oing is buying things).
"What you want is the perishable things that you cannot get fresh in
the market."--"But what kind of perishable things?" A horticulturist of
eminence wanted me to sow lines of straw-berries and raspberries right
over where I had put my potatoes in drills. I had about five hundred
strawberry-plants in another part of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic
wanted me to turn my whole patch into vines and runners. I suppose I
could raise strawberries enough for all my neighbors; and
perhaps I ought to do it. I had a little space prepared for
melons,--muskmelons,--which I showed to an experienced friend.

"You are not going to waste your ground on muskmelons?" he asked. "They
rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost." He had tried for
years without luck. I resolved to not go into such a foolish experiment.
But, the next day, another neighbor happened in. "Ah! I see you are
going to have melons. My family would rather give up anything else in
the garden than musk-melons,--of the nutmeg variety. They are the most
grateful things we have on the table." So there it was. There was no
compromise: it was melons, or no melons, and somebody offended in any
case. I half resolved to plant them a little late, so that they would,
and they would n't. But I had the same difficulty about string-beans
(which I detest), and squash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the
whole round of green things.

I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to put your
foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of my friends, I
should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-day but weeds. And
besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait. Her mind is made
up. She knows just what she will raise; and she has an infinite variety
of early and late. The most humiliating thing to me about a garden
is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man. Nature is prompt,
decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plants with a vigor and
freedom that I admire; and the more worthless the plant, the more rapid
and splendid its growth. She is at it early and late, and all night;
never tiring, nor showing the least sign of exhaustion.

"Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is a motto that I should
put over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it is
not wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The man who
undertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates hi