第6章

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 snakegrass,--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 any 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 them roots somewhere; and that you cannot 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 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 cannot find him, and he flies away so that you cannot 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 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 to 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 cannot jump over.This, however, introduces a new element.I find that I have a zoological garden on my hands.It is an unexpected result of my little enterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris "Jardin des Plantes."