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MULCH

Toward spring the books on gardening begin to come into the library, and I look them over with fresh enthusiasm. Mrs. Bunkum is no longer my favorite author in this field, but her sister writers are very dear to my heart.

There is Mrs. Reginald Creasus. I seize her latest volume with the eagerness of a child. I like to see the pictures of the new marble bench which she has imported from Pompeii and set up at the end of the Rose Walk. Then she usually has a new sculptured group—a fountain, or some other little trifle by Rodin or St. Gaudens, which looks so well amidst the Japanese iris.

After gazing at these illustrations for a while, I go home and observe the red woodshed, and I declare it looks altogether different. It is wonderful how discontented with your lot you can get by reading Mrs. Creasus's books on gardening. Sometimes I think that I am making a mistake in voting the Republican ticket, year after year. Mr. Debs may be right, after all.

This year Mrs. Creasus calls her volume "The Simple Garden." From it I gathered that anyone who knows anything at all will not pass the summer without an Abyssinian hibiscus unfolding its lovely blooms somewhere on the place. They are absolutely necessary, in fact. You have to be careful with them—when you plant them, that is. The fertilizer which they require has to be fetched from the island of Ascension. I calculated that by going without food or clothes for two years I could just about buy and support one of them.

I wish Mrs. Creasus would write a book about the complicated garden. I should like to see it.

Just as I had bought a garden hose, along came Mrs. Creasus's book, remarking casually that it is well to have the whole garden laid out with underground water-pipes, placed at least six feet below the surface, to avoid frost. Two or three private reservoirs are, of course, an essential. I wonder what Mrs. Creasus keeps in these reservoirs. I suppose it is champagne, but I wouldn't like to ask.

Scotch gardeners are going out, she says. The Chinese are the only kind, although they demand—and get—forty to fifty dollars more per month than the others. I made a note to employ no more Scotchmen, and then I looked to see what she had to say about sweet-peas.

She was ever so enthusiastic about them. No family should be without sweet-peas, she said. You dig a trench, and you put in four or five different kinds of dressing, separated by layers of earth, and then you plant the peas, and as fast as they come up you keep discouraging them by putting more earth and things on top, and then you build a trellis for them to run on, sinking the posts not less than four feet, and there you are.

Only—you must mulch them.

Mulch! That struck me as a pleasant word. It had a nice squshy sound about it. I thought it would be so nice, on hot evenings, to go around mulching and mulching.

I went to the dictionary to look it up and find out what it meant, but just at that minute General Bumpus came into my office. He was interested to see Mrs. Creasus's book lying open on my desk—he is president of the library board, and he is another gardening enthusiast.

"Going to have some sweet-peas?" he asked, observing the picture.

"Yes," I replied, "I thought I would."

"Well," he said, "that's all right. Only you must mulch them good and plenty."

"Is that necessary?" I inquired, looking him straight in the eye.

"Oh, yes—absolutely."

Before we could say anything more about it, someone came in to tell the general that Mrs. Bumpus said the horses were uneasy, and that she wished he would come out. He went away, and then Miss Davis came to get me—there was a man in the reading-room, who wanted me to give him permission to break some rule or other. So I forgot all about the sweet-peas until I was on my way home. Then I stepped in at the seed shop to get the peas.

Philip Morris was there, buying a lawn-mower. He had paid for it, and was starting toward the door, when he saw me.

"Hullo! Buying sweet-peas?"

"Yes. Have you ever raised any?"

"Tried to. One year they didn't come up at all, and another year the cut-worms got 'em, and another they just sort of sickened and died. But I didn't mulch 'em—that was the trouble."

"Well, why didn't you mulch 'em?"

"Why, I would have, but—George! that's my car! Good-night!"

And he rushed out.

I did not like to display my ignorance before the dealer, so I merely took the peas and started up the street with them. Inside of two minutes I met Miss Abernathy. She has a marvelous flower-garden. I stopped her and told her of my purchase.

"Oh, you're going to have sweet-peas! I envy you. I've never been very successful with them."

"What happened to them?"

"I don't know. They seemed to get disappointed—they need very rich soil."

"Maybe," I suggested tentatively, "you didn't mulch 'em."

"Oh, that doesn't make any difference."

"Doesn't it?"

"Not a bit."

And she bade me good evening, and passed on.

When I reached home and had eaten dinner, I told Jane that I was going to plant some sweet-peas. I described the process to her. She was very much interested, and offered to help. I dug the trench and put in the peas. I thought some bushes might do instead of Mrs. Creasus's trellis.

"Now," I said, "all they need is to be mulched."

"To be what?" asked Jane.

"Mulched. You always have to mulch sweet-peas; that is, Mrs. Creasus and General Bumpus, and Philip Morris say so, but Miss Abernathy thinks not."

"How do you do it?"

"Jane, do you mean to say that you do not know how to mulch?"

"Of course I don't. How do you do it?"

I felt in my pocket.

"Can't you roll me a cigarette? There's some paper and tobacco in the house—on my desk."

Jane went dutifully away, and when she returned, I lighted the cigarette.

"There," I said, "they're all mulched—I did it with this hoe."

"Is that what it means?"

All this happened in April, and now it is August, and the sweet-peas still maintain a somewhat sullen appearance. I wonder if Miss Abernathy was right, after all. Perhaps I did wrong to mulch them,—at least, so savagely.