The Lure of the Garden (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1911 Excerpt: ... Chapter VII SOME GARDEN VICES IET it not be imagined that a garden is an unmixed paradise. On the contrary, gardens- possess extremely vicious characteristics, as well as no small capacity for arousing unpleasing traits in the people to whom they belong; you will need, in fact, to keep a close watch both on your garden and yourself, if you wish to maintain either in approximate perfection. Some gardens tend to a frantic indulgence in insects and worms of the very worst kinds, a habit difficult to break, insidious and dangerous. Their capacity for outwitting the gardener, together with all the members of his household, impressed into a too-often unwilling service of extermination, is truly amazing. Here and there, for instance, a garden will acquire the cutworm habit, and once this is firmly fixed upon it it will display endless energy, cunning, and devotion in finding and pampering these noxious creatures, yielding to them its finest plants and fairest blossoms, sheltering and hiding them beyond your utmost skill to discover, guiding them past your traps and poisons, and in and out of the tin collars with which you have desperately sought to protect your best beloved seedlings. You may be up early and down late, but the garden, working with a feverish frenzy in the service of its enemy, obsessed like a drug fiend with the passion for its own extermination, is more than apt to win in its suicidal intent, and to leave its beds and borders bare of some of its loveliest possessions. If, however, you do succeed in tracking down and slaying the last of those fat pirates, do not dream that you have conquered your garden's predilections toward evil behavior. It has untold resources of wickedness, and once it has set foot upon the broad pathway of destruction, march...