Back Aa

That House I Bought; A Little Leaf From Life

Close

[Pg 54] <h2>FIFTH PERIOD</h2> Buying a house when spring is young involves a lot of thought and anxiety, from which is developed a high nervous pressure. You alternate days of earnest application and enforced recuperation. One begins to learn, too, how much he doesn't know. Our yard, we found, was admirably adapted to quarry purposes, or would make an excellent clay bank. William told us he would level up the back lot and then put on a top soil and add a sort of compost of manure[Pg 55] and loam, in which we could plant things. I reserved a square 18 by 25 feet for a patent wire pigeon fly. "Why will you raise pigeons?" asked my wife. "I will raise pigeons," I replied with dignity, "for their giblets. I love pigeon giblets. You may have the squibs." "You mean squabs," said my wife. "I said squibs," I insisted stanchly. "You should say squabs," suggested my wife mildly. "I will have squibs or nothing," I replied, as becoming master of the house, and squibs it was. So be it known, we are going to raise squibs. "And I," said my wife, "shall raise[Pg 56] a tomato. The back of the lot is in an all-day sun, and tomatoes thrive in the sun." "And a turnip or two," I said. "If you plant a couple of turnips and let nature take its course, you'll have turnips all over the place. I've heard that turnips and belgian hares are noted for——" "And sweet peas," said my wife, "I shall train them against the house." "You cannot train a pea," I said scornfully. "You may train a pig, or a dog, but you cannot train a pea." One of the reasons women may not vote is that they say just such foolish things as that! Train a pea, indeed![Pg 57] I would as lief try to train a doorknob! With this little difficulty settled and out of the way, we made ready for serious work. We were rather late getting into our gardening, but made up in enthusiasm what we lacked in knowledge. With a piece of string and a few sticks, Yours Truly laid off a strip from the steps around the front porch to the side foundation; and then with a spade the same victim of circumstances broke his back in three places and wore two lovely blisters into the palms of his forepaws. Uncle Henry got his foot into the soil with a spade which, peculiarly[Pg 58] enough, was borrowed from one named Cain, who lives next door. That other Cain was the father of agricolists. Observe how history carries itself down the ages with consistency! And to complete the picture, observe me watering the earth with my sweat! Who in thunder ever invented the scheme of hiding pieces of brick, broken concrete, can tops, chunks of wood and the wreck of dishes right where a fellow wants to dig a garden? I like a practical joke myself, but that is going too far. In taking off the top soil there was a reasonably clear thoroughfare, but when the heft of my hoof went against the heel[Pg 59] of the spade for the first downward dash, it struck an impenetrable ambush of mason's findings. To make it worse, my wife stood on the porch cheerfully lending her aid in the form of advice. The man who owned the spade sat comfortably on his own porch reading The Evening Sun, and now and then glancing over the top at me with an amused smile. William came along. "Are you digging a garden?" he asked. "No," I replied idiotically; "I am running a footrace with an angle-worm!" The Duke of Mont Alto whizzed by in his automobile and waved his[Pg 60] hand. He tooted twice. I think he was kidding me. A friend, wending homeward with his dinnerpail, paused to observe that it was hot weather for digging. That self-consciousness that makes the whole world miserable on occasion seized me. From every window I imagined delighted neighbors looking on; in the twitter of the birds I heard merry giggles. But against and in spite of all these handicaps I persisted. I had as implements, in addition to Cain's spade—how I love that connection!—one table knife, one garden claw, one trowel, one sharp stick, one cracked hoe, and one perfectly good vocabulary. I went after the clay ground[Pg 61] with my hands in preference to any or all of the tools, and after half an hour of agony had removed, by actual count, one hundred and thirty-seven large stones and a small pile of pebbles, none of the pebbles weighing more than one pound. Then with my hands I crumbled the dirt chunks into powder and carefully sifted, smoothed off, rolled, tumbled, and otherwise adjusted the net product. Sweat is the fluid excreted from the sudoriferous glands of the skin. The sudoriferous glands of Yours Truly worked overtime. Yours Truly excreted, exuded, flooded. To be swimming around in your own atmosphere is a novel and sometimes[Pg 62] pleasurable experience. It's funny how a man bowls sixteen-ounce balls until his ribs crack and sits in a Turkish bath until each pore is a geyser, and yet when that same result is obtained by means of honest labor and by pushing a spade, he complains. I cut the lines of this little front garden deep and clean, and sloped the pulverized earth back so that there would be a perpetual irrigation in the ditch from the overflow. Rather clever idea, that. Then my wife got out the dwarf nasturtium seeds and we put them in a box, and the box in the conservatory, and myself into the shower. I don't see how a[Pg 63] farmer can get along without a shower in the house. We had about six hundred nasturtium seeds in envelopes bearing totally misleading pictures of what they will look like. I filled a box with rough earth and then pulverized it with an ice-pick. Then I stuck holes with my finger and put one seed in each hole. After my fingernails had developed into a screaming argument for the use of soap, my wife discovered that I had planted them too deep. "You'll have to take them all out and plant them again," she said. I scratched my head, standing thoughtfully on one foot the while. [Pg 64] "I will not," I said. "I will just scrape an inch of dirt off the top!" When it comes to inventing labor-saving devices, I'm a mental gatling. Nothing happened to those nasturtium seeds for five days. On the morning of the fifth day I heard a scream from my wife and rushed downstairs, to find her leaning over the nasturtium box. "Oooooeeee! Lookee!" she shrieked. I looked. Then I yelled. I grabbed her in both arms and danced around the conservatory like a plumb fool. Then we both ran back and leaned over the box, and raved. There were half a[Pg 65] dozen little greenish-white stalks sticking out, each top curved over like a dear little ingrowing nail. "Aren't they cute!" exclaimed my wife. "Cute!" I said, in disgust. "Why, my dear, they're not cute—they're wonderful!" I pushed the window up a little to give them air. My wife caught my arm excitedly and pulled it down again. "You mustn't do that," she said; "you'll freeze the sprouts!" "Sprouts," I said, "come on potatoes, onions, cabbages, and beets. These are not sprouts; they are bulbs!" [Pg 66] She said not a word, but got a book and showed me a picture of a bulb—a tulip bulb. "That," she said, "is a bulb. These are sprouts." If there's anything that makes home unhappy, it's that atmosphere of superiority in a woman. I tried to point out to her that she couldn't believe everything she saw in a book. "History," I said, "is continually changing. That may have been a bulb at the time of publication, but——" It was no use. I had to give in. She had the dots on Uncle Henry for sure, but you've got to give it to me[Pg 67]—you've just got to. How was this one? Listen: "Of course they're sprouts. I knew they were sprouts all the time. I was just trying to catch you." <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2