What I claim is the fastest asparagus.  As for eating purposes, I have seen better.  A neighbor of mine, who looked in at the growth of the bed, said, “Well, he’d be -----“:  but I told him there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till I wanted it on the asparagus affidavit.  In order to have this sort of asparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork it in, and top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer of chloride of sodium:  if you cannot get that, common salt will do, and the neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na.  Cl. 58-5, or not.

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds.  They grow as if the devil was in them.  I know a lady, a member of the church, and a very good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of that class, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, in going through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keeping the ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition.  I asked her which one, but she said, all of them:  one felt like breaking the whole lot.  The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can be said to hate anything which grows in my own garden) is the “pusley,” a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and the most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the dictionary) plant I know.  I saw a Chinaman, who came over with a returned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of it in a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with relish,—­“Me likee he.”  It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they come to do our gardening.  I only fear they will cultivate it at the expense of the strawberries and melons.  Who can say that other weeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remote people or tribe?  We ought to abate our conceit.  It is possible that we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some other place.  Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are virtues in some remote planet.  I cannot see, however, that this thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weeds are.

There is another subject which is forced upon my notice.  I like neighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to be united near a garden.  Neighbors’ hens in your garden are an annoyance.  Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck the strawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see them straddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner, picking inquisitively here and there.  It is of no use to tell the neighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes:  it makes no impression on him, for the tomatoes are not his.  The best way is to casually remark to him that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown, and that you like spring chickens broiled.  He will take them away at once.