rst; and that what they wanted was light, and
not dirt.
Observation.--Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in a garden.
I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries. Splendid berry
the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone. This patch has grown into
such a defiant attitude, that you could not get within several feet of
it. Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast out long, prickly arms in
all directions; but the bushes were pretty much all dead. I have walked
into them a good deal with a pruning-knife; but it is very much like
fighting original sin. The variety is one that I can recommend. I think
it is called Brinckley's Orange. It is exceedingly prolific, and has
enormous stalks. The fruit is also said to be good; but that does not
matter so much, as the plant does not often bear in this region. The
stalks seem to be biennial institutions; and as they get about their
growth one year, and bear the next year, and then die, and the winters
here nearly always kill them, unless you take them into the house (which
is inconvenient if you have a family of small children), it is very
difficult to induce the plant to flower and fruit. This is the greatest
objection there is to this sort of raspberry. I think of keeping these
for discipline, and setting out some others, more hardy sorts, for
fruit.
SECOND WEEK
Next to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matter
is, what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order for
dinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in a lump
an endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless your garden is a
boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when I hoe it on hot
days), you must make a selection, from the great variety of vegetables,
of those you will raise in it; and you feel rather bound to supply your
own table from your own garden, and to eat only as you have sown.
I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to have
a garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself, but
every man to please his neighbor. I tried to have a garden that would
give general moral satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobody could
object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began to plant them
freely. But there was a chorus of protest against them. "You don't want
to take up your ground with potatoes," the neighbors said; "you can buy
potatoes" (the very thing I wanted to avoid d
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