A Garden of Weeds by Frances M. Payson

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 22, 1910

A Garden of Weeds

By Frances M. Payson

HAVE met one woman in my life who was a genius. She was certainly an exposition of the time-honored saying, "Where there's a will there's a way." The way was like the proverbial road to Jordan, "a hard road to trabble," but there was certainly a will.

She was living in the country when I saw her, trying to settle herself cheerfully amid the unaccustomed surroundings of the backwoods you may almost say, to lift a bit on a year or two of poor business, and help out on saving a small, out-of-the-way farm from the hammer. Money was scarce, and comforts in the little town adjacent about as much so. What one got away off there in a perfect wilderness of lonely nature, as it seemed to me, one got by "grubbing." Life within her limited horizon was far from a bed of roses as regards garden possibilities.

Our train was late; Charles came to meet it, but missed me, and I walked (according to the good-natured directions of a passing farmer), "on over the next slope, by the left fork of the road," and into the pretty, wild, country path leading "round to the Irwin ranch."

Sallie and I had always been flower friends, and her flower-garden was always a species of mania, I used to tell her laughingly. Hers was an ardor of enjoyment in her beloved garden, that seemed to pine without it; a half feeling that she must have the things she so loved about her. My first thought had been, when I heard of her situation and prospects,

"What will Sallie do without her flowers?"

I had quite expected chickens and such country evidences; house-dogs barking, and farm-hands going about with milk-pails and bran-buckets, according to schedule; such things as frivolities like front gardens hadn't occurred to me till I turned the bend at the foot of the slope, and took in the side-hill ahead. I don't know that I was ever more astonished in my life. There lay before me the prettiest garden of dainty flowers — bright against the green of the side-hill — that ever set off to advantage a quaint little prim, white, antiquated farmhouse of nondescript pattern. One peculiarity I noticed, even in my astonishment, as an oddity; and that was the character of the flowers. They all seemed so dainty; not heavy and big as is usual in flower-gardens, but fine and small and delicate, different from my garden at home. And just then, as I stood with my mouth open, that genius of a woman that I spoke of before made her appearance. I bowed down to her at once.

"Well, for goodness' sake, Sallie!" I cried. "Where on earth'd you get them?"

The genius laughed — a little ingenuous way geniuses have of underrating themselves.

"Well, for goodness' sake, Mildred!" she mimicked. "Where could I go about here without getting them?"

With that I got down nearer the ground and gave them a good looking over.

"You don't mean," I gasped, "that those [I confess I lost so much femininity as to point to "those"] are — that those — a — a — that isn't a turnip or a radish, is it?"

The answer was terse; it was a return question.

"If they are, they're pretty, aren't they? Now aren't they?"

I certainly had to admit the claim, awfully plebeian as it was. A bed — a big one — all of wild radish blossoms — think of it! Well, now, I had to confess they were just as pretty as one half the flowers, new importations, the florists send out and make us pay a dollar for. Sallie had gathered the seed about the corners and fence edge where they had gone wild year after year, and set them in, and clipped them and watered them as tenderly as if they had been precious, blooming all trim and close in the rich earth of their beds; and there they were, not the long, scraggly, fady blooms of tall, gawky, common growth, but a close clipped mass of half a dozen tints, like mammoth gypsophila, grown in an oval, close bed, and blowing in the wind with the airs and graces of a florist's catalog.

There were deep bluish purples, and pale pinkish and soft lavenders, and dark blues, and bright rose tints, there were clear light yellows, and pale straw colors, whites, and a peachy salmon of lovely shade; a real bouquet, massed as they were.

Well, I was resigned to anything after that. I followed Sallie about among the flowers (for I began to respect this beautiful garden. It was "a garden," no mistake), and we looked at one kind and then at another, right on through the list.

"O, that's nothing!" she assured me complacently. "Come on over here and see my yellow violets, and my clover beds; they're great!"

Great heads of blue, and crimson, and pink, and white clover were nodding heavy in their beds, and small white and pink and yellows, so dainty, and sweet as honeysuckle, for the bumblebees to drone over. They were not the common flower; these were dream clovers, such as grow in the heaven where all good bumblebees go. I picked a big bunch of them — carefully, as became rare and uncommon plants like these — to take to my room.

Well, I couldn't tell you! There were golden poppies, and sweet pale "kingcups" and buttercups, and yellow violets from the hill-sides, and marsh-marigolds from the brook edges below. There were black splotched wild tiger-lilies, and Mariposa lilies, all pink and lovely; there were pale blue "babies' eyes," and wild red columbine, feathery brakes, and sword ferns, and wild running strawberries all in bloom; and fragrant yerba buena, green and lovely; and O, the lupines! Great high shrubs of pale and dark blue blossoms, and pink and crimson, and pure white, and light and clear dark yellow. They grew luxuriant and tall, and full of long, bright blooms. Talk of shrubs! Why, she had the lupines, and wild elderberries in bloom, and manzanitas trimmed as prim as oleanders, and they were just as fine as any at home in my garden of rarities. And she had them all massed in with bunches of the pretty wild "grass flower" and rafts of that lovely thing, the common sky-blue wild chicory, and deep blue California wild flag, stiff, and purple, and rich, and with the small bright yellow sort beside them in a border. Why! I've passed common lupines a hundred times, and wouldn't even look at them; I felt afraid to ask to pick Sallie's, they looked so rich and splendid, so just like flowers, you know, and beautiful, as tho you needed to be careful not to break the branches.

There comes a time to all lives when a sudden awakening takes place, and brings an instant knowledge of the accumulation of years, our own self-conceit. Such a time had come to me. Hitherto I had rather as a superior being in the flower line patronized Sallie; was wont to consider myself a sort of model in the way of giving nature her due. I had serenely fancied that I was the more appreciative of the two, and had a way of saving the overlooked odds and ends of the garden and stoutly defending the modest beauties of scraggly growths, and dull colors, that, I had fancied, became a true flower-lover; had cried, "Don't pull up the poor things; they are pretty if they aren't handsome!" So I had taken pride in saving a hidden corner for all the neglected old alyssums, and dull colored candytufts, and held on to and coaxed along the diminutive last blooms of the later summer's pansies, and spared the odds and ends of scrubby blooms, with a self-satisfied thought of my tender and artistic appreciation of nature's glories; and fancied serenely that I was her true disciple. But for once I had met quite my match, almost, you might say, my superior. If there be a Waterloo for a flower-lover, that was certainly mine. To see a woman who not only stood up valiantly for nature and unadorned, but who had nothing else in her garden but simple wild nature, right from the woods and hills, not the hint of a "collection," not a "novelty," not a sign of a florist in her whole place, and her garden beat mine and gave it a queen. Well!

As I say, it was my flower Waterloo. When I saw Sallie's radish beds, I came right down off my pedestal, and took off my hat to her and weeds in general, big and little. I've never since then been able to pass the commonest weed by the wayside without viewing it with an eye to garden possibilities. Whenever I find myself attempting to sneer at a common plant, I stop and remember Sallie's sweet little garden there in the wilderness.

Well, one man's meat is another man's poison! If Sallie hadn't been so desperately needing, I suppose I never should have known how much one can get out of nothing in the flower line. When you don't have anything to begin with, and have to invent a garden, you're a genius, you see. The Government is busy paying people to get in and do just what she was doing; it pays folks every day for producing new and improved varieties of things for the use of people. That's sort of creating a new commodity, you see; a something out of nothing.

Sally had just common weeds and uncommon ones, and pretty weeds and ugly ones, and weeds hanging down and weeds staked up; but they were all just common weeds, the insignificant things you pull up and throw away, and dig out of your real gardens, and tramp on, and run your wagon wheels over every day; only these were arranged to look attractive. They were watered and enriched and dug about, and the tall ones tacked up, and the low ones clipped close and neat. Just as soon as you get to that point, you haven't got weeds any longer; you're a second Burbank, and you're creating new varieties. Talk of Burbank! Why, he had something to begin on in the first place! Sallie didn't.

If that isn't a genius for getting on in the world, then I don't know what is, that's all! I did wish Mrs. McClernigan at home down street from our place, in her big stone house, could have seen that display — just once. It might have checked up a bit of the woful complaints I used to hear about her gardens and gardeners, and the "frightful expense" it all was. Maybe — I don't know. Some people can't do anything without spending a fortune, anyway.

I sat out there on the sunny side porch in the barrel chair (she made it) between the pets of waving brakes and long sword ferns, and looked

over at the wild canaries swinging in their wire netting cages between the hanging baskets of yerba buena and flowering wild morning-glory, white with long waving ends of bell-shaped blooms, and thought. Now do you know what I thought?

"Well, that woman!"

But underneath I was bowing down to an unspeakable genius, as I quoted, under my breath, Grey's immortal lines:

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear. Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air."