GREEN FINGERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 103, 13 June 1941, Page 47

GREEN FINGERS

40 young Listeners, OME fine Saturday morning you're sure to have this idea — you want a garden. You must have a garden. So you'll say, "Father, I want a garden that’s mine. Where can I put it?" "Oh," the father will say, looking very interested, and thinking so hard that he looks just like a man in the pictures who is thinking very hard. "Well, let me see. Now, what about this splendid place under the macracarpa tree." So then you must look under the tree and you will see that nothing ever has grown there and nothing ever will grow there. However, you don’t really blame your father for suggesting such a place, He has his reasons. Then you say, "Look here, father, I’m ten now, I’m not the sort of kid I was three years ago-I don’t pull up the seeds now to see if they’re growing, if that’s what you're thinking." After that, you'll get your garden in a really good place, and even though it’s winter, you can plant lots of seeds and seedlings. Carrots, parsnips, cabbages, cauliflowers, silver beet, broad-beans and a few flowers to brighten it up. Then you will have become one of the "producers" of the country which will be important and useful, and people will all admire your garden and say, "My word, you must have Green Fingers-my things won’t grow like that." And you'll say, "Why on earth are my fingers greenthey’re not." Then they'll tell you that when some people plant things they grow, and when other people plant things they don’t grow, and the people whose things do grow are said to have "Green Fingers." ‘There are some verses by Reginald Arkell which tell you about Martha’s garden which didn’t grow and Mary’s garden which did grow: Martha had a garden, And she tended it with care. She took a pail and watered it, Each slug or snail-she slaughtered it There were no green fly there. She scratched and scraped it with a hoe; There were no seeds she didn’t sow And yet her garden wouldn’t grow. Mary had a garden Which is full of happy flowers She doesn’t do a thing in it But walk about and sing in it For hours and hours and hours She never weeds and never hoes And yet her garden always grows Because she" loves it, I suppose. _. Mr. Arkell is all on Mary’s side, which is unfair, don’t you think; because surely a garden must need poor old Martha, too, But they’re very nice verses. It’s a Question They say that gardening is a very healthy occupation. We would have thought it would make people