ocks, or blowing them up, or burying them, or working
around them; and every winter the little gnomes gather and push up a new
lot from the dark storehouses of the underworld. In the spring the
gardeners begin again, and the little gnomes hold their sides with still
laughter to watch the work go on.

"Rocks?" my friends say. "Do you mind the rocks? But they are a special
beauty! Why, I have a rock in my garden that I have treated--"

"Very well," I interrupt rudely. "_A rock_ is all very well. If I had _a
rock_ in my garden I could treat it, too. But how about a garden that is
all rocks?"

"Oh--why--choose another spot."

Whereupon I reply, "You don't know Connecticut."

Ever since I began having a garden I have had my troubles with the rocks,
but the worst time came when, in a mood of enthusiastic and absolutely
unintelligent optimism, I decided to have a bit of smooth grass in the
middle of my garden. I wanted it very much. The place was too restless;
you couldn't sit down anywhere. I felt that I had to have a clear green
spot where I could take a chair and a book. I selected the spot, marked it
off with string, and began to loosen up the earth for a late summer
planting of grass seed. Calendulas and poppies and cornflowers had bloomed
there before, self-sown and able to look out for themselves, so I had
never investigated the depths of the bed to see what the little gnomes had
prepared for me. Now I found out. The spading-fork gave a familiar dull
clink as it struck rock. I felt about for the edge; it was a big one. I
got the crowbar and dropped it, in testing prods; it was a _very_ big one,
and only four inches below the surface. Grass would never grow there in a
dry season. I moved to another part. Another rock, big too! I prodded all
over the allotted space, and found six big fellows lurking just below the
top of the soil. Evidently it was a case for calling in Jonathan.

He came, grumbling a little, as a man should, but very efficient, armed
with two crowbars and equipped with a natural genius for manipulating
rocks. He made a few well-placed remarks about queer people who choose to
have grass where flowers would grow, and flowers where grass would grow,
also about Connecticut being intended for a quarry and not for a garden
anyhow. But all this was only the necessary accompaniment of the
crowbar-play. Soon, under the insistent and canny urgency of the bars, a
big rock began to heave its shoulder into sight