One Saturday night, the last of April, we exulted over the fact that our acre was planted and the seed well covered.

Many of the trees about the house, meantime, had clothed themselves with fragrant promises of fruit.  All, especially Mousie, had been observant of the beautiful changes, and, busy as we had been, she, Winnie and Bobsey had been given time to keep our table well supplied with wildflowers.  Now that they had come in abundance, they seemed as essential as our daily food.  To a limited extent I permitted blooming sprays to be taken from the fruit-trees, thinking, with Mousie, that “cherry blossoms are almost as nice as cherries.”  Thus Nature graced our frugal board, and suggested that, as she accompanied her useful work with beauty and fragrance, so we also could lift our toilsome lives above the coarse and sordid phase too common in country homes.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CORN, COLOR, AND MUSIC

In early May the grass was growing lush and strong, and Brindle was driven down the lane to the meadow, full of thickets, which bordered on the creek.  Here she could supply herself with food and water until the late autumn.

With the first days of the month we planted, on a part of the garden slope, where the soil was dry and warm, very early, dwarf sweet corn, a second early variety, Burr’s Mammoth, and Stowell’s Evergreen.

“These several kinds,” I said, “will give us a succession of boiling ears for weeks together.  When this planting is up a few inches high, we will make another, for, by so doing, my garden book says we may have this delicious vegetable till frost comes.”

After reading and some inquiry during the winter I had decided to buy only McLean’s Gem peas for seed.  This low-growing kind required no brush and, therefore, far less labor.  By putting in a row every ten days till the last of June, we should enjoy green peas of the sweet, wrinkled sort till tired, if that were possible.  We also planted early dwarf wax-beans, covering the seed, as directed, only two inches deep.  It was my ambition to raise a large crop of Lima beans, having read that few vegetables yield more food to a small area than they.  So, armed with an axe and a hatchet, Merton and I went into some young growth on the edge of our wood lot and cut thirty poles, lopping off the branches so as to leave little crotches on which the vines could rest for support.  Having sharpened these poles we set them firmly in the garden, four feet apart each way, then dug in some very fine and decayed manure around each pole, and left the soil for a day or two to grow warm and light.  My book said that, if the earth was cold, wet, or heavy the beans would decay instead of coming up.  The 10th of the month being fine and promising, I pressed the eye or germ side of the beans into the soil and covered them only one inch deep.  In the evening we set out our cabbage and cauliflower plants where they should be allowed to mature.  The tomato plants, being more tender than their companions started in the kitchen window, were set about four inches apart in a sheltered place.  We could thus cover them at night and protect them a little from the midday sun for a week or two longer.