om my
face, I should be grateful for shade. What is a garden for? The
pleasure of man. I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden.
Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of the
increased vigor of a few vegetables? The thing is perfectly absurd.
If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with an
awning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it. It might roll
up and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,
--not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind. Another very
good way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would be
to have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over you
as you hoed. And there might be a person at each end of the row with
some cool and refreshing drink. Agriculture is still in a very
barbarous stage. I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do my
gardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, and
attended by some of the comforts I have named. These things come so
forcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when a
wandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a near
currant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almost
expect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment at
the end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done but
to turn round, and hoe back to the other end.

Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think I disheartened them by
covering the plants so deep with soot and wood-ashes that they could
not find them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever see the plants
again. But I have heard of another defense against the bugs. Put a
fine wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out the bugs and
admit the rain. I should say that these screens would not cost much
more than the melons you would be likely to get from the vines if you
bought them; but then think of the moral satisfaction of watching the
bugs hovering over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the tender
plants within. That is worth paying for.

I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly was
getting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds. She was working
away at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have the
ballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which I
should here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure my
agricultural influence), 'I am compelled to say that this was rather
helpless hoeing. I