YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 89, 7 March 1941, Page 44

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

No. 60)

VER since the gale which wrecked haystacks and the hopes of many Canterbury orchardists and gardeners, I’ve expected a letter from the Garden Lady. You'll perhaps recail ther as the grower of outsize cabbages etc. A letter from her is always a pleasure, but I am always afraid that she will forfeit the right to her present title and become merely an exasperated woman using language no Editor of Garden Notes would allow to pass. Fortunately, as that devastating wind shredded my garden crops and tore great limbs from the willows, I was struck speechless. The big branches at least will make good kindling. Most of the twigs and crisped leaves which carpeted every bit of this aching acre are now raked up. Even those sneaky bits which blocked the feed to the lily pond are discovered. The fountain plays again. Since at this moment the rain splashes purposefully down, I am absolved from yesterday’s resolutions, and am enjoying a crackling wood fire and my chat with you-a trifle onesided perhaps, but entirely without any friction. I’m pretty good at making resolutions. Listening to the unrelenting downpour I decide that no "pale cast of thought" could have sicklied o’er my in tention to sally beyond the rabbitnetted gate and cut down the blue, mauve, and white lupins that have seeded on my bit of frontage. As a rule, I manage to cut these lupins jback hard shortly after their first blooming, and thus strive to give passers-by a second helping of their beauty. This soaking rain may atone for my neglect and tempt them into an Indian Summer effort. Formal roadside gardening in the country is not generally indulged innor in most cases would it be practicable. Passing stock take toll of wayside beauty. Many a skinny old ewe snatching hungrily at the long flower spikes,

has gone on her way to the boiling down works incongruously decorated-a champion’s blue dangling from her gummy, mutnmbling jaws. At times, too, cattle break. or bruise an odd branch, but I find it difficult to be charitable to trippers who stop their cars and pick--not the few blooms that would never be missed and would be gladly spared, but the whole plant torn up by the Toots. No gentle rebuke or suggestion that cutting is kinder has effect on insensitive folk. "It’s a public road. They belong to everyone," argued our latest offender. So do the flowers growing outside city gardens — they’re on public roads, too. But there are people with whom one doesn’t argue. A spring cleaner of flowering. bulbs also beautifying the roadside, was courteously urged by the planter to step inside his gate and gather more and better ones. Her amazing reply, "No thanks, I’ve got plenty," brought the soft answer: "No? -ah! well, perhaps another time." However, it pays to keep your town street frontage bright. Nasturtiums or marigolds are flame ‘bright, but less dangerous than tall dry grass that often takes possession. You will never know how nearly your paling fence-so neatly capped in white-was to destructidn. My shoe still carries a slight scotch where I stathped out a fire started by some carelessly thrown cigarette butt. T may not pass your — again.