GLOOMY GARDENERS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 48, 26 February 1927, Page 20

GLOOMY GARDENERS

MOST DISMAL-LOOKING MEN,

It has frequently been noticed that, although gardens are often very beautiful places, gardeners as a class are depressed. Three ' young gardeners were once standing talking at Keigate, Surrey, upon a'large open'space. They saw approaching from the distance, accompanied by his wife and children,' the most dismal-looking man they ■'..•' had iever seen." "Look at this tfaller," said :one of the. three. " Oi betcher whatcher loike? 'he's ' a ga-ar-dinerl" He was Irigtit;- the 1 most dismal of ■ men was, in fact, a gardener. He was head gardener at' a large house in that neighbourhood, and his- face was seamed with cares.i This story (writes Mr. Frank Swinnerton in <'Good Hougekeeping'.') is a true one, narrated to me by one of the three; and it has its plain moral. Gardeners notoriously cry for rain when the rest of men long for sunshine; if one remarks cheerfully to gardeners, "How nice the roses look to-day," they shake their heads, and crush one-by saying miserably, "Aain't what they should be. Them 'plagued floi; them cuckoo-spit. . .;.; Blessed mildew. .." Too well do gardeners realise the truth. Closer examination by the amateur does indeed reveal both fly and mildew, and a small, sinister patch of white froth. The froth conceals a lethargic. yellow insect which presently will jump headlong about the garden like a grasshopper or the Death Watch beetle. Once started upon wretched thoughts, the gardener can but add to one's dolours. ''Carrots won't come to nothin','' says he. "Nor turnips; they've got the fly" /or "the beetle." "There's thrip on the peas; woolly aphis on the apples" (but in England he will not say "woollj aphis," but "American bloight,"| while in America I, think he says blight." "Me lettuce is boltin, "; "Sha-ant 'aye no anemones ■—not the 'Cayenne'/ (Caen); them there woire-worms has bin a-af ter them."" Blessed slugs.'. . ."And so •on. ' .■■..'•.■■