A Little Garden Calendar for Boys and Girls

For now the days had become warm and bright. Already the children had been to the woods for hepaticas and violets, and everywhere the trees were tinged with green. The little garden had fairly filled the window so that now you had to look between the vines to see. Even in the garden outside, the Chief Gardener had made some more beds, and the first ones – the radishes and lettuce – were so well along, that early on the morning of big Prue's birthday he brought in some tiny radishes and some tender green salad leaves, almost as good, Davy said, as the first ones from his garden.

"These are for breakfast," he said. "You and Prue will have to supply the birthday dinner."

And that is just what they did.

First of all there was a lovely bunch of sweet-pease on big Prue's plate – these, of course, being from Prue's garden. There was a little bunch of pansies for Prue, while for the Chief Gardener and Davy there were round, bright sunflowers, one each for their buttonholes.

In the center of the table there was a wonderful little glass bowl of nasturtium flowers, that were so fresh and pretty that one must be hungry just to look at them.

Then it was Davy's turn.

In a pretty salad-dish on a little side table, there was a lettuce salad that looked like a great green bloom, and lying upon another smaller dish at the side, were four of the roundest, reddest radishes imaginable, the very last of the little garden crop. But now something came in in two small covered dishes, something that steamed, and behold, when they were opened, in one were Davy's beans, ever so many, white and mottled, all cooked and hot and ready to be eaten, and in the other Davy's pease! But that was not all. Still another steaming dish came in, and when that was opened, everybody fairly shouted, "Oh, my!" for in that dish was Davy's corn! Think of it! Two whole ears of corn, one large one to be divided between little Prue and Davy.

Never was there such a birthday dinner as that. The flowers were beautiful, the beans and the pease splendid, while the corn, why the corn was just the sweetest and best corn that was ever raised. They all said so, and Davy got excited and said he was going to plant a thousand acres of corn just as soon as the Chief Gardener would let him.

And then they began to plan for the new garden of summer-time, which was to be made outside.

Most of their things they thought they would take out of the windows, and reset in the open garden, but, of course, there were no radishes or lettuce to take now, and the corn and pease were no longer of value, while the vines would be hard to move. So they decided to take out all but the vines. Prue could reset her pansies and nasturtiums and sunflower, and the sweet-pease, which would bloom all summer, perhaps, leaving the morning-glories and scarlet runner in the windows, to bloom as long as they would.

"My windows would look very bare without even the vines left of the little gardens," said big Prue, "but it is getting so green outside, that we won't miss them so much now, and, of course, everything must go, sometime."

"And we are going to have them next year," said Davy. "We will begin then earlier, and have other things, too, but first we are going to have ever and ever so much outside, in the real garden. Prue is going to have flowers, and I am going to have, oh, ever and ever so many good things to eat!"

And so with big Prue's birthday dinner, the little garden in the windows saw its greatest glory, and the month of April, which had been its happiest season, came to a happy end.

MAY

I

SWEET-PEASE HAVE TO BE PUT DOWN PRETTY DEEP

IT was May and the apple-trees were in bloom. In the garden outside was the Chief Gardener, with Prue and Davy – one on each side – hoeing and digging and raking. The early plantings, like radishes and lettuce and pease, were already well along, but it was just time, now, for a second planting of these things, and for the first planting of such things as corn and beans, and most of the kinds of flowers.

Some sweet-pease, it is true, little Prue had planted earlier, one warm day in April, when the Chief Gardener had dug for her a trench along the fence, and she had put in the pease, one at a time, and just so far apart, so that they wouldn't crowd, she said, or get in each other's way. The trench was quite deep – most too deep, Prue thought, but then sweet-pease have to be put down pretty deep, and the soil dragged up to the vines as they grow, to give them strength. Now, she planted some sweet-williams, and pansies, and mignonettes, and alyssum, and had brought most of her pots from the house, and set the things in a little row by themselves, so that they might still be company as they had been through the long winter and late spring.

Davy, too, had made a fine garden, with six hills of sweet-corn, one hill of cantaloupes, a row of pease, a little row of onions, lettuce, and radishes, besides a very small row of sweet herbs, such as marjoram, fennel, and thyme. Each garden was fully eight feet square, which is really quite a good-sized garden, when you remember that it must be kept nicely tilled and perfectly clean of weeds.

"I think I will have a hill of cucumbers, too," said Davy. "I like cucumbers."

"But they won't do, near your cantaloupes," said the Chief Gardener. "You see, cucumbers and cantaloupes belong to the same family, and one of the most twining, friendly families I know of. Each member left to itself is very good in its way, and often ornamental, but let them run together ever so little and before you know it they begin to mix up and look like one another, and even have tastes alike. A cucumber-hill there, Davy, would spoil the taste of your cantaloupes, and the cucumbers would not be good either. It's the same way with watermelons, and citrons, and pumpkins, and all the rest of the gourds."

"Gourds!"

"Why, yes, they all belong to the Gourd family, and they will all look and taste like gourds if you give them a chance. It's really, of course, because the pollen of one blows into the bloom of the other, and the members of the Gourd family are so closely related that pollens blend and mix. Different kinds of corn will do the same thing. That is why we have our popcorn as far from our sweet corn as we can get it. There are other families that do not mix at all. We grow apples and plums and peaches and roses, side by side – even different kinds of each – and they never mix."

"But apples and plums and peaches are not roses, are they?" asked little Prue.

"Just as much as strawberries, and pears and quinces are," said the Chief Gardener.

The children looked at him rather puzzled.

"How about blackberries and raspberries?" asked the Chief Gardener. "Don't you think they look a little, a very little, like wild roses, only the flowers are smaller and white, instead of pink?"

"Why, yes, so they do!" nodded Davy.

"And doesn't the bloom of a blackberry look like the bloom of a plum, and a cherry, and a pear, and an apple, and all those things?"

"A good deal," said Prue, "and wild crab blossoms look just like little wild roses, and they smell so sweet, too."

"And the wild crab has thorns like a rose, only not so sharp," said Davy.

"And a rose has little apples after the bloom falls," said the Chief Gardener. "I have known children to eat rose apples, though I don't think they could be very good."

Davy had run down to the corner of the garden and came back now with something in his hand. It was a wild rose that grew by the hedge there; a pretty, single pink blossom. Then he stopped and picked a strawberry bloom, and one from the apple-tree that hung over the fence. These he brought over to the little bench where Prue and the Chief Gardener had sat down to rest.

The Chief Gardener took them and held them side by side.

"There, you will see they are all very much alike," he said.

The children looked at them. Then Prue ran across the lawn and came back with a little yellow bloom.

"Isn't this flower one of them, too?" she asked. "Some people call it wild strawberry, and some sink-field."

"That," said the Chief Gardener, "is cinque-foil. I suppose the name sink-field comes from that. It is French, and means five-leaved, but sink-field is not so bad a name either, for it often grows in moist places. Yes, that is a rose, too."

"Then buttercups must be roses," said Davy. "They look just like that."

"No, Davy, that is one place where our eyes must look sharp. Can you find a buttercup?"

"Oh, plenty," said Prue, and ran to bring them.

Then the Chief Gardener took a buttercup and an apple-bloom, and held them side by side. There was a difference, but not very great. Then he took his knife, and divided the blossoms in half.

"Now look again," he said, and he took a small magnifying-glass from his pocket and held it so that they could see. "The petals and the sepals (that make the corolla and the calyx, you know) are a good deal the same," he said, "but, you see, there are many more stamens in the buttercup, and then the seed pod or pods, which we call the pistils, are not at all alike. The buttercup has a lot of tiny pods or pistils inside the flower, while the apple-bloom has one round pod below the flower, and this forms the fruit. The buttercup does not make fruit. It belongs to the Crowfoot family, and is a cousin of the hepatica and of the larkspur, which you would not think from the shape of the larkspur's bloom. The Crowfoot family is not so beautiful nor so useful as the Rose family, which is, perhaps, the most useful family next to the Grass family, and certainly one of the most beautiful families in the world."

"I think the Rose family is nicer than the Grass family," said Prue.

"Oh, no," said Davy. "We couldn't do without wheat and corn, and we could do without fruit and flowers – that is, of course, if we had to," he added with a sigh.

"I couldn't," said little Prue. "I like flowers best, and jelly and jam to eat on my biscuits, and you like all those things, too, Davy, and shortcake, and berry pie."

"Of course! but how would you have biscuits and shortcake without wheat to make the flour of?"

The Chief Gardener smiled.

"We can't decide it," he said. "They go together. It is said that we shall not live on bread alone, and I don't think we could live altogether on fruit and flowers, though I believe some people try to do so. Jam and bread go together, and a shortcake must have both crust and fruit to be a real shortcake. Wheat fields and orchards march side by side, and taking these together we have peach pudding and apple tart."

Prue was looking out over her little garden where the smoothly patted rows of beds made her quite happy, just to see them.