A Little Garden Calendar for Boys and Girls. Paine Albert Bigelow

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СКАЧАТЬ found that its pods held good food, they planted it both for its flowers and its usefulness, and valued it very highly, indeed. Just where all this happened I do not know. The honeysuckle and morning-glory now grow wild, both in Europe and the United States, and the scarlet runner is said to have been found wild in these countries, too, though I have never seen it except in gardens."

      "Papa," asked little Prue, "haven't my morning-glories any useful relations, like my sweet-pease?"

      "Why, yes, of course, let me see. The sweet potato belongs to that family. It is really about a first cousin, and useful drugs are made from the juice and root of a wild morning-glory. There are hardly any families that do not have both useful and ornamental members, and most of them, I am sorry to say, have troublesome ones, too, which we call weeds. But I must run away now, and all that will have to wait until another time."

      MARCH

      I

      STILL, IT WAS REALLY A RADISH

      AND so the month of February passed. Once the vines had started up the strings, they seemed to grow faster – almost as if they were running races, while the pease reached out and clung to the little twigs, and stood up straight and trim, like soldiers. The pansies and nasturtiums, too, and the lettuce and radishes all sent out more and more leaves, and began to hide the little pods. Davy was wild to pull up just one radish to see if it wasn't big enough to eat, but on the first day of March, when the Chief Gardener told him that he might do so, he was grieved to find only a pale little root, just a bit larger and a trifle pinker at the top, instead of the fat, round vegetable he had expected.

      Still, it was really a radish, Davy said, and he cut the thickest part in two and gave half to little Prue, who brought out her little dishes and set her table that Santa Claus left under the Christmas Tree. Then she put her piece on one little plate, and Davy's piece on another, and picked one tiny pansy leaf and one from the nasturtiums to make bouquets. And Davy picked a lettuce leaf – a very small lettuce leaf – for a salad, so that when their little table was all spread and ready, with some very small slices of bread, and some cookies – some quite large cookies – and some animal crackers, with milk for tea, it really looked quite fresh and pretty and made you hungry just to look at it.

      And, oh, yes, I forgot to say that there was some salt, the least little bit, in two of the tiniest salt dishes, and when they sat down at last to the very first meal out of their garden, all on the first day of March, when no other gardens around about had been planted yet, they dipped the tiny bits of radish into the tiny salt dishes, and nibbled it, just a wee bit at a time to make it last, and last, ever so long. And they said it tasted real radishy, and that the lettuce leaf, with one drop of vinegar and a speck of salt, was just fine. And little Prue held her doll and made her taste, too, and then the Chief Gardener and grown-up Prue must each have a tiny, tiny bite.

      And so, of course, Davy got to be really quite proud of his first radish, and said that after all it wasn't so bad for the first one, and that it was almost as big as a slate-pencil, in the thickest part. Pretty soon they might have a radish that would be big enough for each one to have quite a piece, and they would serve it on a whole leaf of salad. He felt sure that on his birthday, which would be on the tenth, they might really have something very nice.

      Then Prue was very quiet for a minute, thinking. By and by she asked:

      "And do you think I will have flowers for Davy's birthday? Davy can just pick his lettuce and radishes any time. My 'sturtiums and pansies are as big as his things, but I have to wait for them to bloom."

      "Why, that's so, Prue." The Chief Gardener went over to her pansies and looked at them very closely, but if he saw anything he did not speak of it. "Oh, well," he said, "if you don't have flowers for Davy's birthday, maybe you will for mine. It comes in March, too, you know. And then it's ten days yet till Davy's, and you never can tell what will happen in ten days."

      Alas, this was too true. It got quite warm during the second week of March, and the fire in the furnace was allowed to get low. Then one night it suddenly turned cold – as cold as January.

      "Oh, what makes some of my pea leaves look so dark?" asked Davy, as they stopped in the icy sitting-room for a moment, before hurrying through to the warm dining-room, where a big open fire was blazing.

      The Chief Gardener shook his head, rather solemnly.

      "I'm afraid they are bitten a little by Jack Frost," he said.

      "Oh, mine are all dark, too," whispered Prue, sorrowfully. "I am going to take them right out to the dining-room fire, and warm them."

      "And that would be the very worst thing you could do," said the Chief Gardener. "Let them stay right where they are, and we will heat the room slowly by opening the register just the least bit at a time, and draw the shades to keep out the sun. Perhaps if we do that the frost will come out so gently that the plants will not be killed. If you should warm them quickly they would be very apt to die, or at least to be badly injured."

      So they did as the Chief Gardener said, and kept the sitting-room quite cool all day. Then by another day the pease and all the others looked about as well as ever, only a few of the tenderest leaves withered up and dropped off because Jack Frost had breathed harder on these than on the others. As for the radishes and lettuce and pansies, they hadn't minded it the least bit, for they can stand a good deal of cold, and the corn and sunflower and nasturtiums didn't lose any leaves, so, perhaps, they didn't care for a touch of frost either.

      II

      THE SUN SWINGS LIKE A GREAT PENDULUM

      And now with each day there was brighter sunshine that came earlier and stayed longer. From a high east window they saw the sun rise each morning, when it was bright weather, and when they happened to be awake in time, and they saw how the big red ball crept farther and farther to the north, along the far fringe of trees, beyond all the houses which they could see.

      "It rose away down beyond that little white house on Christmas morning," said Davy, who was always up early. "I remember very well. Now it's got past the tall pine by the red barn. How much farther will it go?"

      The Chief Gardener pointed to a dim pencil-mark on the window-sill.

      "That was the angle of the shadow," he said, "on the twenty-first of June, and points to just where the sun will rise on the longest day of the year. You will have to be up very early to see it on that day." He pointed to another faint line. "That," he said, "was the angle on the twenty-first of December, the shortest day. The sun swings like a great pendulum from one point to the other and gives us winter and summer, and all the seasons between. Half-way between these marks is due east, and there the sun will rise on the twenty-first of March, which is the first day of spring."

      "Do you think our garden things are looking at it, and wishing it would hurry and get farther toward the June mark," said little Prue.

      "I think they are," the Chief Gardener answered. "They don't have eyes, as we have, but they have a way of seeing the sun, and of knowing just where it is, for most of them turn toward it as they grow, and some of them follow it all the way across the sky, from morning until night, and then turn back and wait for it to rise again. Your sunflower would do that, Prue, if it were out under the open sky."

      "Oh, it does now. I mean it looks toward the sun in the morning, with its top leaves, and keeps them turned toward it as far as it can."

      "So you have noticed that, have you? Well, I'm glad, for I have read in books – books written by very wise men – that the sunflower did not really do this, but that it was just an old fable. I think those wise men, perhaps, never saw the СКАЧАТЬ