ct with their love of barefoot play in
the dirt, and there are grown folks who still love it--but we call it
gardening. The sight and the feel and the smell of my brown garden beds
gives me a pleasure that is very deep and probably very primitive.

But there is another source of pleasure in my fall gardening--a pleasure
not of the senses but of the imagination.

For as I do my work my fancy is active. As I transplant my young
hollyhocks, I see them, not little round-leaved bunches in my hand, but
tall and stately, aflare with colors--yellows, whites, pinks. As I dig
about my larkspur and stake out its seedlings, they spire above me in
heavenly blues. As I arrange the clumps of coarse-leaved young foxgloves,
I seem to see their rich tower-like clusters of old-pink bells bending
always a little towards the southeast, where most sun comes from. As I
thin my forget-me-not I see it--in my mind's eye--in a blue mist of spring
bloom. Thus, a garden rises in my fancy, a garden where neither beetle,
borer, nor cutworm doth corrupt, and where the mole doth not break in or
steal, where gentle rain and blessed sun come as they are needed, where
all the flowers bloom unceasingly in colors of heavenly light--a garden
such as never yet existed nor ever shall, till the tales of fairyland come
true. I shall never see that garden, yet every year it blooms for me
afresh--after frost.

V

The Joys of Garden Stewardship

I sometimes think I am coming to classify my friends according to the way
they act when I talk about my garden. On this basis, there are three sorts
of people.

First there are those who are obviously not interested. Such as these feel
no answering thrill, even at the sight of a florist's spring catalogue. A
weed inspires in them no desire to pull it. They may, however, be really
nice people if they are still young; for, except by special grace, no one
under thirty need be expected to care about gardens--it is a mature taste.
But in the mean time I turn our talk in other channels.

Then there are the people who, when I approach the subject, brighten up,
look intelligent, even eager, but in a moment make it clear that what they
are eager for is a chance to talk about their own gardens. Mine is merely
the stepping-stone, the bridge, the handle. This is better than
indifference, yet it is sometimes trying. One of my dearest friends thus
tests my love