GARDEN ETHICS
by Charles Dudley Warner
I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetable
total depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it.
It is the bunch-, or joint-, or snake-grass,--whatever it is called.
As I do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do
as Adam did in his garden,--name things as I find them. This grass
has a slender, beautiful stalk: and when you cut it down, or pull
up a long root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or
two it will come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.
Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on. Extermination
rather helps it. If you follow a slender white root, it will be
found to run under the ground until it meets another slender white
root; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knot
somewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots,
every joint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only
way to deal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers,
and carefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will
take a little time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small
patch; but if you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have
no further trouble.
I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt to
pull up and root out sin in you, which shows on the surface,--if
it does not show, you do not care for it,--you may have noticed
how it runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sprouting
branch of these roots somewhere; and that you can not pull out one
without making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up your
whole being. I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off
at the top--say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your
religious clothes and face,--so that no one will see them, and
not try to eradicate the network within.
Remark.--This moral vegetable figure is at the service of
any clergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help
me at a day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need
apply.
I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualities
of vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that
(or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row
of bean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer the
trellis. When it came out of the ground, it looked around to see
what it should do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-pole
was empty. There was evidently a little the best chance of light,
air, and sole proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started for
the pole, and began to climb it with determination. Here was as
distinct an act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when he
goes into a forest, and, looking about, decides which tree he will
climb. And, besides, how did the vine know enough to travel in
exactly the right direction, three feet, to find what it wanted?
This is intellect. The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful
moral qualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral
action. I feel as if I were destroying a sin. My hoe becomes an
instrument of retributive justice. I am an apostle of nature. This
view of the matter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which
nothing else does, and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing
becomes, not a pastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so,
as the days and the weeds lengthen.
Observation.--Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening
is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingenious
instrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at
a great disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moral
double-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. He
burrows in the ground so that you can not find him, and he flies
away so that you can not catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs
go, but utterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant
close to the ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage
to himself. I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will
be a cholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small
loss), and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal
with the striped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently
watch for him. If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however,
takes time. It takes all day and part of the night. For he flieth
in the darkness, and wasteth at noonday. If you get up before the
dew is off the plants,--it goes off very early,--you can sprinkle
soot on the plant (soot is my panacea: if I can get the disease
of a plant reduced to the necessity of soot, I am all right); and
soot is unpleasant to the bug. But the best thing to do is set
a toad to catch the bugs. The toad at once establishes the most
intimate relations with the bug. It is a pleasure to see such
unity among the lower animals. The difficulty is to make the toad
stay and watch the hill. If you know your toad, it is all right.
If you do not, you must build a tight fence round the plants,
which the toad can not jump over. This, however, introduces a
new element. I find that I have a zoological garden. It is an
unexpected result of my little enterprise, which never aspired
to the completeness of the Paris "Jardin des Plantes."
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