A Garden with House Attached

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Sarah Warner Brooks. A Garden with House Attached

CHAPTER I "A Garden with House Attached"

CHAPTER II "The Man with the Hoe"

CHAPTER III. The "Lady's" Conservatory

CHAPTER IV. The House Garden. The Selection, Arrangement, and Culture of House Plants

CHAPTER V. At Easter-time

CHAPTER VI. Burglar-proof

CHAPTER VII. Perennials

CHAPTER VIII. Hollyhocks and Violets

CHAPTER IX. The Rose

CHAPTER X. Border Bulbs

CHAPTER XI. Annuals

CHAPTER XII. Climbers

CHAPTER XIII. Gardens "in Spain"

CHAPTER XIV. The Cerebral Processes of Plants

CHAPTER XV "Auf Wiedersehen"

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As before our advent at the "Mansion House" the man-of-all-work – after a long administration of its out-door affairs in the soft service of an easily-gratified mistress (the dear "Lady of the Wheeled Chair") had been abstracted from the family circle, the first step in our gardening was to call in the local "Man with the Hoe." This useful personage (let it here be said) was not – like Mr. Markham's terrible hero – "Brother to the ox." His "jaw" and "forehead" were all right, and, owing to the use of a hoe with proper length of handle, "The Weight of the Centuries" had not disturbed the contour of his back. One could not swear that he knew his "Plato" (alas, how few of us do!) and as to "The Swing of the Pleiades," it was not his immediate concern.

His it was, rather, to interest himself with the hoeing and edging of graveled walks, the weeding of kitchen and flower-gardens, the pruning of shrubs and vines, and the "making of two" lilies "grow where but one grew before." And so far from being (like Markham's man) "fraught with menace to the universe" our "Man with the Hoe" – in that small section of it within his immediate radius – was considered a positive blessing! Was it not on his good right arm that we – "the deserving poor" – to whom Providence had apportioned vegetable patches, flower-borders, and bits of lawn with intersecting graveled paths, and denied the luxury of a resident "hired man" – depended for the presentability of our "outdoors"? Poor Millet! one fancies his astonishment at Markham's terrible presentation of his peasant model! Himself of their guild, he painted his brother peasants in all honesty; and being neither pessimist nor anarchist, but working simply from the standpoint of the artist, has so made them immortal.

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Under this dispensation I consoled myself by nursing the invalids back to health and comparative prosperity, and, in late February, they amply repaid my care by abundant leafage and wealth of bloom.

Meantime, the Freesias, and Narcissi, the Hyacinths and Tritelias, came one after another from the dark cellar, to sit in the sun, and cheer our wintry days with odor and bloom, and give delight to the dear invalid Lady.

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