason and Dixon line--and he hasn't hookworm for anexcuse.

  My next expenditure was for a cement root cellar, which scarcely needsdefence, as I had no silo on the barn, and it would not pay to installone for only two cows. But the third item filled Mike with scorn. I hadbeen making him milk the cows out of doors for some weeks, taking atip from one of the big estates, and keeping an eye on him to see thathe washed his hands properly and put on one of the white milking coats Ihad purchased. His utter contempt for that white rig was comical, butwhen I told him that I was going to have a cork and asphalt brickfloor laid in the cow shed, he was speechless. He had endured thewhite apron, and the spectacle of the tuberculin test (the latterbecause the law made him), but an expensive floor in the barn wastoo much. He gave me one pitying look, and walked away.

  The floor was laid, however, and when it was completed, and the drainageadjusted, Hard Cider trimmed up the supports of the barn cellar door andthe two cellar window frames behind, and built in substantial screens.I didn't tell Mike about them till they were all in. Then I showedthem to him, and told him he was to keep them closed under penaltyof his job, and he was further to sprinkle chloride of lime on themanure once a week.

  "Well, I niver seen screens on a barn before," said he, "and I guessnobody else iver did. Shure, it's to be spendin' your money azy ye are.Are yez goin' to put in a bathroom for the horse?"

  Bert was almost as scornful of the screens as Mike, though he understoodthe cork-asphalt floor, having, in fact, unconsciously persuaded me toinstall it by telling me how the cows of a dairyman in the next townhad been injured by slipping on a concrete floor. My floor had theadvantages of concrete, but gave the cows a footing. There had neverbeen screens on a barn in Bentford before, however, nor any chloride oflime used. This was too much for Bert. But Mrs. Bert was interested.After our screens had been on ten days and the barn cellar had beenlimed, Mrs. Pillig pointed out that the number of flies caught on thefly paper on the kitchen door had decreased at least 400 per cent."And I think what's there now come down from your place," she addedto Mrs. Bert. The next thing we knew, Bert was talking of screening hisstable. Truth compels me to admit, however, that he never got beyond thetalking stage.

  In the face of these expenditures, our garden expenses were a mere song,yet we had begun to plant and plan for the following year as soon as thepool was done. We knew we were green, and we did not scorn the adviceof books and still more of our best practical friend--the head gardeneron one of the large estates, who knew the exactions of our climate andthe conditions of our soil.

  "Plant your perennial seeds in as rich and cool a place as you can,"he told us, "and expect to lose at least three fourths of your larkspur.When your foxglove plants are large enough to transplant, make longtrenches in the vegetable garden, with manure at the bottom and fourinches of soil on top, and set in the plants. Do it early in Septemberif you can, so that they can make roots before our early frosts. Thenyou'll have fine plants for bedding in spring. If you buy any plants,get 'em from a nursery farther north if possible. They have to be veryhardy here."

  We went through the seed catalogues as one wanders amid manifoldtemptations, but we kept to our purpose of planting only the simpler,more old-fashioned blooms at present. In addition to the bulbs, whichcame later, we resolved to sow pansies, sweet William, larkspur,Canterbury bells, foxglove, peach bells, Oriental poppies, platicodon,veronica, mallow (for backing to the pool especially), hollyhocks, phlox(both the early variety, the divaricata, blooming in May, and, ofcourse, the standard decussata. The May phlox we secured in plants).All these seeds were carefully planted in the new beds between thepool and the orchard, where we could water them plentifully, andStella, with the instincts of the true gardener, babied and tended thoseseedlings almost as if they were human. Without her care, probably,they would never have pulled through the dry, hot weeks which followed.

  We used to walk down to see them every morning after breakfast, whenStella watered them, dipping the water from the pool and sending Antonyand Cleopatra scurrying. Antony and Cleopatra were the goldfish whichthe Eckstroms, true to their promise, had sent us. The poor thingswere unnamed when they arrived, but their aspect--the one dark andsinuous, the other pompously golden--betrayed their identity. Stellacalled a few days after their arrival, to convey our thanks--carefullywaiting till she saw the Eckstroms driving out in their car! Theircuriosity having been satisfied regarding us, and our thanks havingbeen rendered to them, further intercourse lapsed. We have never triedto maintain relations with those of our neighbours who bore us, orwith whom we have nothing in common. Life is too short.

  Not only did Stella water the seedlings religiously, but she kept thesoil mulched and the weeds out, working with her gloved hands in theearth. All the seeds came up well save the phlox, with which we hadsmall luck, and the _Papaver Orientalis_, with which we had no luck atall. Not a seed came up, and not a seed ever has come up in our soil. Wehave had to beg the plants from other people. Even as the gardenerpredicted, the tender little larkspur plants mysteriously died. Weringed them with stiff paper, we surrounded them with coal ashes, weeven sprayed them with Bordeaux and arsenate of lead. But still theywere devoured at the roots or the tops, or mysteriously gave up theghost with no apparent cause. We started with two hundred, and whenautumn came we had just thirty left.

  "Still," said Stella cheerfully, "thirty will make quite a braveshow."

  "If they survive the winter," said I gloomily. "I've not the patienceto be a gardener."

  "It _is_ a good deal like reform!" Stella replied.

  As the busy autumn days came upon us, Twin Fires took on a new aspect,and one to us greenhorns indescribably thrilling. In the first place,our field of corn rustled perpetually as we walked past it, and downin the greenish-golden lanes beneath we could see the orange gleam ofpungkins (I shall so spell the word lest it be mispronounced by theignorant). Great ears of the Stowell's evergreen were ripe, for Mike'sprediction about the early frost had not come true, and we ate thesucculent food clean to the cob every day at dinner, besides sellingmany dozens of ears to the market. In the long light of afternoon,Stella loved to go along the path by the hayfield wall and then turn inamid the corn, losing sight at once of all the universe and wanderingin a new world of rustling leaves. She felt, she said, just as Alicemust have felt after she had eaten the cake; and once a rabbit boundedacross her foot, to her unspeakable delight. She looked to see if he haddropped his gloves!

  Then there was the potat
o field. We were eating our own new potatoes now.Often Stella dug them.

  "It seems so funny to go and dig up a potato," she declared. "I'vealways felt that potatoes _just were_. But to see the whole process ofgrowth is quite another matter. Oh, John, it makes them so much nicer!"

  "Especially when you are getting seventy-five cents a bushel for them,"I laughed.

  The loaded tomato vines, too, with the red fruit hanging out from thewire frames and sending a pungent odour into the surrounding air,appealed to Stella endlessly. I used to see her now and then, as Iglanced from the south room of a morning, eating a raw tomato like anapple, her head bent forward so that the juice would not spoil her dress.

  And there were the apples! Already a red astrachan tree invited us onevery trip to the brook, and other old trees were bearing fast reddeningfruit. I had wanted to set out more orchard, but we agreed that wecould not afford it that year, if we were to build chicken houses againstthe spring, so I reluctantly gave up the idea. But our old trees, inspite of (or perhaps because of) my spring pruning, were doing fairlywell. We had enough for baked apples and cream all winter, anyhow,Stella reckoned, smacking her lips at the thought.

  Every day, on our way to the pool, one or the other of us took a hoealong and scraped a tree for five minutes, gradually getting the oldbark off, and making a final preparation for a thorough spraying thenext winter just so much easier. I used to prune a bit, too, in sparemoments, so that by the end of the summer considerable renovation hadbeen accomplished.

  And now came the foxglove transplanting. According to the gardener'sdirections, we took two long rows where the early peas had stood (andwhere Mike had disobeyed my instructions to spade the vines under, thatbeing a form of green manuring your old-time gardener will not see thevalue of, I have discovered), trenched them, put in manure and soil, andset out at least 300 foxglove plants six inches apart. It was a cool,cloudy day, and they stood up as though nothing had happened. Then,as an experiment, we moved scores of tiny hollyhocks from the crowdedseed beds into their permanent position as a screen between the southkitchen windows and the sundial lawn, and as a border on the west sideof the same lawn. They, too, were quite unaffected by the change.

  Meanwhile, we ordered our bulbs--hyacinths, daffodils (which in ourclimate refuse to take the winds of March with beauty, cowardly waitingtill May), a few crocuses, _Narcissus poeticus_, Empress narcissus,German iris, Japanese iris, and Darwin tulips. We ordered the iris andtulips in named varieties.

  "They have such nice names," said Stella, "especially the Japaneseiris--Kimi-no-megumi, Shirataki, Momochiguma! The tulips are nice, too.Here is Ariadne and Kate Greenaway hobnobbing with Professor Rauwenhoff!What's the use of having plants that aren't named? We must show themas much respect as Antony and Cleopatra, or Epictetus and Luella!"

  We also experimented with lilies--lemon lilies for the shady north sideof the house, tigers for the border beyond the pool, and two or three ofthe expensive Myriophyllums, just to show that we, too, could go in forthe exotic, like our neighbours on the big estates.

  When the bulbs came, in October, we looked at the boxes sadly.

  "Whew!" said Stella, "you can't be lazy and have a garden, can you?"

  "I don't work to-morrow, I guess," said I. "Shall we ask Mike's Joeto help us?"

  "Never!" said my wife. "We'll put these bulbs in ourselves. If I hadany help, I should feel like the Eckstroms, which God forbid!"

  So the next day at seven-thirty we began. We ringed the pool withGerman and Japanese iris, alternated for succession, and planted afew Japanese both below and above the pool, close to the brook. We setthe _Narcissus poeticus_ bulbs where, if they grew, the flowers couldlook at themselves in the mirror below the dam. The Empress narcissus weplaced on both sides of the pool just beyond the iris. On each side ofthe bench we placed a bulb of our precious Myriophyllums, and put thetigers into the borders close to the shrubbery on both sides. Thehyacinths went into the sundial beds, the Darwins into the beds at thebase of the rose aqueduct, a few crocuses into the sundial lawn, andthe daffodils here and there all over the place, where the fancy struckus and the ground invited.

  "Now, I'm going to label everything, and put it on a map besides,"cried Stella, "except the daffodils. I want to forget where they are. Iwant surprises in the spring. Oh, John, do you suppose they'll come up?"

  "Yes, I suppose they will," I laughed, "some of them. But do yousuppose we'll ever get the kinks out of our backs?"

  "I'm willing to go doubled up the rest of my life, for a garden ofdaffodils all my own," she cried.

  "'And then my heart with pleasure thrills And dances with the daffodils----'

  It was very thoughtful of old Wordsworth, and Shakespeare, and Masefield,and all the rest to write nice things about the daffodils, wasn't it,John? I wonder if gardens would be so wonderful if it weren't for alltheir literary suggestions, and the lovely things they remind you of?Gardens have so much atmosphere! Oh, spring, spring, hurry and come!"

  I forgot my lame back in her enthusiasm, and later, when the apples weregathered, the potatoes dug, the beets and carrots in the root cellar,our own sweet cider foamed in a glass pitcher on our table, and thefirst snow spits of December whistled across the fields, we put a littlelong manure over the irises and other bulbs, and pine boughs over theremaining perennials, and wrapped the ramblers in straw, with almost asmuch laughing tenderness as you would put a child to bed.

  The cows were back in the stable, and Mike had revised his opinionof cork-asphalt floors when he realized the ease of cleaning with ahose; the potatoes and apples and onions and beets and carrots forour family use were stored in barrels and bins in the cellar, or spreadon shelves, or buried in sand. The vegetable garden was newly ploughed,and manure spread on the hayfield. Antony and Cleopatra had beencaptured and brought into the dining-room, where they were to spendthe winter in a glass bowl. Epictetus and Luella and Gladys and Gaynorhad all burrowed out of sight into the ground. The pageant of autumn onour hills was over, only an amethyst haze succeeding at sunset time.Wood fires sparkled on our twin hearths. The summer residents haddeparted. Our first Thanksgiving turkey had been eaten, though a greatstone crock of Mrs. Pillig's incomparable mincemeat still yielded upits treasures for ambrosial pies.

  "And now," said Stella, "I'm going to find out at last what a countrywinter is like!"

  "And your friends are pitying you down in town," said I. "Don't youwant to go back to them till spring?"

  Stella looked at the fires, she looked out over the bare garden andthe ploughed fields to the dun hillsides, she listened a moment to thewhistle of the bleak December wind, she looked at me.

  In her eyes I read her answer.