A Little Garden Calendar for Boys and Girls. Paine Albert Bigelow
Читать онлайн книгу.
to boil my pease!'"
"But, Papa," began little Prue, "I don't see – "
"I do," said Davy, "it made them soft, so they didn't hurt."
"What kind of pease were they?" asked Prue. "Like Davy's or mine?"
"Well, I've never heard just what kind they were. There are a good many kinds of pease, and they seem to have come from a good many places. Besides the sweet-pease and garden-pease, there are field-pease, used dry for cattle, and in England there is what is called a sea-pea, because it was first found growing on the shore of a place called Sussex, more than three hundred and fifty years ago, in a year of famine. There were many, many of them and they were in a place where even grass had not grown before that time. The people thought they must have been cast up by some shipwrecked vessel, and they gathered them for food, and so kept from going hungry and starving to death. The garden-pea is almost the finest of vegetables, and there are many kinds – some large, some small, some very sweet, some that grow on tall vines and have to have stakes, and some that grow very short without stakes, and are called dwarfs. There are a good many kinds of sweet-pease, too, different sizes and colors, but I think all the different kinds of garden-pease and sweet-pease might have come from one kind of each, a very, very long time ago, and that takes me to another story which I will have to put off until next time. I have some books now to look over, and you and Davy, Prue, can go for a run in the fresh air."
III
EVEN CLOVER BELONGS TO THE PULSE FAMILY
It was on the same evening that Prue and Davy asked for the other story. And of course the Chief Gardener had to tell it, for he had promised, and little Prue, especially, didn't like to put off anything that had been promised. So this is the story that the Chief Gardener told:
"The Pulse family is a very large one. I don't know just where the first old great-grandfather Pulse ever did come from, but it is thought to be some place in Asia, a great country of the far East. It may be that the first Pulse lived in the Garden of Eden, though whether as a tree or a vine or a shrub, or only as a little plant, we can't tell now."
"I think it's going to be a fairy story," said Prue, settling down to listen. "Is it, Papa? A real, true fairy story?"
"Well, perhaps it is a sort of a fairy story, and I'll try to tell it just as truly as I can. Anyway, the story goes, that a long time after the Garden of Eden was ruined and the Pulse family started west, there were two cousins, and these two cousins were vines, though whether they were always vines, or only got to be vines so they could travel faster, I do not know. Some of their relations were trees then, and are now; the locust tree out in the corner of the yard is one of them."
Davy looked up, and was about to ask a question. The Chief Gardener went on.
"The cousins I am talking about, being vines, traveled quite fast in the summer-time, but when it came winter, they lay down for a long nap, and only when spring came they roused up and traveled on. One of them was a very fine fellow, with gay flowers that had a sweet smell, and people loved him for his beauty and fragrance. The other brought only greenish-white flowers, not very showy, but some thought him far more useful than his pretty cousin, for he gave the people food as he passed along.
"So they journeyed on, down by the way of the Black Sea, which you will know about when you are a little older, and still farther west until at last the pretty Pulse cousin and the plain but useful Pulse cousin had spread their families all over Europe, and were called P's, perhaps because the first letter of their family name began with P. Then by and by it was spelled p-e-a, and they were called garden-pease and sweet-pease, and were planted everywhere, one for the lovely flowers, and the other for food. Now we have them side by side in your windows, just as they were when they first started on their travels, so very, very long ago."
"Did they really travel as you have told?" asked Davy, looking into the fire.
"Well, I have never been able to find any printed history of their travels, so it may have been something like that."
"They did, didn't they, Papa?" insisted little Prue, who always wanted to believe every word of every fairy story. "They went hand in hand, just as Davy and I do when we go walking, didn't they?"
"And Davy is the garden-pea and you the sweet-pea, is that it? Well, they did come a long way – that is true – and they do belong to a very large family. Why, even the clover belongs to the Pulse family, and the peanut, and the locust, and the laburnum, and there is one distant branch of the family that is so modest and sensitive that at the least touch its members shrink and hide, and these are called sensitive plants."
"Aren't beans of the Pulse family, too?" asked Davy.
"Why do you think so?" asked the Chief Gardener.
"Well, I remember that the flowers are something alike, and then they both have pods."
"And you are right, Davy. Both the flowers are what is called butterfly-shaped, and pods of that kind are called legumes. Whenever you see a flower of that shape, or a pod of that kind, no matter how small or how large, or whether they grow on a plant or a tree or a shrub, you will know you have found one of the Pulse family and a relative of the pea. Your scarlet runners are about second cousins, I should think, and I have something to tell about them, too, but it is too late this evening."
IV
BEANS AND MORNING-GLORIES TWINE TO THE RIGHT
"My morning-glories are climbing! My morning-glories are climbing up the strings!"
"And so are my scarlet runners! Two of them have gone twice around already, and one of them three times! But oh, Papa, something has broken one of my stalks of corn, right off close to the ground!"
It was two days after the strings had been put up, and Prue and Davy had tried very hard not to look at their garden during all that time. Then they just had to look, and found that the beans and morning-glories were really starting up the strings. But what could have happened to Davy's corn!
The Chief Gardener hurried down to see. Then with an old knife he dug down into the pot a little, and up came, what do you suppose? Why, a white, fat ugly worm – a cut-worm, the Chief Gardener called him.
"They are a great enemy to young corn," he said, "especially in cool weather. Sometimes almost whole fields have to be replanted. Blackbirds will kill them, but many times the farmer thinks the blackbird is pulling up his corn, and drives him away with a gun, when the blackbird is only trying to help the farmer."
"Do you suppose there are any more?" asked Davy anxiously.
The Chief Gardener dug carefully around the other stalk, until the white roots began to show.
"No, I think your other stalk is safe," he said, "at least from cut-worms."
Grown-up Prue came to see the gardens. Yes, the vines were really making a nice start, as well as the other things. One of Davy's pease had sent out some tiny tendrils that were reaching toward the slender twig-branches, but thoughtful Davy was looking first at his beans, then at Prue's morning-glories.
"They all go around the strings just alike," he said at last; "all the same way. Why don't some go the other way?"
"You ask such hard questions, Davy," the Chief Gardener answered. "I have never known anybody to tell why all the beans and morning-glories twine to the right, any more than why all the honeysuckles twine to the left." The Chief Gardener turned to the little woman beside him. "There must be some reason, of course; some law of harmony and attraction. I suppose it would be quite simple to us if we knew. Why, where did Davy go?"
Davy came in, just then, with his hat and coat on.
"I'm going to look at the honeysuckles," he said, "those out on the porch."
The others put on wraps, too, and went with him. It was crisp and bright out there, and dry leaves still clinging to the vines whispered and gossiped together in the wintry breeze.
"They do!" said Davy, "they every one turn the other way – every single one! How do you suppose they can tell which way to start – which is right, and which is left?"
The Chief Gardener shook