So Margery watched.Her father took a handful of kernels, and, stooping, walked slowly along the line, letting the kernels fall, five or six at a time, in spots about a foot apart; he swung his arm with a gentle, throwing motion, and the golden seeds trickled out like little showers, very exactly.It was pretty to watch; it made Margery think of a photograph her teacher had, a photograph of a famous picture called "The Sower." Perhaps you have seen it.
Putting in the seed was not so easy to do as to watch; sometimes Margery got in too much, and sometimes not enough; but her father helped fix it, and soon she did better.
They planted peas, beans, spinach, carrots, and parsnips.And Margery's father made a row of holes, after that, for the tomato plants.Hesaid those had to be transplanted; they could not be sown from seed.
When the seeds were in the trenches they had to be covered up, and Margery really helped at that.It is fun to do it.You stand beside the little trench and walk backward, and as you walk you hoe the loose earth back over the seeds; the same dirt that was hoed up you pull back again.Then you rake very gently over the surface, with the back of a rake, to even it all off.Margery liked it, because now the garden began to look LIKE a garden.
But best of all was the work next day, when her own little particular garden was begun.Father Brown loved Margery and Margery's mother so much that he wanted their garden to be perfect, and that meant a great deal more work.He knew very well that the old grass would begin to come through again on such "green" soil, and that it would make terribly hard weeding.He was not going to have any such thing for his two "little girls," as he called them.So he fixed that little garden very fine! This is what he did.
After he had thrown out all the turf, he shoveled clean earth on to the garden,-- as much as three solid inches of it; not a bit of grass was in that.Then it was ready for raking and fertilizing, and for the lines.The little footpaths were marked out by Father Brown's feet; Margery and her mother laughed well when they saw it, for it looked like some kind of dance.Mr.Brown had seen gardeners do it when he was a little boy, and he did it very nicely: he walked along the sides of the square, with one foot turned a little out, and the other straight, taking such tiny steps that his feet touched each other all the time.This tramped out a path just wide enough for a person to walk.
The wider path was marked with lines and raked.
Margery thought, of course, all the flowers would be put in as the vegetables were; but she found that it was not so.For some, her father poked little holes with his finger; for some, he made very shallow ditches; and some very small seeds were just scattered lightly over the top of the ground.
Margery and her mother had taken so much pains in thinking out how the flowers would look prettiest, that maybe you will like to hear just howthey designed that garden.At the back were the sweet peas, which would grow tall, like a screen; on the two sides, for a kind of hedge, were yellow sunflowers; and along the front edge were the gay nasturtiums.Margery planned that, so that she could look into the garden from the front, but have it shut away from the vegetable patch by the tall flowers on the sides.The two front corners had coreopsis in them.Coreopsis is a tall, pretty, daisy-like flower, very dainty and bright.And then, in little square patches all round the garden, were planted white sweet alyssum, blue bachelor's buttons, yellow marigolds, tall larkspur, many- colored asters and zinnias.All these lovely flowers used to grow in our grandmothers' gardens, and if you don't know what they look like, I hope you can find out next summer.
Between the flowers and the middle path went the seeds for that wonderful salad garden; all the things Mrs.Brown had named to Margery were there.Margery had never seen anything so cunning as the little round lettuce-seeds.They looked like tiny beads; it did not seem possible that green lettuce leaves could come from those.But they surely would.
Mother and father and Margery were all late to supper that evening.But they were all so happy that it did not matter.The last thing Margery thought of, as she went to sleep at night, was the dear, smooth little garden, with its funny foot- path, and with the little sticks standing at the end of the rows, labeled "lettuce," "beets," "helianthus," and so on.
"I have a garden! I have a garden!" thought Margery, and then she went off to dreamland.
