HEALTH IN THE GARDEN. A CHAPTER EXPRESSLY FOR WOMEN READERS

The writer of this book often finds women who seem "all run down," without being able to tell of any positive physical ailment. Inquiry generally develops the fact that they have overworked; that they have been confined to the house the greater part of the time, busy with household matters, and that in caring for others they have neglected to care for themselves. Though I am not an M.D. I take the liberty of prescribing for patients of this class. My prescription is a course of treatment in the garden. I insist on their getting out of doors, where the air is pure, and the sunshine bright and warm, and Nature is waiting to give her pleasant companionship to whoever signifies a desire to make her acquaintance.

There is health in the garden. But because one has to dig for it some persons prefer to keep on enjoying their old miserableness day after day and year after year. These are the incurables—the "chronic" cases that one cannot expect to do much with or for. But those who are willing to exert themselves in an effort to get back the tone that life has lost to a considerable extent will find that work in the garden is a better tonic than our doctors have a record of in their pharmacopoeia.

The earth fairly tingles with life in spring, and by putting ourselves in contact with it we absorb some of this vitality. We breathe in the wine of a new life, and we thrill with a thousand sensations that can come only from putting ourselves in close touch with Nature. You can tell a woman who needs a change from indoors to outdoors that she ought to take more exercise, but if you advise walking the chances are that she won't walk much. That kind of exercise doesn't appeal to her, and to make whatever kind of exercise she takes effective it must be something that affords her pleasure—something that she enjoys more than she does doing things from a "sense of duty," or simply because she has been told to do it. What is needed is some form of exercise that has an object in it—a definite object, rather than the more or less abstract one of "regaining health."

Give her a few packages of seeds and arouse in her the enthusiasm to have a garden and she will get the very best kind of exercise out of her attempt to carry out the plan, and the "definite object"—in other words, the garden—that she has in mind will keep her so delightfully busy that she will forget all about the health-features of the undertaking until it dawns upon her with startling suddenness some fine day that she "has got her health back." How or when it came she cannot tell you. All she knows is that she feels like a new woman. After that there will be no necessity to repeat the prescription, for one year's half-way successful work in the garden fixes "the garden habit" for all time. Nothing else can afford so much pleasure and exercise in happy combination as gardening, or exert a greater fascination over the person who allows herself to come under its influence.

I cannot begin to tell you what wonderful and delightful things I have learned in the garden. It is like having the Book of Nature opened before you and being taught its lore by the book's own author. You see magical things taking place about you every day, and every day there are more of them, to set you thinking and wondering. You may work until you are tired, but you do not realize physical wear and tear because your mind has something else that it considers of greater importance to busy itself over. Only after the work of the day is done will you become conscious of physical weariness, and then it is that you find out what the luxury of rest is; to fully appreciate rest we must first understand what it is to be really tired.

Lassitude, ennui—these do not give us a knowledge of genuine tiredness, therefore we are not in a condition to receive the full benefit of that rest which means a reaction of the physical system until we have done some kind of work that makes reaction necessary in order to establish a normal equilibrium. The rest that comes after getting really tired is so full of delightful sensations that we admit to ourselves that it is richly worth the price we have to pay for it.

There is a subtle charm about garden work from its very beginning. The seed we sow has a mystery wrapped up in it. The processes of germination are as fascinating as a fairytale. The development of the tiny seedling is a source of constant wonder to us. We watch for the first bud with eager impatience, and it has to be on the alert if it succeeds in opening without our being on hand to observe the performance. Spring begins the story, summer carries it forward, and autumn seems to complete it, but there is always the promise of the retelling of the story another year to keep us interested from the end of one season to the coming of another. Garden work is a sort of thousand and one days' entertainment, in which the interest is continually kept up—always something to look forward to—always something new.

The woman who grows weary over the monotony of household duties, but cannot put them entirely aside, will find relaxation in the garden. The change will rest her. And the woman who has no household duties to claim her attention needs something to get interested in. Both will find the necessary stimulus in growing flowers.

But in order to do this it must not be "played at." Set about it because you mean to accomplish something. A week after you have begun in earnest you will find yourself looking forward impatiently to the hour that takes you out of doors. You will forget about the gloves that you probably provided yourself with at the outset. You won't be bothered with veils. Tan will have no terrors for you. You will look upon dirt as something pleasing because you begin to see the possibilities in it. You will go back to the house with an appetite that makes plain bread and butter delicious.

Have a garden.

And do all the work in it yourself.

That's the secret of the benefit you are to get out of it.

THE END