Some sweet-pease, it is true, little Prue had planted earlier, one
warm day in April, when the Chief Gardener had dug for her a trench
along the fence, and she had put in the pease, one at a time, and just
so far apart, so that they wouldn't crowd, she said, or get in each
other's way. The trench was quite deep--most too deep, Prue thought,
but then sweet-pease have to be put down pretty deep, and the soil
dragged up to the vines as they grow, to give them strength. Now, she
planted some sweet-williams, and pansies, and mignonettes, and alyssum,
and had brought most of her pots from the house, and set the things in
a little row by themselves, so that they might still be company as they
had been through the long winter and late spring.
Davy, too, had made a fine garden, with six hills of sweet-corn, one
hill of cantaloupes, a row of pease, a little row of onions, lettuce,
and radishes, besides a very small row of sweet herbs, such as
marjoram, fennel, and thyme. Each garden was fully eight feet square,
which is really quite a good-sized garden, when you remember that it
must be kept nicely tilled and _perfectly clean_ of weeds.
"I think I will have a hill of cucumbers, too," said Davy. "I like
cucumbers."
"But they won't do, near your cantaloupes," said the Chief Gardener.
"You see, cucumbers and cantaloupes belong to the same family, and one
of the most twining, friendly families I know of. Each member left to
itself is very good in its way, and often ornamental, but let them run
together ever so little and before you know it they begin to mix up
and look like one another, and even have tastes alike. A cucumber-hill
there, Davy, would spoil the taste of your cantaloupes, and the
cucumbers would not be good either. It's the same way with watermelons,
and citrons, and pumpkins, and all the rest of the gourds."
"Gourds!"
"Why, yes, they all belong to the Gourd family, and they will all
look and taste like gourds if you give them a chance. It's really, of
course, because the pollen of one blows into the bloom of the other,
and the members of the Gourd family are so closely related that
pollens blend and mix. Different kinds of corn will do the same thing.
That is why we have our popcorn as far from our sweet corn as we can
get it. There are other families that do not mix at all. We grow apples
and plums and peaches and roses, side by side--even different kinds of
each--and they never mix."
"But apples and plums and peaches are not roses, are they?" asked
little Prue.
"Just as much as strawberries, and pears and quinces are," said the
Chief Gardener.
The children looked at him rather puzzled.
"How about blackberries and raspberries?" asked the Chief Gardener.
"Don't you think they look a little, a very little, like wild roses,
only the flowers are smaller and white, instead of pink?"
"Why, yes, so they do!" nodded Davy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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