YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 54, 5 July 1940, Page 54

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Anne Earncliff

Brown

(No. 37)

A PEEP AT THE DEVIL’S GARDEN Y a recent American mail I received a picture postcard which actually lived up to its name, for it portrayed most artistically "The Devil’s Garden," with Mount San Jacinto in the background. In times of stress, the calm normality of gardening is perhaps of as great value as the product, for it is work that demands a settled routine. Cities may crumble and empires crack, but cabbages continue to require the same attention, suffer the same attacks, and give the same rewards as in a world of peace. Nevertheless on receiving this postcard, it was a relief to let my mind stray to the monstrous desert growths under warm Californian skies. I pictured the sender, gazing across the vast heat-simmering sands of " The Devil’s Garden," that natural cactus garden from which Mount San Jacinto rises in a sheer wall of rock over two miles high. To me cactus growths always have a fantastic, unbelievable qual-ity-almost making me doubt the evidence of my senses. Thus when the mind staggers at the daily abnormalities of a war-torn world it is a queer kind of relief to accept also the reality of cacti; miles of them in a Californian desert; rows of them in an ambitious greenhouse; one dusty little specimen cheek by jowl with an aspidistra seen through Nottingham lace curtains in a cottage window; cacti of every kind artfully displayed against a canvas canyon in a Botanical Garden’s House display; and, by a sunny front entrance, the cactus upon which for 20 years boys and girls have cut their initialsa sort of social register much treasured by the family who offer this privilege to the elect amongst callers. "Yes," one thinks, noting traces of snow high up in the deepest fissures of the mountain, and sensing the sunglare on the scorching sand, ‘" the whole thing is an outsize hoax on Nature’s part: sun, snow, desert-sand, and cacti-but definitely a change from cabbages. As far apart as Cabbages and Kings!" a /" * However, most of us are more familiar with cabbages, and if we are careful gardeners, .will be diligent in tending these at present. Though sound hearted, some may. have become rocked by storm winds, or their stalks loosened from the soil by frost action, These should be firmed and the soil around them stirred and drawn well up to the stalks. Where blights or burrowing insects have invaded the hearts, the plants should be removed and fed to fowls or stock, or failing this, be burned. Do not dig these diseased plants into your garden or even allow them to rot cn your compost heap. In both places they may be future trouble breeders. If sowed Savoys or Drumheads are occupying ground urgently needed for other plantings, or requiring immediate special cultivation, the cabbages can be carefully lifted, set closely in a trench, and earthed up well. Heeled in thus, they keep fresh and sound till required. Which makes me wonder if to-day Cabbages and Kings are really quite so far apart! B