Читать книгу A Little Garden Calendar for Boys and Girls - Paine Albert Bigelow - Страница 3

The Chief Gardener took his pencil and a piece of paper, and drew a little plan. He was not much of an artist, and sometimes when he drew things he had to write their names below, so that Prue and Davy could tell which was the rabbit and which was the donkey, and so they wouldn't think the kitten was a lion. But a window was not so hard, and then he could put names under the plants, too. On the next page is the picture that the Chief Gardener drew.

While he was making the picture, the children had been asking questions.

"Which is my side? Oh, what's that in the center – that tall plant? What are those vines? What will we have in those littlest pots? Oh, I know what those are! Those are morning-glories! Oh, goody!"

The last was from Prue, when she saw the artist putting the flowers along the vines that he had made climbing up the sides of her window.

"Yes," said the Chief Gardener, "those are morning-glories. You can have two vines in each pot, if you wish, and in that way get four colors – blue, white, purple, and pink. On Davy's side I have made climbing beans – scarlet and white runners – because they are very pretty, and also very good to eat. Davy's is a vegetable, and yours a flower, garden. Then, if Davy wants some flowers, and you get hungry, you can give him flowers for vegetables."

"Oh, that will be playing 'market,' won't it? I just love to play 'store' and 'going to market.'"

"My beans look a good deal like Prue's morning-glories, all but the flowers," said Davy.

"So they do, Davy; and they really look something the same in the garden. The leaves are nearly the same shape, only that the morning-glory's is more heart-shaped, and then beans have three leaves to the stem instead of one. Sometimes I have taken a morning-glory for a bean, just at first."

"What else have we?" asked Prue. "What are the little flowers, and the big one in the center?"

If the Chief Gardener felt hurt because his pictures did not show just what all the flowers were, without telling, he did not say so. He said:

"Well, in the center of your window, Prue, the big flower is made for a sunflower. Not the big kind, but the small western sunflower, such as we had along the back fence last summer. I think we can raise those in the house."

"I just love those," nodded Prue.

"Then those two slender plants are sweet-pease on your side, and garden-pease on Davy's. I put two in each window, because I know that you love sweet-pease, while Davy is very fond of the vegetable kind."

"I'd like a whole bushel of sweet-pease!" said Prue.

"And I wish I had a bushel of eating pease!" said Davy, "and I know that's sweet corn in the middle of my window. I just love it!"

"Yes," said the Chief Gardener, "and a little pot of radishes on one side, and a pot of lettuce salad on the other. Do you think you like that, Davy?"

"Can't I have strawberries, instead of the salad?" asked Davy.

"Strawberries don't bear from seed the first season, and I can't remember any fruit that does, unless you call tomatoes fruit, and I don't think a tomato vine would be quite pleasant in the house. It doesn't always have a sweet odor."

"Oh, well, I can eat lettuce," said Davy. "I can eat anything that's good."

"What are in my other little pots?" asked Prue for the third or fourth time.

"Well, one is meant for a pot of pansies – "

"Oh, pansies! pansies! Can't I have two pots of pansies?"

"You can have three or four plants in one pot – perhaps that will do. Then you can put nasturtiums in the other little pot. They are easy to grow, and very beautiful."

"Yes," said Prue, "I never saw anything so lovely as your nasturtiums by the house, last year."

The Chief Gardener looked at the sketch and tapped it with his pencil.

"Of course," he said, "your garden may not look just as I have it here. I don't draw very well, but I can make things about the right sizes to fit the windows, and that isn't so hard to do with a pencil as it is with the plants themselves. Plants, like children, don't always grow just as their friends want them to, and they are not always well behaved. You see – "

"But won't my bean vines and corn grow up like that?" asked Davy.

"And won't my morning-glories have flowers on them?" asked Prue.

"I hope they will, and we will try to coax them. But you see things may happen. Sometimes it comes a very cold night when the fires get low, and then plants are likely to chill, or perhaps freeze and die. We can only try to be very careful."

"How long will it take them to grow?" asked Davy.

"That is not easy to say. When everything is just right, some seeds start very soon. I have known radishes to pop up within three days, when the weather was warm and damp. Corn will sprout in about a week, in warm weather. Sweet-pease take a good deal longer, though we can hurry them a little by soaking them in warm water before we plant them. But we will talk about all that later. First, let's see about the pots and earth, and the seeds."