THE PLEASURES OF GARDENING.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 1643, 10 November 1873, Page 2

THE PLEASURES OF GARDENING.

An American paper thus amusingly treats on the difficulties of raising your own vegetables : — • : l

" The chief charm of having a garden of your own is the fresh state of the vegetables which daily garnish your table. Any one who has always depended upon a store for his supply does not have the faintest conception of the superior flavor, tone, and elastacity of vegetables gathered fresh every morning from your, own garden. Aside from this benefit gardening is the most health-giving occupation^ known to man, unless we except that of a physician' — which we don't. There is ;aman who lives on the other side of our street who has a garden, and has fresh vegetables every .day, our folks say. We don't know anything about that, but we do know he has a garden, because we see . him out in it every morning, in shirt sleeves and slippers, picking cucumber and squash bugs.. We know when he gets hold 'of one by the way he shuts up his mouth and fingers. Sometimes he don't catch the one he is after, and sometimes he makes a half-dozen passes at one bug. Every time he makes, one of those passes he says something. The firat remark is not very plainly heard, but the next is quite so, and the observation that follows after the sixth unfortunate pass appears to go completely through our head. He jumps around this way for about an hour, and having got his blood up to a. fever heat, goes in and drinks a cup of boiling coffee, and then goes to business. At noon he goes out there to kill a couple more bugs, but does'nt do it. He finds two hens from the next house in the cucumber patch. They have scratched down to the cool ear|h, and thrown the parched soil of two cucumber hills oVer their backs, and with one eye closed in a speculative way, are thinking of the intense heat and the short grass crop.'. When they see him- and tfie, preparations of welcome, he has .hastily got together, they get up and leave. The first thing he throws at them, knocks a limb off a choice pear tree, and thenext thing, which is generally a' pail, goes through a glass cover to some choice flower seeds and loses its bail. He then goes into the house and gets some moreb'oiling coffee, and says the man next door, is something we never put in print, and goes to business again. At night.he comes" home and kills bugs until supper time, and then goes in with his fingers smelling as if he had shaken hands with 1200 bedbugs. .He keeps his boy home from school to water the garden and guard it against the encroachment of straying cattle. The boy gets several other boys to come over and help him. They take half a dozen sheets out of the wash, and puts up a circus in the back part of the yard, and some vicious boy who hasn't pins enough to get in, leaves the front gate open, and when the circus is in the midst of ,its glory, the cry of "a cow in the garden," breaks up the performance, and sends both artists and audience in pursuit of the beast. When our neighbor comes home that night to gather vegetables fresh from the garden, and smash bugs with his finger and thumb, and goes out and looks at the destruction, it is altogether likely the. first thing he thinks : ef is the danger in eating store vegetables which have been picked some days;before, aiid allowed to swelter and wither in noxious barrels, and how much better it is to have everything fresh from. the garden.' But we are not certain. Neither is the proprietor of the garden."