The crop in the barren Mexican soil grew by leaps and bounds. It all looked alike at first, but my mind's eye saw each spikelet in full bloom, and I nursed them with a mother's care. They could not tell me it was impossible to raise things right out of the ground! Cats provided the first cloud on the horizon. My pet Maltese had two boy friends. They discovered this soft, rich bed of loam and thought it a good setting for prolonged night-work. Four-toed footprints mashed six of my babies to the ground! What to do? Build a tent over the entire plot? Expensive! Surround it by chicken-wire five feet high? Ugly, and chicken wire was six pesos a yard. Pepper? I sprinkled it and the cats adored it. Then, with the help of a ladder, I climbed the nearest palm tree, hacked off all the sharp-pointed dead leaves and planted them in the garden, like Perseus sowing the dragon's teeth. That worked.
Two days later a friend came to tea. I showed her the garden. "This," I said, "is going to be larkspur, and those little delicate things in the rear are my digitalis." She looked at me attentively. "My poor woman," she said, "you have been cultivating weeds; flower-seeds do not come up three days after you plant them. Pull all these out if you expect a garden." I pulled them out, but I planted them again behind the rubbish heap. I had grown fond of those weeds. Sure enough, at the end of two weeks the nasturtiums and the mint put in an appearance. No digitalis and no larkspur.
"You probably planted them too deep," said my friend. "Or not deep enough. All you can do now is to wait." I found this waiting a trial. I had not known that Nature was so slow. At the end of a month Mint and Company was only one inch high, and friends would stare at the mud-plot and say, "Why did you dig up all that nice grass you had there?" Exhausted with watchful waiting, I compromised and bought a box of prepared fertilizer.
Miracle! Everything began to grow like mad, and the larkspur and digitalis fairly leaped out of the earth. Now every morning I arose at a ghastly hour, before the sun was hot, and played a fine spray from the hose over my offspring. Their little leaves sparkled in the sun. My friend, catching me at it, said, "Never spray leaves. They don't absorb moisture. In fact, never spray at all. It washes out the soil. You should irrigate."
About this Author
David is the author of many articles including Best Friend Quotes and also the author of Best life quotes
Other articles:
Cute Best Friend
Best life quotes
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