Then there are the people who, when I approach the subject, brighten up, look intelligent, even eager, but in a moment make it clear that what they are eager for is a chance to talk about their own gardens. Mine is merely the stepping-stone, the bridge, the handle. This is better than indifference, yet it is sometimes trying. One of my dearest friends thus tests my love now and then when she walks in my garden.
“Aren’t those peonies lovely?” I suggest.
“Yes,” dreamily; “you know I can’t have that shade in my garden because—” and she trails off into a disquisition that I could, just at that moment, do without.
“Look at the height of that larkspur!” I say.
“Yes—but, you know, it wouldn’t do for me to have larkspur when I go away so early. What I need is things for April and May.”
“Well, I am not trying to _sell_ you any,” I am sometimes goaded into protesting. “I only wanted you to say they are pretty—pretty right here in _my_ garden.”
“Yes—yes—of course they are pretty—they’re lovely—you have a lovely garden, you know.” She pulls herself up to give this tribute, but soon her eyes get the faraway look in them again, and she is murmuring, “Oh, I must write Edward to see about that hedge. Tell me, my dear, if you had a brick wall, would you have vines on it or wall-fruit?”
It is of no use. I cannot hold her long. I sometimes think she was nicer when she had no garden of her own. Perhaps she thinks I was nicer when I had none.
But there is another kind of garden manners—a kind that subtly soothes, cheers, perhaps inebriates. It is the manner of the friend who may, indeed, have a garden, but who looks at mine with the eye of adoption, temporarily at least. She walks down its paths, singling out this or that for notice. She suggests, she even criticizes, tenderly, as one who tells you an “even _more_ becoming way” to arrange your little daughter’s hair. She offers you roots and seeds and seedlings from her garden, and—last touch of flattery—she begs seeds and seedlings from yours.
For garden purposes, give me the manners of this third class. And, indeed, not for garden purposes alone. They are useful as applied to many things—children, particularly, and houses.
Undoubtedly the demand that I make upon my friends is a form of vanity, yet I cannot seem to feel ashamed of it. I admit at once that not the least part of my pleasure in my flowers is the attention they get from others. Moreover, it is not only from friends that I seek this, but from every passer-by along my country road. There are gardens and gardens. Some, set about with hedges tall and thick, offer the delights of exclusiveness and solitude. But exclusiveness and solitude are easily had on a Connecticut farm, and my garden will none of them; it flings forth its appeal to every wayfarer. And I like it. I like my garden to “get notice.” As people drive by I hope they enjoy my phlox. I furtively glance to see if they have an eye for the foxglove. I wonder if the calendulas are so tall that they hide the asters. And if, as I bend over my weeding, an automobile whirling past lets fly an appreciative phrase—“lovely flowers—” “wonderful yellow of—” “garden there,”—my ears are quick to receive it and I forgive the eddies of gasolene and dust that are also left by the vanishing visitant.