January 1. This is the first New Year's we have ever spent in our new home or in any home we could call our own. Think of that, Olde Booke, if you will.

It's all over but the shouting. All that remains is the last final chore of paying off the mortgage. That? Poof—a mere nothing! Only 337 more or less monthly payments and the place is ours. The baby—now three years old—is, thank goodness, paid for.

Limp and worn out, hair half lost and the rest turning gray, bond box empty, bank account but a tradition, overcoat three winters old and going strong, no new suit last year and maybe none this year, wife and child in rags, life insurance pledged to the hilt, my half-

brother-to-a-flivver five years' old in December and at 60,000 miles, frequent bean soup or corn meal mush and supper instead of sirloin and dinner, good-by to operas, neighborhood movies instead of orchestra rows, tux and full dress embalmed in cedars of Lebanon for the period of reconstruction—I face the new year triumphantly. I'm living in my own home.

I've won the fight of the century or the ages. Bless my soul, but I know now how the caveman felt when he ousted the saber-tooth by the tail and took possession of that hillside hole in the rocks. Or how the Children of Israel felt when at last they encamped in the Promised Land.

Last night we did our usual New Year's Eve chore. Maggie—my wife—cast up our account book for the year, while I made out the annual inventory of our worldly goods. Tonight I audited her accounts.

The debit and credit didn't meet by more than $2,000. Queer thing, too, the books show $2,000 more than we actually had. Back tracking, I found that in keeping record of the expenditures of building the new house, she

had entered twice a sale of bonds to the value of $2,000. There was one month when the amusement column seemed abnormally high. I found she had listed "Moving expense— $25. Moving may have been amusement to her, but I don't recall it that way.

Dear me—look at that column of expenses for plants—$757.63 I spent last year, a lot more than we could afford. I don't see where we found all the money.

To explain, this included a double row of shrubs that is 200 feet long, to make a shrub border along the east side of the lawn with a good many rather rare and choice things, a hedge of Japanese barberry more than 100 feet long across the back to separate the lawn from the garden. There were a few evergreens.

It included, too, about 40 varieties of peonies ranging from some at 50 cents up to Le Cygne at—let's see, was it $10? It included perhaps 20 varieties of roses of various kinds, mainly climbing, hybrid perpetuals and all of the new Van Fleet hybrids, such as Dr. E- M. Mills and Sarah Van Fleet.

Iris of many kinds I bought. Then perennials—here is where I spent money galore for plants and seeds, until I now have more than 300 varieties. I have run riot on perennials. There has been rhubarb, asparagus, strawberries, currant bushes, grapevines—for even a Dirt Gardener must live and eat. But when I look at the barren places on the lawn and at the many things yet in the catalogues—alas, I have only begun.

January 3.    Long years ago I used to read in    I one of the old McGuffey readers:   |

"Backward, turn backward, O Time in thy flight; Make me a child again just for tonight."

Donald, three and a half years old, is, poor little chap, sick in bed with a sore throat and high fever. Last night he had the earache. We had no remedy in the house that would work. So I brought him, wrapped in a blanket, into niy study and as I sat before the fireplace and held him in my arms, I smoked my j old cob pipe and blew smoke into his ear. In just such way had my father done it long years ago, back in the little tenant farm farmhouse

in ancestral Slabhollow, when I was a little tot as Donald is. Somehow it didn't help Donald and the tears kept rolling down his cheeks. But he didn't cry, for he is a brave little

fellow.

It was zero weather out, a bitter wind was

blowing, but I bundled up and hied over to a neighbor's to borrow a vial of earache medicine that the doctor had given the neighbor children. I brought it home, warmed it and put a few drops in Donald's ear.

In a little while he slept. But I sat in my chair by the fire and dozed until three in the morning, while I kept the medicine warm and ready to be used again. He did not awaken.

January 6. "Daddy, I want you to make me a stotler," said Donald this afternoon about four, when it came time to relax and exercise.

"What's a stotler?" said I.

"Oh, it's something I thought up that has a piece going this way and one going that way and a thing across the top and you know, it has Handles an' things. I told my little boys down in Quincef about it and they made one."

So when four o'clock came and we would have gone to the garden had it been warm we went instead to the workbench in the garage and made a "stotler." It turned out to be a V-shaped sled to make paths in the snow. It didn't have the handles an' things, but it suited him. We painted it green. Quincef is a magical place Donald has created in his imagination, about which he makes up stories.

January 12. No snow yet. There has been really none all winter. Each night freezing. Each day thawing. I looked at my newly planted shrubs and roses and my heart failed. They are heaving right out of the ground. Out I went and re-set a few things in the mud that had been planted in the most approved manner last fall.

Then with wheelbarrow and fork, I hauled strawy litter that neighbor Dakan had dumped out of his poultry house and mulched around the roses and shrubbery and over the peonies and tulips. The ground was wet and soggy. It wasn't the ideal time nor ideal way,

[28]

but it is the best I can do.    I don't have the money to do it right.

January 13-      y, why can't I have a sandpile in the garage so I can play in sand when it's cold and the sand frozen out of doors?" asked Donald as I came down from the study late this afternoon.

Out in the garage was a box about three feet square and about ten inches high, in which a shipment of some shrubs had come from a nursery last fall. This we rigged up on the box in which the roses had come and filled it with sand. Presto, a garage sandbox. I'll bet a lot of little fellows would like one.

January 14. At last, I've succumbed to temptation. I've done it and I'm afraid to tell Maggie. I found a chance to buy a set of Bailey's "Cyclopedia of Horticulture," the three-volume edition, for $20 today — and I up and bought it. Almost reverently I sit at my desk tonight and leaf through the volumes, pausing to read about viburnums, about sedums, this and that. For years I've been long-

ing to own this set, where all the accumulated knowledge of the ages and the plant life of the planet have been gathered together.

January 17. In Chicago on business, I looked in at the meeting of the Illinois Nurserymen's Association, which was meeting in the hotel where I was staying. There I met my old friend and former student, Ralph Wedge, who's a partner in a nursery firm at Albert Lea, Minnesota. He tells me that he has invented a device for packing roots of roses, shrubs and perennials in a brick of pressed peat that will keep them from drying out and he showed me a sample. The brick of peat is planted with the root inside. This looks like a fine thing, especially for roses.

January 24. This was a famous day to me. I awoke in a hotel amid the largest collection of small towns in the world, known locally as Philadelphia, and caught a train at six in the morning that took me down to West Grove to see Robert Pyle, famous rosarian and secretary

[30]

of the American Rose Society.   A kindly, enthusiastic man I found him to be.

This afternoon I went to Reading and out to visit the nursery of the late B. H. Farr. The thing that struck me, as I rode out through Wyomissing on the car, was the many homes planted with beautiful evergreens. I don't believe there is a better-planted lot of homes in America than here. What a monument to a great man who is gone. Mr. Farr died all untimely. There is another monument, too, for he was a pioneer in originating iris varieties in America. We owe to him Quaker Lady, Cecile Minturn, Mary Garden, the beautiful Mildred Presby and a good many others which, in their day, were the best we had.

January 26. In New York City, I called on magazine editors about writing business. For instance, I met for the first time Richardson Wright, the genial editor of House and Garden. There just isn't anybody else quite like him. After he was made, the mold was broken up. Despite the fact that he edits such

a high-toned magazine, he's a dirt gardener to the 72nd degree and a philosopher beside. Maggie and I owe a lot to him. His magazine was the first to which we subscribed after we were married and we planned our house from it.

Then, too, I went out to Long Island and Garden City to meet Leonard Barren, the veteran editor of American Home and one of the best garden authorities in the country. He showed me over the beautiful gardens around the Doubleday printing plant that he has largely planned and managed. Then he took me for a ride over to visit the Cottage Garden Nursery—famous for evergreens. I was fascinated by the many varieties of taxus or yew, most of which we haven't seen in the Mid-West yet.

January 29. Home again from my trip East. In the stack of mail awaiting me, I found the first seed catalogue of the year—harbinger ahead of the bluebirds and such, of spring that is on the way. You guessed it the first time—" it was Dreer's. What a classic it is! What memories it brings back, of seeds, of my first

[32]

Gold Medal hybrid delphiniums, of Pyrethrum aurenm and the rest

Once I lived in Philadelphia for a year and used to pass Dreer's store every day—the old store on Chestnut Street. Dear me, it was in front of Dreer's that I used to meet the Glory

Woman.

Some charwoman she probably was, old and wrinkled and ill-dressed, coming up from the ferry. But she always strode along, face uplifted and singing aloud to herself. The Glory Woman, I named her, and used to look for her each morning and even tried to fancy that some day she might influence my life as she went by—like Pippa when she passed by on her holiday. Maybe she did—for one of the most important decisions in my life was made right along that street one day, as I went by a little milliner's shop. Anyhow, I'll bet you anything that the Glory Woman had a flower garden over in Jersey somewhere and her song began there.

[33]

February 1928

February 1. Never empty the ash can today if it can be put off until

tomorrow, says I. What a dull chore it is, when one would much rather

be hoeing the flowers—or reading dime detective magazines. But the

flowers are still asleep. Today it just had to be done—those ashes—and

as I labored and tugged them out of the cellar, I did write me a song

in my head, which I sang lustily, as follows:

“Ob, durn, oh, durn, oh, durn that ashes can! I shun, I shun, I shun it

when I can. I swear, I swear, I’ll never empty it more— Til kick, I’ll

kick, the durned thing out the door.”

February 2. This day I did something I never did in my life before. I

made a stairway. Our new house, an old style colonial brick, sits

[34]

down on the ground with only a few inches of the foundation showing, to

give as much of the cottage effect as possible. On my instance, the

architect included two large areaways outside the basement walls, with

large door-windows opening out to these—for light and exit. One is in

the furnace room.

It was for this areaway that I built my stairway. I had been using

boxes of different heights previously, in lieu of steps. Being no

carpenter—no Irishman ever is—it was downright hard for me to make even

a little stairway with five steps. But at last it was in, crude but

stout, as Robinson Crusoe would say, and it works even if crooked.

Next time I can carry my ashes out without having to kill myself

lifting them up, without resorting to vulgar expletive or ribald song

to give me strength. I can get out ashes, too, without dragging them up

the regular stairs and through the rear hall door. Then, too, when I’m

working in the garden and come in muddy shoes, I can get into the

basement

change without tracking in mud.    This too, suffices for kindling and

such.    A

[35plain outside cellarway would have been better, I now see.

February 6. The Ohio Nurserymen’s Association was meeting in the city

today and I went in. On the program was Doc Maynard, professor of

advertising in the school of commerce at the university. Sell people

the idea of more beautiful homes, not nursery stock, he told the

nurserymen.

Take more space in your catalogues to give information on how to plant,

what to plant, what is good for shady spots, what for clay soil and the

like, he told them. Sell service instead of plants. People buy because

of pride, imitation, dollars and cents and health. It sounded like good

advice to me.

February 7. Bottomley, professor of landscape architecture at the

University of Cincinnati—he has written a book, too—talked on common

sense in home planting to the nurserymen and I went to hear him. He

poked fun at a lot of old fake rules of landscape gardeners. Some say,

“You shall not use red.” All bosh, according to Bottomley. It isn’t the use

[36]

but the misuse of red and plants of striking  color, he

said.

February 13- There is one spot on the front lawn that doesn’t suit me.

The sand and crushed stone were piled here when our house was built and

the concrete mixed here, too. If I had had the place landscaped

professionally, as I should have done, the spot would be forgotten by

now. But hard up and doing the work myself, I labored at it last spring

until I succumbed and gave it up. Not much grass grew on it.

There was a bright sun today, weather thawing and so I hied me with

pick, wheelbarrow and shovel to this spot. I dug up a lot of rubble and

hauled it across the road to fill up the ruts under the mail box made

by the flivver of our rural route man. Other loads I put—I don’t dare

tell you where I put them.

February 15. Down at the university is Hottes, professor of

floriculture and writer extraordinary of books and magazine articles.

With him is the right-hand man, Ries, who does extension work in

floriculture and home

[37

landscaping. The two are putting on a two-day garden school. Yes, I was there—bright and early. And so were others, several hundred of them, men and women, from in town and away.

McClure, professor of soils, was on the program to talk on “Feeding Starving Plants.” His topic should have been “Putting Beauty into Flowers,” he said. He explained about soils, about different elements of fertility, how to make a compost pile, getting organic matter into soils, when to use nitrate, when potash. As to lawns, he said not to lime them—that only makes the weeds grow. Instead, use a good fertilizer—and nothing better than a 12-6-4 if it can be bought. (Note: Others which can be bought and are about as good are 10-6-4 and 8-5-3. On a new lawn, a 4-12-4 is better.)

Plant propagation was discussed by Hottes. This used to be surrounded with mystery, he said. But no more. We’re all getting wise. Every plant indicates by its nature the very way to propagate it—by seeds, divisions, cuttings, grafting. Hottes is wrong in one respect Our grandmothers knew all about these things. But we’re ignorant—well, the well of our abysmal ignorance in this generation as to propagating has no bottom.

In sowing seeds, he said that the ground should not be too rich—which is gospel. Cover the ground, after the seeds are sown, with dry sphagnum moss rubbed through a fine sieve. This will keep the ground and seeds from drying out. The seeds will come through it and still be mulched. This sounds like something I must try some time.

February 16. At the garden school this morning Hottes talked on evergreens. Don’t plant Norway spruce in a foundation planting, he said. Lots of durned pseudo, real estate-subsidized landscape gardeners do, though. They’re cheap—and buyers are ignorant. Evergreens fail because of drought, red spiders ^which can be washed off with the hose, though this is by no means infallible—winter winds, smoke of cities, too deep planting, wrong types and dogs, he said.

Wassenberg,  well-known  peony  and  iris

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grower of Van Wert, gave a talk on peonies. If peonies don’t bloom, it is because the root planted was too big, it was planted too deeply the ground was too dry, the weather too hot or the plants were underfed, I learned.

Better plant a small root and let the peony build a home for itself, advised Wassenberg. By choice of varieties and species, the blooming period can be prolonged over several months.

The five best good peonies in the world for a beginner are Festiva maxima, Mons. Jules Elie, Grandiflora, Sarah Bernhardt and Mikado, according to Wassenberg. If you want another five, add Marie Jacquin, Marie Crousse, Baroness Schroeder, Karl Rosenfield and Eugenie Verdier.

For five of the best better peonies in the world, coming at somewhat higher price, plant Therese, “Walter Faxon, Tourangelle, Solange and Milton Hill. If you want five more of this better class, then they are Frances Willard, Lady Alexandra Duff, Richard Carvel, Souv. de Louis Bigot and Martha Bulloch.

If you want the best five peonies in the

[40]

world, regardless of price, then you will find them, said Wassenberg, in Le Cygne, President Wilson, Phillipe Rivoire, Kelway’s Glorious and Tamate-Boku. If you need five more of the world’s best, they are E. C. Shaw, Auguste Dessert, Isani-Gidui and Mrs. A. M. Brand. He might have mentioned Alice Harding here,

too.

Home, I checked over my own list. There’s a lot of them I don’t have—but give me time.

Another speaker on the program was Jack Grullemans of Wayside Gardens, Mentor, Ohio, nurseryman and famous grower of rock plants, with beautifully colored slides of rock plants to illustrate his talk on such. The worst handicap of the nurseryman, he said, is the woman writers who rave over rare plants that nobody can buy in this country. There is no need to get a lot of rare or expensive plants to have a rock garden—200 varieties will include all that even the largest rock garden will ever need.

February 23.    Tonight I hauled the tux out from the cedar closet, Maggie hunted up her best evening gown and, begorry, we went to grand opera. The Chicago Civic Opera came to town for three nights and we chose to hear Aida—maybe because the water-lilies and lotus flowers bloom in the Nile scene. We could not afford the price of the tickets, but;, shut my eyes when I bought them.

Pushing the garden barrow before me, with an ax thereon, we went to our woods evening, Donald and I.    The woods, be known, is in the rear of our place—really steep wooded ravine—and it belongs to with some 80 trees, big and small, and various shrubs and bushes.    There’s a brook running through that Donald used to call his “little ribber.”

Today this little ribber was frozen over Donald skated, or rather scooted, on it in spots three or four feet wide that were smooth Then we gathered up a load of wood for fireplace   and   trudged   back   to   the  hoi Think of it—firewood right from our o1 place!   It was for this ravine that we bought the place, as much as anything.   When I rich, I shall stock it with many a wild flower

[ 42 ]

along the sides I’ll make the finest rock Garden in the world—my own.    What wild flowers there are, are buried under leaves and trace of snow, asleep.

February 26- Freeze and thaw—thaw and freeze—such a winter I never remember knowing before. My poor perennials, they’re mainly out of the ground, it seems like. It was muddy today and I waded around and sorrowfully gathered up some, to put in a sand frame to keep until they can be reset in spring. Even shrubs are rising right out from the sticky clay. It has been that way all winter, the worst I ever saw. Mulching doesn’t seem to have any effect. There has been no real snow, no long frozen spells that mean protection to plants.

27 Up betimes and at six was in

basement where dwelleth the electric washer| Our good woman who comes in to do the washing is sick—“Ah done have to take an operation,” she says. So to get back the

I spent on opera tickets the other day,

fact,       

[43]I’m going to do the washing myself for three or four weeks.

Two women came to visit us this afternoon They were total strangers but they had heard that I grow flowers. They wanted advice on what and where to buy. Last year they brought delphiniums and “such little things you never saw.”

Why, they didn’t get nearly as big as the pictures in the catalogue. Poor things—the women, I mean. They looked at me as if I were trying to josh them when I told them that one-year delphiniums were indeed little, about as big as my thumb when you bought them, that good nurseries usually sell two-year clumps and that it takes about three years and a lot of care to grow big clumps like you see in the pictures.

Beginners in perennial gardening are too impatient. They have been buying potted plants from the florist. They have been buying zinnias at 15 cents a dozen that make a big bush by fall. It takes five years to make a perennial garden—unless one is a millionaire and even he must wait a year before he gets the full effect.

[44]

Patience—it is the middle name of the true grower of perennials.   If one has it not, he acquires it as he works with them. There are

failures, discouragements, but once one begins, he keeps on until success comes. It took me— do you remember, Olde Booke?—three years before I could grow a columbine from seed that bloomed.

February 28. The ditching machine came today. Drainage is what my place needs and so neighbor Dakan and I had a man come with a new machine and a crew of men to tile our places.

My perennials at the back of the garden are now so damaged from the winter that I just let the machine set to work right through them. Slowly the juggernaut moved, but with such execution as the dirt rolled out that I could not bear to stay and see. Last fall, in anticipation, I had cleared away part of the space, but not all. But once the space is drained, maybe I won’t lose so many plants an-

 [45]

February 29. Gosh, is this leap year?

I did something I liked very much to do.

wrote for catalogues.   How I like to get catalogs

    I pore over them, study them, order

things from them and file them away in loving

rows on the handiest shelf near my desk.   To.

night I took the garden magazines and from

the ads wrote and wrote until I was aweary and

it was nearly midnight.    That’s what these

catalogues are for.   I sent not only for home

ones but for some in Europe.

March 1928

.

March 1. In Lake County, Ohio, the county seat of which is Painesville, is one of the largest nursery centers in America or in the world. Within the borders of this county and around its edges practically every kind of tree, shrub, rose or flower that can be grown in the country is propagated. To this town I came today on business with some of these nurserymen and as I talked with them I asked questions, many questions—and learned various things. My business, to be exact, was to secure information for some garden articles that are to be written.

Plant trees and shrubs in the fall if possible, said one veteran nurseryman who has supervised the growing of millions of them. If in

[47]

spring, plant as early as possible, said he. Dig the hole big enough—lots of folks don't. Cut off broken roots with a knife and don't be afraid to use the knife, either.

People buy perennials, shrubs and roses because the name sounds good, regardless of whether the variety is good or not, said another nurseryman. Everybody wants American Beauty roses, said he, though they are not so good and there are any number of better varieties.

Tell the editors of garden magazines and the garden editors of other magazines, said a third nurseryman, to make their March issues the planting numbers instead of April.

Plant apple trees for beauty, one nurseryman told me. We take pride in having a home that stands among apple trees, said he, yet when making an ornamental planting we never think of putting in some apple trees for the purpose. That sounds like good advice. I shall plant an apple tree on my own back lawn as soon as I get round to it.

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A    I did something this day that I never

did in my life e before.   I flew a kite— me - — half bald and nearing the age of 40.   When I was young I tried it often, always with home affairs I made myself.   But they never would

fly-

Granddad gave Donald one today that cost

ten cents. I took one look and saw why I had never been successful with mine. I had always tried to fly them wrong side up. Out went Donald and I — and glory be — it flew, up in the air, over the telephone wires, over the trees, over the pasture. My thrill was as great as his. It was the pioneer effort for both of us.

March 7. Business brought me and a friend to Cincinnati last night and this morning we drove south across the Ohio into Kentucky and down one of the most beautiful winding roads in the world — as far as I've seen said world — to Lexington, Kentucky. I wished that it might have been just a little later, when leaves were out and things in bloom. What wonderful

 [49]

estates, fine homes and beautiful plantings of trees and shrubs out from Lexington, especially on the road in from Georgetown.

Our business was at a baby chick hatchery that can handle a million eggs at one setting but we found time to run out to visit the Hillenmyer nurseries, where many of the trees and shrubs were propagated that now adorn those fine old estates and where the third generation of Hillenmeyers are now still growing such to beautify the homes of this generation. I found my good friend, Walter Hillenmeyer, nationally known in nursery circles, on the job. He told me of how at a recent Christmas Lexington had a contest in decorating outdoor Christmas trees—and more than 60 homes competed. That's a fine idea—something new in way of a garden of the sort that used to bloom on Grandmother’s lawn in Union just about high school commencement time

en contest.

March 10. There came the American Rose Annual in our rural route mail box this morning, full of new lore on roses from the American Rose Society. I am the original prize nut on roses. I joined this society and for four years paid dues without owning a single rose

[50]

bush.  In the yard of my rented home were just two roses, an old-fashioned Harrison’s Yellow and an of the sort that used to bloom on Grandmother’s lawn in Union just about high school commencement time

old-f of the sort that used to bloom on Grandmother’s lawn in Union just about high school commencement time

all these years I've saved up these annuals, read 'em, soaked up information until classifications, species, varieties are familiar to me. Now that I have a place of my own, it's roses for me, and last fall I made my first planting, just a beginning, I hope, of what will be a lifetime of growing roses. There is something about roses that gets you, fascinates you, makes a crank of you. (Note: All that is needed to join the American Rose Society is to send $ 3.50 to The American Rose Society, Box 687, Harrisburg, Pa.)

March 13. This morning found me back in Kentucky, but at Louisville this time, and out to the National Flower Show and the meeting of the Society of American Florists. All morning I wandered up and down the aisles of the large coliseum at the fair grounds. There

[51]

were roses of magical size and color, azalea in bloom, rock gardens with little running streams trickling down.

Nurserymen had brought in great evergreens 20 feet tall, and a wide assortment of evergreens of all kinds with labels, so that it was an education to examine them. And cacti—exhibits from the Southwest—heavens how the cactus is catching hold of people. There were exhibits of nurseries, of all the important seed houses, of implement firms and whatnot else. It was a great place to be in, even if the taxi fare was $ 1.65 to get out.

This afternoon I went to the meeting of the florists—those fellows who have been spending several millions just to get into our consciousness the idea of "Say it with flowers." My purpose in being here is to help the Florists' Exchange report the meeting. So I sat on the front row, at one side, and as rapidly as I could, learned the Who's Who of the men present. What a notable gathering I found it to be, made up of men many of whose names have been long familiar—names to conjure with in the horticultural world.

[52]

That stoutish man there is Totty, famous for his chrysanthemums. The wiry slim chap is Max Schling, noted florist and seedsman. The oldish man with gray hair is Hill, of Richmond, Indiana, who has given us many a beautiful rose. The tall, broad-shouldered, youngish man is Leonard Vaughan, of the house of Vaughan, Chicago.

At the president's reception at the Brown Hotel tonight, I was introduced to a young, good-natured fellow by the name of Elder. I picked up my ears and began to ask questions. He was the very man—the originator of the Hartje and Elder daisy that blooms in my garden before Memorial Day in the spring. He's a wholesale florist at Indianapolis, I find—and an originator of new, finer freesias, too.

After the reception, I went for a long walk with T. A. Weston, who is associate editor of the Exchange for which I am reporting the convention. A modest, pleasant chap he is, who came over from England after the World War and who lives over in Jersey and has a flower garden for a hobby. Lots of people Probably never heard of him by name—yet

[53]

he is blessed all unknowingly in ten thousand and two gardens. He is the originator of that wonderful new Viola, Jersey Gem. He has written a book, too, that people should know\y called "Bulbs That Bloom in the Spring."

March 20. For days past I've been out daily to peep at things, snatching a look under the mulch to see if the new peonies are appearing, resisting temptation to uncover things. But at four this afternoon I began the outdoor garden season in earnest. Dressed in old clothes, old shoes, old hat, I sallied forth to make close inventory.

Alas, I'm ruined. It fairly makes me want to hang something, myself if necessary, on the weeping willow tree—if I had one—as I walk up and down. It seems as if practically everything I bought last fall is dead. Most of my own propagation that I transplanted in the fall seems dead, too. I hardly dared look at some of them.

Delphiniums, all gone. Japanese anemones, dead. Every columbine on top of the ground that hadn't been already garnered up and

[54]

led in the sand frame. Gaillardias gone. Oriental poppies out and roots dead. Phlox is all above ground. Even the barberry hedge and the new shrubs planted last fall are half out of the ground and the roses likewise, right through the mulch I gave them.

Such are the results of an open winter, with no real snow and alternate freezing and thawing, on newly planted things.

I wandered here and there like a person with melancholia dementia—I believe that's what it was called that Dinorah had when she sang to her shadow in the opera—and solemnly put in a few perennials with my trowel here, then, seeing something more precious there, moved on to it.

I see ahead of me the task of almost beginning over again in my new garden, resetting almost everything, buying new things to replace what I have lost, growing others from seed. But despite the flecks of snow, there is a trace of green in the grass, a faint trace—and where there is green there is hope, though even much of the new grass in the lawn is gone, too, and will have to be reseeded.

[55]

But there is one ray of sunshine. The rock garden things, almost to the last one, are alive and mainly in the ground. They came through the winter like veterans. They are for the present planted in rows in a bed until such time as I can increase my supply by propagation and build me a rock garden.

March 21. Bright sun shone at four this afternoon, as I came out to the garden, but the wind was so cold it stung my ears as it whistled. So I bundled the family into the car and we drove to the nursery of friend Burwell out east of town, to see how he fared over the winter. Here I bought me some hemerocallis or day-lilies—Dr. Regal and some other varieties— some Japanese iris and some dwarf iris including Orange Queen and The Bride. Home again, I heeled these into the sand frame that in summer I use for cuttings, to await proper planting conditions.

Tonight I industriously wrote letters, sending for more catalogues from nurseries and seed houses. Already the mail brings me some

[56]

daily I’m filing them in a loving row on my shelves.

This has been a bright warm day— day of real spring. How I longed to but duty took me down to the old think factory and I had to stay there all day on duties that earn the family living. As I sat inside, my eyes wandered away and I thought of how years ago I translated a little poem from the German — the author of which I don't know. Tonight I hunted it up, to see how it goes. Here it is:

PLEASE, MOTHER

Oh, mother dear, I cannot spin, I cannot sit In a room -within Our narrow house. The wheel stops dead, I break the thread, Oh, -mother dear, I must go out.

The springtime peeps, Bright through the pane;

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Who can sit now,

Who still remain,

And busy be?

Oh, let me go,

And let me see,

If I can fly

Like birdies free.

Oh, let me see,

Oh, let me listen,

Where wind blows free,

Where brooklets hasten,

Where flowers stay.

These let me pluck,    

Make beautiful

My curls of brown,

With leaves so gay.     5

When I was young and foolish I used write a lot of verse and, looking through nr almost forgotten collection of it, I found on which I called "Where Violets Grow" that I wrote one day after a tramp through the North Woods at Ames, Iowa. The date on it is March 21,1916. It goes thus:

Deep in heart of woodland,        Violets lie asleep;    .

Under shade of winter, Cold and damp and deep.

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    Already snow has melted, leaves are blown away, Winds of March are sweeping Through the woods today.

| shrouds arc torn asunder,

Sunbeams pry below; I They creep beneath the cover, warm life blood aglow.

Soon the sprites of springtime Come stealing through the air;

Wave their wands of magic See — violets blooming there.

March 24. Much happiness has been mine this Saturday|—also much ache. Thursday morning early I had slipped downtown and purchased me two pairs of new overalls — the old ones being dirty and ragged around the bottom. This morning, no classes at the think factory to interfere, I donned one of the new pairs and with a woolen shirt sallied forth before breakfast. By the time the oatmeal was cooked it was hot and off came the shirt to be succeeded by a cotton one.

All morning I worked steadily.    I finished resetting the barberry hedge that had been

[59]

heaved out or worked loose during the winter.   Also I pruned it severely.   In place of some dead bushes, I filled in with some extras I had put back for such purpose last spring.

Next, I went over the shrub border that \ had put in last fall, nearly half of which was more or less above ground. Those needing it I reset, others I firmed the earth around and straightened. All seem alive as far as I can tell, except two cotoneasters. Some are putting forth buds, most of which are on the little dwarf Viburnum opulus nanum or dwarf high bush cranberry.

Only a few peonies had been heaved and these I reset. Then on to my roses, and all of the hybrid teas I find are dead except Columbia —despite the fact that I mulched them just like the book said to do. But the climbers, the hybrid perpetuals and the collection of the new Van Fleet hybrids are all alive. Those needing it, I reset. Then I turned to the perennials and continued what I've been at for several days, either resetting or digging and heeling into the sand frame.      I

March 25. Sunday and this afternoon I got nursery catalogues. I made out my list of perennials to order. It fairly breaks my half-scotch heart to have to order things Which I grew last summer with much backache! or bought and planted last fall with money stinted from other things. But all afternoon and evening I droned over the catalogues, comparing back and forth. I finally made out orders to go to three nurseries. Then I made put an order, too, for vegetable seeds and annuals to be bought from Livingston's, downtown.

This day I screwed my courage to the sticking point and ordered a garden tractor that will cost me around $300. But I just have to have it if I'm going to cultivate all the vegetables that I plan to sow this summer.

Tonight to my catalogues again and, with much poring over, I made out my order for my year's supply of perennial seeds. This really should have been done sooner, but I wanted to see how things were doing outdoors first.

March 29.    Donald and I set out in the car under lowering skies that before long drizzly rain, on a trip to the nurseries in the Miami Valley.   I had some business to attend to, alone the way, that matters not.   As we went along we accumulated things.

At Scarff's, at New Carlisle, I bought some more Mastodon strawberries, some grapevines and a Baldwin apple tree.   At Siebenthaler's, in Dayton, I picked up some perennials I've been wanting, including Sedum kamchaticiim, neat and with yellow bloom.    On the way home we stopped to see Fletcher Bohlender, the boss of Spring Hill Nurseries, and brought away some pussy willow, an Abelia grandiflora and Fletcher gave Donald a plant of that new shrub, Kolkwitzia amabilis or beauty bush, that I've been reading so much about.

March 28. I find to my joy that some of the things I thought dead are showing life. Most of the plants in my long perennial border beside the drive are coming, as well as some of the phlox and some of the delphiniums back m the garden. Today I sowed ten pounds of

I 62 J

grass seed on the lawn and put on a hundred pounds of a complete analysis plant food.

March 30. This afternoon it turned colder and, as snow peppered down, I planted my new Baldwin tree—and did it for benefit of my grandchildren. Donald, only child to date, aged not quite four, helped me. Now wouldn't it be sad, if 25 years or 30 years from now, grandchildren would come to visit granddad and no apple tree on the lawn from which to hang a swing? I never intend to be such an improvident cuss as not to provide in advance for such a contingency. Also we finished putting in the other things we had brought home the other day.

March 31. There was a box for me at the express office. It proved to be chrysanthemums and some lily bulbs ordered that came a lot sooner than I had counted on. I planted the s> but the mums, which were just rooted cuttings, I put in the sand frame until such Ume as! can get the ground in shape for them.

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April 1928

April 2. This afternoon I uncovered the peonies and tulips in front of the long shrub border from their winter mulch. Some of both are peeping above the ground. There has been a great temptation to do it sooner. Then I worked away, resetting more of the perennials that had been disturbed by the winter's heaving and also reset some of the rambler roses on the west border fence that had been planted last fall and were partially out of the ground despite all my heaped dirt and mulching.

April 4. When I came out at four this afternoon I tackled a job I have been itching to do for weeks. I began the spring work on tne long perennial border by the drive, where the   nicest things are. This border is more than feet long and about 12 feet wide, which is

the size a good border should be for best effects. I took the shears and cut off the dead tops of things, which I always leave on over winter for protection. Off came dead leaves and such. Then I reset with the big 7-inch trowel anything that needed it. More things were alive than I had expected, after the hard winter; in fact, I didn't lose much here. I found most of the delphiniums safe and glory be! the Veronica longifolia subsessilis, that tall purple spike of midsummer, which all died, back in the garden, and which seems to be hard to obtain from nurseries this spring, is safe, too.

April 6.   Before I was in my old clothes at

four this afternoon, came friend Leo Rum-

mell, who like me earns his living by writing

jor the papers.   He lives near the place where

used to live, back in the city, and we trade

things back and forth.   He is beginning a rock

garden—the only thing lacking in his beauti-

ful home planting—and I found several things

or it, including various sedums.

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It's warm today.   In town I saw crocuses in bloom, of which I have only a few planted ' our new place as yet, and in a shady spot I saw a narcissus bursting forth.    The peonies are shooting higher.   Two days ago I saw forsythia or golden bough in bloom in town and my small ones will be out in a few days.   Shrubs are showing life and my hugonis rose is in leaf. What a pleasant time the spring is, as one watches its onward coming, day by day.

April 7. Last night it rained. This morning it was cold and it kept getting colder all day. This afternoon I went to the express office and there were three boxes of perennials in, the first to arrive from my spring orders—no, the second, I mean. I unpacked them in the rain and heeled them in sand, with fingers fairly numb. I want my ground in good condition before I plant them.

We drove out to Mother K.'s home today— Donald's grandmother—and there in her won­derfully fine old-fashioned garden we saw bulbs all abloom—narcissi, hyacinth, grape

[66]

hyacinth scillas and also bloodroot, anemones

and whatnot.

Tonight I made a good fire in the study fire-lace and in mine easy chair sat me down to fort over the catalogues of yesteryear. Going over them one by one, I extracted and tore out anything usable—lists of varieties, planting di­rections, historical material and the like. This I classified in piles on the floor. All this I'll file away with other dope. It was twenty to two A.M. when I finished. I looked out of the window. It was snowing.

April 8. Easter Sunday. As is my custom, I slipped downstairs and put on the "Hallelu­jah Chorus" on the phonograph, followed by "Up from the Grave He Arose." I've been playing these every Easter morning for ten years or more. Then I opened the dining-room window and placed outside on the ground, against a corner of the chimney, a bas­ket of eggs which Maggie and I had colored last night, along with a little paper rabbit. Later Donald found them and brought them »n with much shouting.

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April 9. Bright shone the sun this day, but it was cold, so cold that, as I tried to work un­packing the rest of the boxes of perennials that came Saturday, I slipped in twice to the base­ment and opened the door of the furnace where I stood and thawed out my hands.

I uncovered my seed frames, too, and found that most of the things there are alive. If I had left everything there last fall instead of planting things out so late in my undrained clay soil, I'd be much better off this spring. But one lives for the future by experience from the past.

Glory be! I had a neighbor farmer haul me some barnyard fertilizer today—part of it so rotted that it was actually black humus. I paid him three dollars a load. But it's what my soil and flowers need.

"What is manure for, daddy?" asked Don­ald.

"It's like ice cream for the flowers," I an­swered.

The other day I ordered a new supply of chemical plant food, too. Manure is humus, not food, except to a limited extent.

168]

April 10. Three more boxes of perennials came today, from Wayside, and I had a fine time opening them up and putting them in sand—for the ground isn't ready yet to plant. Among them was a collection of perennial as­ters, which give one such good bloom in early fall, when not much else is blooming.

At six I hurried in, changed clothes and hastened downtown to a hotel where the boys of Sigma Delta Chi, a journalism fraternity, were giving a dinner to my friend Hooper, of the school of journalism, whose office I share and who is 70 years old today. Strangely, there were just 70 guests present.

Hooper gave us his recipe for beating the years—be cheerful and optimistic, work hard, don't envy the other fellow and try to do good. He's getting the garden fever, too, I think, for he's been asking me what will grow in the shade and what to do to make his lawn better. Maybe, too, it's because he writes verses. There's one in a book of verse he gave me for Christmas that's about a hollyhock. The book he called "Dodging a Sunbeam." Here's the poem:

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little Miss hollyhock

Little Miss Hollyhock,

In a green ball, Lived in a stem, that -was

Slender and tall; She lived in a ballroom,

Perhaps you might say, And her beautiful dwelling

Grew bigger each day.

The rain came to woo her,

And so did the sun, And the stars sang unto her,

When daylight was done; So many attentions

Miss Hollyhock knew, She danced in delight, till

Her house broke in two.

And out of the opening—

Well, what do you think?— Miss Hollyhock fluttered,

All dressed up in pink. Pink gown and pink bonnet,

And stood, straight and tall, In her little green house,

That was shaped like a ball.

April 11.    Behold, and there came a flivver truck this afternoon as I did rake the lawn and in it was my new garden tractor. We unloaded it, drove to the back part of the place and there set it to plowing over some ground, It plowed, the durned little cuss, but it wasn't much of a job and I'll use it mainly for culti­vating. Many a backache it ought to save me.

April 14. This morning it was raining. By noon rain was over. But there was a high wind that blew the wheelbarrow over, hat off my old half-bald head and the air kept getting colder until by bedtime it was freezing. I tried planting some of my new perennials, but it was too cold. Then I went to the lawn to rake, but the wind blew everything I raked over to where I had raked before. So I just picked up sticks and little stones, filled up holes and took a turn at pulling the durned roller over the grass.

Catalogues came today—some do every day. One was from Perry, the great English grower. This is perhaps the finest list of perennials in the English language offered for sale. One doesn't know perennials, especially rock gar­den plants, until he has seen this.

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"What is that blue flower in bloom out" there?" asked Maggie, my wife, as she was get. ting supper in the kitchen. I couldn't imagine until finally it dawned on me. "Why, that must be Anemone pulsatilla," said I. Out I went in my slippers and the dusk and, sure enough, it was—the pasque flower, nodding in the wind. s |

April 16. Shortly after I bought our new place two years ago and was at work moving out my perennials, I built me a little tool shed back in the middle of where the gardens were to be and at one side, with a grass plot in front. This little house—8 x 10, or is it 10 x i|?—I built all by myself on two hot summer days. It cost me $35 in all. It is whopper j a wes$ ^and out of plumb, but besides storing tools, I have shelves for seeds, stakes, trowels and the like. Under the barn sash windows I have a bench where I do propagating work, such as dividing plants.

Today I cleaned this out and put things in order. And glory be!—but oh, how sad-back under the bench, back of the sphagnum

moss box I found one of my old corncob pipes

historic one that I had taken with me

.amping in Michigan and Canada.   It was half

₀S  covered with dirt and mildew.    "Sic

transit gloria mundi"—is it not?   Also I scared

out a brown mouse—shades of Herbert Quick

and his novel.

Weather has turned right at last and now I'm spading ground, getting it ready and planting out the things that have been heeled in sand, working hard and fast. For the present, most of my new things are being put out in straight rows, for I want just to grow them, propagate them, study them, while I'm getting the ground in good enough shape to be­gin making a real garden along ornamental lines.

April 17. With as much excitement as though we were going to a circus, Donald and I hauled out the new garden tractor and I tried to crank it up. I cranked with a rope, with the handle, with a rope, one way, t'other way. Finally I remembered to turn on the gas and pull the •ever down. It sputtered, spitted and roared.

 [ 73 ]

I threw in the lever and we drove it back to the field, hell-bent for sartin. After about an hour experimenting with the durned little cuss, I finally plowed—maybe three rounds—and it upset. I couldn't lift it myself and had to get neighbor Dakan to come and help me right it. I found something was broken. I'll have to send to the factory for repairs. Anybody like to buy a second-hand garden tractor, almost new, dirt cheap? I'm afraid it's the finest white elephant I ever owned.

At Mother K's garden this morning I saw where scillas had naturalized themselves and were growing and blooming down the ravine many feet from where they had been planted originally.

April 18. For the first time in my life this eve­ning I made a rock garden all by myself. It is a tiny one, in a little corner where no other treatment seemed to fit. So I spaded the ground, piled in rocks in order, rammed dirt in between the rocks and planted therein various rock plants—sedums, silene, Aster alpimis, Alyssum saxatile compactum, Arabis alpine,

[74]

Dianthus deltoides "Brilliant," and so on— all of which I have been growing back m my propagating garden.

The rest of the evening I moved things into the long border by the drive, especially the Gold Medal hybrid delphiniums that came in one of my recent boxes. The ones I grew from seed last year are too tiny yet to make much of a show. This border is the pride of my whole landscape scheme.

April 19- Last night it froze slightly, but this afternoon it was bright and warm. So I spaded over one of my old seed frames, put under in the doing some rotted manure, scat­tered some black humus on top afterwards, to­gether with lake sand. I raked until I had a fine surface mulch. Then with practiced hand I began my year's sowing of perennial seeds. First came the columbines, next delphiniums and so on to Giant Shirley foxgloves.

April 20.   At last I am an entrepreneur.   I am an employer of labor.   I have hired a neighbor from up the road to put in a few days spading

[75]

and doing the rough part of the work for me. This gives me more time to plant perennials and seeds.

April 21. Last night a gentle rain began to fall and has kept up all day today. The shrubs are coming out in leaf. Downtown I saw a Japanese quince in bloom. Mine won't have any blossoms this year, for they are small. The grass has taken up growing again.

This afternoon at four I went to the Colum­bus Horticultural Society, which functions as a garden club in these latter days, where I was on the program to talk on "What's New in Flower Gardens." I spieled for an hour, but didn't say much except what my listeners al­ready knew. The poring over of catalogues that I've been doing lately, though, to get dope for this talk did me a lot of educating, at least. There really hasn't been much new since the Regal lily was given us—except, of course, in iris, roses and the like. But alas, my regals all heaved out over winter and are all dead as door­knobs.

April 24. There was a package in the mail this" morning that contained a dozen Cimici-, racemosa—queer, black, dead-looking things. But what a difference when they are in bloom! I'll bet they don't do much for me, though, for they need shade, which I don't

have.

There were two more boxes at the express

office, too. One from Wayside had in it some Arctic daisies, some Veronica spicata rosea or pink speedwell and a dozen Viola Jersey Gem. The other box, from Bobbink & Atkins, had in it two new geums, bulgaricum and sibiri-cum, and an ajuga, reptans rubra or bugle weed, with bronze-colored leaves and also some Sedum lydium, a dwarf reddish sort that gets green by and by and has a yellow bloom.

Today for the first time I found bloom on Anchusa myosotidiflora or forget-me-not flowered anchusa, some of which I bought and planted earlier. Next year it will bloom ear­lier than this. Such a dainty, rich blue it is. Also the white arabis bloomed first today.

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and doing the rough part of the work for me. This gives me more time to plant perennials and seeds.

April 21. Last night a gentle rain began to fall and has kept up all day today. The shrubs are coming out in leaf. Downtown I saw a Japanese quince in bloom. Mine won't have any blossoms this year, for they are small. The grass has taken up growing again.

This afternoon at four I went to the Colum­bus Horticultural Society, which functions as a garden club in these latter days, where I was on the program to talk on "What's New in Flower Gardens." I spieled for an hour, but didn't say much except what my listeners al­ready knew. The poring over of catalogues that I've been doing lately, though, to get dope for this talk did me a lot of educating, at least. There really hasn't been much new since the Regal lily was given us—except, of course, in iris, roses and the like. But alas, my regals all heaved out over winter and are all dead as door­knobs.

_PLAIN  DIRT  GARDENER

.j ₂ , There was a package in the mail this" morning that contained a dozen Cimici-, racemosa—queer, black, dead-looking things. But what a difference when they are in bloom! I'll bet they don't do much for me, though, for they need shade, which I don't

have.

There were two more boxes at the express

office, too. One from Wayside had in it some Arctic daisies, some Veronica spicata rosea or pink speedwell and a dozen Viola Jersey Gem. The other box, from Bobbink & Atkins, had in it two new geums, bulgaricum and sibiri-cum, and an ajuga, reptans rubra or bugle weed, with bronze-colored leaves and also some Sedum lydium, a dwarf reddish sort that gets green by and by and has a yellow bloom.

Today for the first time I found bloom on Anchusa myosotidiflora or forget-me-not flowered anchusa, some of which I bought and planted earlier. Next year it will bloom ear­lier than this. Such a dainty, rich blue it is. Also the white arabis bloomed first today.

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April 25. Lo, and it so befell that as I looked from the living-room window this morning, I saw eleven birds—meadow larks and sparrows —searching for and devouring the grass seed I sowed on my lawn some time since.

This afternoon another box of perennials came with treasures in them. These included Doronicum caucasicum or leopard's bane—my third attempt to grow this—and some new sedums and some wooly thyme. For the pres­ent these latter things went into rows to be propagated and studied until time for my dream rock garden.

April 2 6. This evening I discovered the merits of a straight-edged shovel for spading. It is really a square spade with a long handle. All my life I've been using the common curved dirt shovel for the purpose. But the other day I bought me this straight-edged one. How it does dig up the ground and how its sharp edge can cut up a clod or smash it to smithereens! The ground has to be soft, though, for it won't work when the ground gets hard and dry. Durn these spring poets, anyhow. Blast

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their infernal hides.   They live indoors or at

e southern winter resort and have never

et discovered that April is more winter than

a spring month.   There was Robert Browning,

basking in Italy and writing, "Oh, to be in

England,  now that April's here."   But he

never went, if it could be avoided.   Why, 'pon

my soul, I used to write April poetry myself,

when I was young and rattle-brained.

Once I wrote one for the university news­paper, entitled "An April Day," that began something like this:

What is so rare as an April day,

When the bees come out and the children play;

When the lilacs bloom by the garden wall

And shed sweet fragrance aver all—

Tell me, what is so rare?

There were two more touching verses. And some constant reader wrote a letter for the next issue, poking fun at them and ended up by saying, "What is so rare? Nothing, except a good half-fried beefsteak." And I know by now that precious few lilacs ever do much blooming in April.

of which comes to mind, when with

[79]

weather almost freezing, wind blowing bitter I donned heaviest woolen shirt, my north woods socks and went out to roll the lawn to keep from perishing with the cold. The pre­diction for tonight is snow.

April 30. Just at dusk tonight, after much hard labor with spade and trowel, Donald, to­gether with Bubs and Elsie, our neighbor chil­dren, and I all went to the woods and down into our ravine. There we found white, yel­low and blue violets blooming, also bloodroot, trillium, Dutchman's breeches, and dogtooth violets, too.

I had my trowel and I dug up a clump of wild thalictrum for the garden. I kept think­ing of how, years ago, I had translated a little poem of Goethe's, entitled "Gefunden." Home, I hunted it up. My translation was like this.

found

I went to the -woods,

To wander alone, And scarcely knew why

I came there to roam.

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In the shadows I saw

A little flower there, That shone like a star

Or an eyelet so fair.

I reached down to pluck it,

When it said to me— "When thus I am broken,

Won't I withered he?"

I dug it all up,

With each little root; "Near my pretty house,

In the garden 'twas put.

So thus in the quiet,

I planted it there; Now it still blooms

And flowers doth bear.

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May 1928

8/17/2004 2:05:54 PM

May 1. Once in my callow youth I set out to write a sonnet sequence on a day's work and began with "To My Alarm Clock." Just to show what a ludicrous scarecrow of a poet I was, here it is—and may the reading of it amuse—for I've been chuckling over it as I've read it tonight:

To my alarm clock

Ding a ding a ding a ding a ding! What pretty music, far away, 1 hear, That louder grows, and louder, until near Awake and conscious, but not quite, the ring Of my alarm clock hurries through my brain The chime of early matins, sweet and clear, Pealing o'er the woodland, 'hove the weir: Dear dreamland fancies; I awake to pain Of creaking bones, of aching back and head.

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Before me lies a day of toil.   The care

Of many things undone, of tasks that ne'er

Are o'er.   But full awake, I leap from bed,

The day is here, and 'fore I am aware,

M-y cares are gone, and sunbeams come instead.

Now ain't them pretty sentiments, b'gosh? Anyhow, though the date says I scribbled it off on May 12, 1909 It fits precisely the creak­ing bones, the aching back and head with which I clambered out of bed this morning, after much kneeling to transplant yesterday. Yet in spite of such, I donned overalls and began to put into effect my summer schedule of garden work by getting in a few licks be­fore breakfast.   After I really get into garden­ing, I find, with all my college professoring and other tasks, that I can't get enough done m the garden between four o'clock—P.M.— and dark.   So I must work early in the mom and dew.

I didn't do much this morning, but it was enough to set the pace in the right direction. Also, it gave zest to my morning bath under personal shower in the basement.    This by the way, is an industrial shower

[83]

and cost, as I recall, $9, including the extra plumbing, and is worth about nine millions when a fellow comes in all hot and dirty. My winter calisthenics have been put in cold storage.

As we sat at breakfast, I half saw a little form slip past the dining-room window, then a moment later slip back again. I went to the front door and there was a basket filled with wild flowers on the step, for "It's May Time, it's May Time," as once I heard Oley Speaks sing and it's May Day, too. Elsie, our little neighbor, had remembered us.

After my class at the university, I went downtown and made sundry purchases, to wit —a new rake with curved teeth, which I find are more effective than straight teeth, a lawn seat of rustic cedar with the bark on it and a baby's bassinet. Now why, Olde Booke, do you suppose I bought the latter? Not for the garden, surely.

May 2. In my mail today was a book, "Gar­dening with Peat Moss," written by H. H-Rockwell. It was most interesting and this

[84]

peat moss idea fascinates me. I shall get a bale and try it, before long. What an industrious chap Rockwell is! He must write a new gar­den book every week.

In my garden I finished transplanting my delphiniums from the frames and then carted a lot of things to the long border by the drive and planted them. This included a lot more phlox, especially Rheinlander and Beacon. I used three of each in a triangle to form groups. Also I moved in here at the back several more clumps of that striking midsummer tower of purple, Liatris pycnostachia or Kansas Gay Feather.

May 3. Years ago, when I was a young pro­fessor of English down in Oklahoma, I served as a judge one night in a declamation contest m the chapel, and one of the contestants—it must have been Inez June Harris—gave a read­ing called "Three Bars in the Key of G," which bars referred to a place in an oratorio where the words occur of "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."

Olde Booke, that very thing happened to us

[85]

this day. I stood in a little doctor's office at the hospital and nervously smoked my pipe this morning. And after a time, from the room across the hall, I heard a tiny wail. A few minutes and a nurse came out, carrying some­thing wrapped in a blanket on a pillow.

It was David Hugh, eight pounds and one ounce. I called on the phone to tell Donald, who is four today, that he had a new baby brother for a birthday present. Back to the faculty club, after sending telegrams, I did buy sundry cigars and pass them around.

It's a good world today. Warm is the air, bright the sun. The new doronicum bloomed. Trees and shrubs are rapidly leafing out. On the way back from the hospital I saw a Judas tree in bloom. Despite the excitement of the day, I found time this evening to dig and spade and plant a bit.

May 4. Tonight I spaded ground and moved my new chrysanthemums from the sand frame where they had been heeled in since they came, into the ground. There are nearly a dozen va­rieties. The tops are dead from the recent late

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frosts but that won't matter, for the roots are live and the plants will be all the more bushy

and thrifty.

Under the spell of warm weather there was a deluge of new bloom today. Iris pumila, The Bride, a creamy white, came forth. The Phlox subulata rosea and also the "Vivid," wonderfully fine, my old-fashioned bunch primroses, the little blue dwarf Jacob's ladder or Polemonium reptans—all are in bloom.

There was the first pink, fragrant bloom, too, on the Daphne cneorum or garland flower, a quaint little evergreen shrub no bigger than a minute. There was bloom on the flowering almonds under the windows and the apple trees in my neighbor's orchard are out in leaf.

May 5. There was a bit of rain this morning. I drove out to Burwell's nursery to buy a few things and there saw for the first time in my liie, knowing it to be such, Viburnum carlesi m bloom—a large bloom, faintly pink and fra­grant. My own new ones, planted last fall, will not bloom this year.

my way home I stopped to see the new

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rock garden of our friend, Grace Innis. She has one of the best gardens of which I know. She works hard to make it so. We trade plants often. This time she gave me a fresh start of a perennial verbena, which in my own garden died over last winter.

May 8. Up by five, I breakfasted hastily and set out in my half-brother-to-a-flivver to visit my folks, 90 miles away, and see my brother's new house with its garden and pool. Then I drove on to Siebenthaler's nursery at Dayton where I loaded down my car with all the trees and shrubbery necessary to make a foundation planting for our new house.

The landscape department of the nursery had made me a blueprint of this and the things were all dug for me when I arrived. My car is a coupe. We loaded the back, covered the fenders, put some inside on the seat, until with the 12-foot elms and so on, my car looked like Burnham Wood coming for sure.

May 9.   With the help of a man to dig the holes,   I planted  my  foundation  shrubbery

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around the house and garage today. I have in mind an old-fashioned planting to set off our simple colonial brick. So I put elm trees on each side to frame it and around put lilacs, flowering almonds, Lonicera elegantissima or winter honeysuckle, two flowering dogwoods on either side of the front entrance, with Aronia arbutifolia or red chokeberry by the chimney on the east, a Washington hawthorn by the west chimney and so on. For ivy, I planted Ampelopsis tricupidata, known as Japanese or Boston ivy. I wish all of this could have been planted a month or six weeks ago. But there is too much to do around a new place.

May 10. I had the man helping me clean up the debris from the shrub planting yesterday and set in a new curve the stepping stone walk from the drive up to the front door. This had never been right before.

n. A box with a dozen pairs of work s came today. I have found a brand of pliable sheepskin gloves that I wear in doing work. They are tanned with the tal-

low remaining, so they keep hands soft and they wear better. I buy them by the dozen from the factory and keep them by the fur­nace, by the fireplaces and in the car.

May 12. This afternoon I planted seeds—-perennial seeds—lots of them. Tulips are in bloom today. Late last fall I bought 300 mixed bulbs and scattered them here and there in a hurry. Now there is rich reward of color.

May 14. Day after day, mornings before breakfast, each evening until dark, it is, just as today, spade, rake, transplant. My garden is new, my place is new, and I'm just getting it under way, for this is just the second summer on a five-year program of landscaping and bring­ing garden and borders to a finished state. Some new things ordered are still arriving. In­stead of ordering everything at once, I've been buying gradually, so that I don't have too many things at once to plant.

May 16. Blooms come on apace. I noted to­day the first of columbine, blue flax, Centaurea

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montana or perennial ragged robin, Viola Jer­sey Gem— jewels all.

May19

Stopping at the university gardens   today, I saw the hugonis rose in bloom— the wonderful golden rose of China, with its grace­ful long sprays of yellow. My new ones, set out last fall, won't bloom this first year. On a lawn downtown I saw a wonderful flame azalea in bloom and a flowering crab in the public library lawn.

This afternoon, being Saturday, I devoted to the garden. I spaded under hot sun until my head thumped. I mowed the yard some. Then as clouds came up, I hastened to do some transplanting before the shower. But the rain came. After the rain, I went at it again. I also divided some old clumps of veronica of various kinds and also made some cuttings of these and put them in the sand frame to root.

20.      Sunday, and I went garden-visiting this morning.   At Mrs. Halencamp's garden I saw a fine collection of rock garden plants for ^de> wdeed of perennials in general for shade.

There were clumps of Dicentra spectabilis or bleeding heart three feet tall, of the dwarfer Dicentra eximea a foot tall, clumps of Anchusa myosotidiflore bigger than I had supposed this would ever grow and something I had never seen before, Tiarella cordifolia or foamflower. This dainty plant with its little white plumes is fit for the garden of the queen. Mrs. Halen-camp has a little bog garden, too, with many rare ferns and she even keeps a snake in it.

May 21. Some Thalictrum dipterocarpum plants were in a place unsuitable, so I moved them into the long border and around the space I put a wire, pinned into the ground, that next spring I may know where they are and not dig them out before they come up, they are so frail and come so late.

Most of my time from four to dark was spent in using the speedy cultivator—a little steel pronged hoe effect with more vicious kick than any garden tool I have. You just draw it through the ground instead of using a chop­ping motion and it works two or three times as fast as an ordinary hoe. When I sat down

[92]

to work afterward I was so tired I

just sat and nodded.   The first pyrethrums or

painted daisies were in bloom today.

May 22. The Viburnum opulus sterile or Jap­anese snowball, that I planted two weeks ago as part of the new garage planting, is in full bloom. Three varieties of hemerocallis or day-lilies are coming out. The first Hartje and Elder daisy is blooming — ten days ahead of its Memorial Day schedule. I worked so late in the garden that it was ten before I had my supper.

May 24. A belated order of more perennials is here and I worked hard and fast getting them in the ground tonight. The shipment is mainly, veronicas — erica, incana, rupestris, Rupestris rosea and so on.

5. I'm sick. My throat is sore and my head is thick. I could hardly hear my students 'talk in class this morning. But this afternoon about the usual hour I was out in the garden just the same, still transplanting this and that.

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May 29.   I have a boy helping me a bit and I put him to cleaning up the new shrub border! and hoeing it.   This border is 200 feet long 12 feet wide and has two rows of shrubbery, mainly of the rarer sorts.    But I could have] done it in about one-fourth time that he took to do it.    Erinus alpinus roseus is in bloom. This is a dainty little rock garden plant with a pink flower.   Mine don't do so well, for they need shade.

May 30. A million folks had their Memorial Day ruined for them by the same circumstance that made me and my garden rejoice. It rained.

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8/17/2004 9:49:34 AM

June 1928

June 1. Alas, I made a sad mistake this morn­ing. I set the clock wrong last night and, bliss­fully ignorant of such, I arose just one hour ahead of the usual six this morning and then marveled at the work done in the garden be­fore breakfast, as I pondered on the lateness of the breakfast bell. Besides spading, raking and odd jobs, I planted some more perennial seeds after I went forth at four this evening. Most of the things previously planted are coming up. I have a hunch it will be a great season for raising seedlings.

June 2.   This morning I went to visit the rock

garden and garden otherwise of friend Mark

Russell, who teaches art and draws magazine

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covers to live and gardens for fun. All his art he puts into his garden, too, growing not only plants therein but arranging them with the eye of a true artist. His is the most notable gar­den in these parts.

I saw therein many things in bloom, until I was fairly envious—great lupins, baptisia, Ori­ental poppies, Cheiranthus allioni or Siberian wallflower, armeria, aubretia or purple rock cress, gas plants several years old, helianthe-mums or sun roses, Siberian iris, verbascum or educated mullein, a doronicum of a later bloom than mine, a little naturalistic pool with water lilies about to bloom, vast sheets of the dwarf Veronica rupestris in rich blue and many an­other thing.

At noon the expressman phoned and quicker than I could say Jack Robinson I was off in the car—for I knew the box was from Wolcott's, famous growers of rock plants. And when I unpacked it, there they were—such treasures indeed. There were rare sedums such as dasyphyllum, a dwarf ewersi, a new veronica known as multifida, sempervisums and so on.

Here they were—and the place not yet

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ready for them. I'm not yet in frame of mind to make my big rock garden, but am decided upon a small one for these plants and a few more coming. There is a little spot just out­side the east entrance to the garden, in a nook in front of shrubbery—the very identical spot in fact where the roses had been planted that

died last winter.

Here I built this little rock garden—having no classes to interfere this afternoon—low-like, not seeking so much for artistic effect as to provide an alpine bed that would have drain­age and suitable soil mixture that included sand and compost to make a home for these new plants. With much labor and sweat I made it all, wet down the soil with the hose to settle it, let it dry awhile and then by darkness I had everything planted.

June}. Being Sunday, I rested and slept. The first helianthemums or sun roses in my garden bloomed today. If I were king, there would

be a law requiring every gardener to have some of these dainty dwarf shrub flowers. You can have them in reds, yellows, whites, salmon

,

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pink and with green or gray foliage. Diantbus deltoides or maiden pink is coming in bloom, in red, pink and white varieties and glory be! the Lactuca perenne that I bought without realiz­ing the name's perennial lettuce and that vis­itors have been joshing me about and calling dandelion. It has a charming blue flower.

June 4. Last night it rained. Today it rained. The ground is soaked good. So on this day I began my annual chore, destined to last all summer long, of transplanting seedlings from seed frames. Everything without exception I'll put out in rows in the propagating garden, there to be tended and cultivated and grown into good clumps, that by fall or next spring can go into border or bed. The first ones were forget-me-nots. The books say to sow these late, but I did for the past two summers and lost out, so I'm early and have hundreds of seedlings, at least. I suppose lack of shade, though, is the reason why I have such poor luck with these.

Reading in a nursery trade paper recently that a famous firm of Dutch nurserymen have

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walk on boards when transplanting rhododendrons, I got me a board a foot wide and 11 feet long and what a blessing it proved in transplanting my seedlings in the wet sod. I've been long lamenting that when I plant in such, my clay soil is so packed that it cakes when it dries out.

June 5. More rain and cold weather permitted some belated division of perennials. I hadn't enough Nepeta mussini or Persian catnip. So I took a few clumps and made a lot of small ones. These I put out in rows in the propa­gating garden, to be handled just like my seed­lings.

June 6. I have a boy helping me today and I had him spade up a long border in the rear of the lawn where I expect to have a collection of better sorts of iris sometime. I'll probably put m some late annuals now. I see where J. Horace McFarland writes that lilies transplant ^readily. So to try it out, I moved three plants Ldtum umbellatum or candlestick lily from

[99]

A the back of the garden into the long border by the drive.   If they die, I'll blame J. Horace.

Out between the garden and the propagat­ing garden there's my tiny tool shed and work place and a great event happened there today. A pair of wrens had made a nest on the shelf-getting in under the eaves, which shows what a poor carpenter I am.    They laid eggs which hatched.   Today the baby wrens left the nest and were hopping around on the floor, while the parents scolded me lustily for daring to intrude.

June 7.   As I buttoned my shirt this morn, I looked out the window and saw from afar two new irises in bloom.   As soon as respectability permitted, I hurried out, clasping in hand my garden record book of last year with the plant­ing record.    They were Dream, a rose pink, and Afterglow, soft grayish lavender-pink. Farther up I spied Rhein nixe, that bit of old-fashioned white and violet-blue.    Last night Fairy, good old white with faint blue margin, was in bloom.   It may be on the bargain lists or the discard by the iris sharks, but it is early? [ 100 ]

dependable, fragrant, beautiful.    I'm going to keep on growing it.

Yes, it's iris time — even Donald has some growing in his little garden. How I like iris. There are so many fine, new things in the cat­alogues. I have almost none of them yet — but give me time and I'll have them.

And rose time, too. Columbia, the only hybrid tea of my roses planted last fall that es­caped the winter, is in bud. Harrison's Yel­low is out in all its dependable old-fashioned glory. So is an old-fashioned red that I brought with me from our former garden in town.

On this day I planted annual seeds in the newly spaded bed at the rear of the lawn, about 'steen weeks later than they should be. I've been too busy with perennials of late years to do much with annuals, but I just feel that I must have some zinnias, ageratum, California Poppies and the like. Besides, Maggie likes to have them for cutting. You know, come to think of it, the time you need annuals is in the summer and early fall, anyhow.

There are plenty of other things in the spring.

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June 8. A-visiting in the rain to the garden of Mrs. Savage, whose son is a student in land­scape architecture in the East somewhere and has built his mother a fine rock garden, I saw some Edelweiss—the first I ever saw. I believe I could grow it myself.

June 9. Stopped at neighbor Albaugh's to see the big new rock garden he is building and his old one and there I saw for the first time in my life such a brave little plant. The fairies must have put it there. It was Thymus serpyllum coccineum—wonderfully rich, deep reddish or purplish. I bought a few plants myself this spring, but they haven't bloomed yet. A trick in getting it to grow is to mix a lot of sand into the soil in which it is planted. This applies to other thymes, too.

Since it rained this Saturday afternoon, I hied me to the long border by the drive and from four to dark I weeded until it looks like the proverbial pin. And when I weed, I get down on my knees, use a 7-inch forged steel trowel, dig each weed out by the roots that can't be pulled, knock the dirt off and put said [102]

weed into a bushel basket at my left elbow. It is then carted away to the compost pile.

June 10. Donald and I went garden-visiting this Sunday morning. At friend Evert's we saw an ordinary-sized backyard transformed into a fairy bower — perennial borders, a good collection of roses, dainty little rock garden with a pool. He makes unanimous use of peat moss and is enthusiastic about it.

Then we went to the garden of Mrs. Spen­cer, who has one of the finest collections of iris in these parts, more than 300 varieties that in­clude the best in the world. Like one in a daze I walked around and looked at high-priced things that heretofore I had known only in catalogue pages — Dominion and the Domin­ion seedlings of Bliss, such as Bruno, Cardinal, Moa and the rest; the new French varieties; all the new ones of Miss Sturtevant. But there was none that outshone Morning Splendor, originated by Shull, down in Washington D.C. This is, I believe, the finest iris to date Originated in America. In her rock garden I noted Lilium tenuifolium, daintiest dar-

ling of the flower gods, in its brilliant red

bloom—the little coral lily.

It surely is no sin to make a child happy on

the Sabbath.   So home, Donald and I donned

our overalls and we made him a little rock gar­den all his own.   He hauled little rocks, I big ones.   He hauled sand and humus, I a load of shale.    We made it and planted it with one each of the choicest things in my propagation garden of the more hardy, thrifty sorts.   It is four feet long, eight feet wide, with a pool in the middle made from the upturned top of an old garbage can.    Donald is four years old. But he knows the botanical names of nearly everything in his garden.

June 12.   Planted my last perennial seeds for the   spring  season,   a   few  odds   left  over. Mowed the yard with my new garden tractor, now repaired, to do the pushee and pullee—as the  Chinaman  said—and  the  durned little thing worked.    So did I work, swinging it around the corners.   I've bolted the mower on in front.    My, how the thing snorted and puffed and roused the whole neighborhood.

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Donald tagged along, round and round, as we

went.

June 14- A race was run on my lawn this afternoon and now I know that Jules Elie is no gentleman. For he won out to be the first peony of the year in bloom by 15 minutes over Frances Shaylor. Jules, though, is a glorious pink. If I were king, every home owner should have at least one clump on his lawn somewhere. My new peonies, planted last fall, are beginning to bloom. I suppose I should pull off the buds the first year, but I can never, never do it, until I've seen them.

June 15.   This day was spent on the sidewalks of Chicago.    Bought me some neckties and Maggie some new soup plates in her Wedg­wood pattern  at  Field's.     The  Wedgwood room at Field's is the most interesting spot in Chicago.   I go there now instead of going to the Art Museum.   To me, the most beautiful color in the world is that blue of Wedgwood, the blue  of Wedgewood.

 At 6:15, I was on board a special train on the Burlington, bound for Denver and the an-

nual convention of the American Association of Nurserymen, to which meeting certain busi­ness connected with writing calls me. The train was filled with the leading growers of trees, shrubs and plants of America.

June 16.    Morning and in good old loway, where once I lived for five years.    Our train was shunted down the branch line to Shenandoah where the nurserymen spent the day vis­iting nurseries in that center of such.   At one nursery I saw that to shade transplanted peren­nial seedlings, bricks were upended and lath frames laid on the bricks.   Begorry, I'll do the same when I get home and use the tile left over from my drainage last spring.

June 17. On arrival at Denver this morning I hied me out to the home of Hugh, Maggie's brother, whom I'm to visit while here. This evening the nurserymen visited the display gardens of Roberts, a local florist and nursery­man, that are probably as good as any in the country—an acre of ground fitted up with [106]

perennial borders, a big rock garden, pools and around 2,000 varieties of plants, all labeled.

June 19-

This has been a day of glory. We

went for a day's ride in the mountains west from Denver, into the canyon, up, up — whole fields abloom with vast sheets of wild alpines in the greatest rock garden in the world — Dame Nature's.    Blue    spruce,    then    Englemann spruce, then patches of snow among the trees. At noon, nearly  12,000 feet up, we had lunch at Echo Lake under Mount Evans and snow blew on us, from the white top that towered above us, as we ate.    In the lodge here I met D. M. Andrews, the veteran botanist, seeds­man, plant explorer and propagator of Rocky Mountain perennials.

June 20. Friend Kern from Cincinnati and I went 30 miles out from Denver to see the nursery of Andrews at Boulder and we wandered through his fields and propagating frames until dark, seeing treasures that can be found in captivity nowhere else in the world, some of them.  Why go to the Alps for alpines when

we have 'em at home? We saw, too, his new iris, Candlelight, that has been voted the best iris in the world by the American Iris Society.

June 24. Sunday and back home. Weeds are taking my garden but there is bloom in abund­ance, I found. There are seven varieties of hybrid philadelphus in bloom in the shrub bor­der—descendants of the old mock orange. Also the dwarfish Deutzta gracilis is in bloom and Viburnum dilatatum.

Oh, there were dozens of perennials in bloom, too, from delphiniums to dianthus and Campanula lactifolia macrantha with bells as large as Canterbury bells—but it is a hardy perennial. Paul's Scarlet and Dr. Van Fleet climbing roses are in bloom, too. Most of the peonies have bloomed and are gone and now I must wait another year to see Le Cygne and Lady Alexandra Duff. But hats off to Judge Berry—it's a noble pink peony.

June 25. This day, with the help of a boy, I began the long summer grind of fighting weeds in border, frames and garden generally.

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June 26. I went hunting for seedlings in the long border tonight and I found them — peren­nial flax, coreopsis, Shasta daisy, columbines, feverfew and a half dozen other kinds. These I transplanted into rows back in the propaga­tion garden, there to grow until I need them in the fall.

June 28. Today I began cultivating all of the new shrubbery around the place and, after it rained, transplanted some pink forget-me-nots.

June 29. First bloom on the Heliopsis pitch-eriana today — a single large yellow on a stiff stem that is sometimes called perennial zinnia and blooms all summer.

June 30. There was more rain and I put in most of my spare time this Saturday trans­planting seedlings from the seed frames. Also J dug and divided some dwarf phlox — should have been done right after blooming — and weeded a little at the seed frames.

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July 1928