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APRIL

I
THE YELLOW DUST IS A FOOD FOR THE SEED

APRIL showers began early. The sun shone out brightly on the morning of the first day, but by breakfast time the rain was pattering down, and all the rest of the day there were showers, one after another, that streamed down the garden windows and made a little river of the path outside. Davy said he had never seen it rain so much in one day, and Prue said it was too bad. The Chief Gardener said it was an April fool.

But there was reason to be happy, after all. Whether it was the shower outside; or the sun that was trying to shine; or just because it was April, Prue and Davy did not know, but Prue all at once found a bud on her sunflowers and Davy about the same time discovered a tiny brown silky bunch on his corn, the beginning of the ear.

Then they forgot all about the rain, or at least they did not care so much, and got their books and their little table and sat down by their garden, which was now a real garden, of real flowers and vegetables, and read some stories about other little people, and looked at the pictures and talked about what they would do when warm weather came and they had a still bigger garden outside.

And that night, when the Chief Gardener came home, he had to look at the corn and the sunflower the first thing, and say, "Well, well," every time Prue told him how she had first seen the bud, which was a good many times, and he had to explain to Davy all about the corn silk, and the little ear that was still behind the rough green leaf, and how the dust, or pollen, dropping down from the tassel above helped to make the corn swell and grow on the ear.

"It is so in every flower, the yellow dust is a food for the seed. In most plants the seed-pod and the food-dust or pollen are all in one flower, but with the corn they are separate, as you see. Did you ever notice, Davy, how much a cornstalk looks like an Indian, with plumes, and its ear, like a quiver for holding arrows?"

"Oh, is that why people sometimes call it Indian corn?" asked Davy.

"No, that is not the reason. At least, there is a better one which I will tell you when we have had our dinner."

So by and by, when dinner was over, and Prue had two servings of pudding because she didn't care for chocolate cake – one very little serving, of course, the Chief Gardener and Davy, and big Prue and little Prue all went into the library, and the Chief Gardener told the story of

II
THE COMING OF THE CORN

"You remember," said the Chief Gardener, "how I told you about the first sunflowers – "

"Yes," put in Prue, "about that wicked Kapoka, who pushed poor Ahlogah from the high rocks. Oh, I hope he is not in the corn story, too."

"No, he isn't in the corn story, but it was, perhaps, about that time that the corn came to the American Indian tribes, for the corn was first found in America, and it is a true Indian plant like the sunflower. Like the sunflower, too, it came once upon a time.

"Well, then, once upon a time, there was a year of famine. The winter had been very cold, and almost all the wild game, upon which the Indians then lived, had either died or gone out of the country. The fish, too, seemed scarce and hard to catch, and the wild fruit had been winter-killed. There was little to eat during the winter, and even when spring came it was not much better, though by and by some of the game came back and there were more fish in the streams.

"Still it was very hard to get enough food, and every bird and animal was killed wherever found, and brought to the camps to be eaten.

"But one day there flew down very close to one of the very large camps a big bird, such as no one of the tribe had ever seen before. It was not a hawk, nor an eagle, for it was a golden yellow, and it seemed to have come a very long way. It sat quite still, and its wings drooped, and it did not seem frightened when the wondering and hungry Indians came nearer to look at it.

"Then one or two Indians began stringing their bows to shoot the great bird for food. But others said, 'No, let us not harm the stranger. He has come from a far country. And see, the color is golden, like the sun. Perhaps, the sun has sent a messenger, as a good omen.'

"So they did not kill the bird, but even brought it food, little as they had, and the bird ate and rested through the day. Then just at evening he lifted his great wings and flew away into the sunset, and was seen no more.

"But when a week had gone by, there came up where the bird had rested a strange new plant which grew very fast in the warm sun and shower and sent out long graceful leaves, and at last a plume at the top like that of an Indian chief, and from behind the graceful drooping leaves, tufts of silk that became ears, and were like Indian quivers. And when the summer was past, the tribe gathered these ears, and pulled away the husk, and lo, there were the rows of ripened corn, golden like the great bird.

"Then the tribes from far and near were called together, and there was great rejoicing and thanks for this new gift, brought to them by the wonderful bird of the sun. And to each chief was given a few of the grains for planting, so that the next year all the tribes around about were watching and tending the tall green stalks that were to give them abundance of seed against another famine.

"And that is the legend of the corn. After the third year there was seed for all, and corn became the best and surest food for all the Indian tribes. When the white men came, they ate it, too, and by cultivation made new kinds and colors. Now we have the sweet or sugar corn, the Davy's, and we have popcorn, too, which is only a dwarf corn with a hard, flinty shell which pops open with heat."

"Do they raise corn in any other country except America?" asked Davy.

"Oh, yes, there is a great deal raised in other countries now, and I believe they claim to have found some grains of it in a very old tomb in Greece, and a picture of it in a very old book in China, so, perhaps, it was from some place in the far East that the great bird of the Indians came with the seed."

"And does it belong to a family, too?" asked little Prue.

"It is claimed by the grass family, and, of course, it is something like big grass. Wheat and oats and, indeed, all the grains, belong to that wonderful family, too. Then there is broom-corn, useful for making brooms, while sugar-cane, which is also a grass, gives us our best sugar and molasses, but corn not only gives us the ears for food, but the leaves are used for cattle, and the husks for making cushions and mattresses, and for packing fruits. Syrup also is made from the young stalks, and the dry stalks are used for thatching, stable-bedding and fuel. In fact, every part of the corn is valuable, and I think we might call it the king, or, perhaps, being an Indian, the chief of the tribe of Grasses."

"I know the best of all the things that comes from it," said little Prue.

"What?" asked Davy.

"Pop-corn balls," said Prue.

III
CROSS BY NAME AND CROSS BY NATURE

What wonderful things happened to the little window-garden in April! The nasturtium bloomed early in the month – first a red one then a yellow one, then a lot of red and yellow ones. They were so beautiful that almost every meal the little pot stood on the table, and sometimes the pansy-pot, too.

And then the sweet-pease bloomed, beautiful pink and white and purple blooms that were so sweet you could smell them as soon as you came into the room. Davy's garden-pease had bloomed even sooner, and had little pods on them by April. Before many days the tiny pease inside began to swell, and you could see every one quite plainly when you turned the pod flat side to the light. As for the beans and morning-glories, they had bloomed and bloomed, and already had seed-pods hanging all the way up the vines that now reached to the top of the casings and looped down and joined in a long festoon which hung between.

And how proud the children were of their two beautiful windows. And how happy they were when passers-by stopped to look in, and perhaps wondered about the gardens, and maybe thought that the rosy-cheeked boy and girl looking out between the blossoms and leaves and vines were the brightest and best flowers that bloomed there.

And Davy's corn sent out another ear, a little one, and both ears grew and the pollen from above sifted down, and Davy knew that inside the green husks the sweet kernels were forming.

"When can we eat it?" he asked almost every day. "Don't you think it's about big enough now?"

"When the silk turns brown," said the Chief Gardener. "That is about the best rule. I think you'll have pease and beans, too, pretty soon, so you can have quite a feast."

"Just in time for my birthday," said big Prue, who had been an April baby a long time ago.

"It's ever so long till my birthday," said little Prue, rather sadly. "I don't think we'll have anything left by August."

"Oh, but I'll have a fine garden outside by then," said the Chief Gardener, "and you will, too. I'll have radishes and lettuce now before you know it;" for in spite of the cold snow and freeze, the Chief Gardener's first planting had sprouted fairly well, and was rapidly filling his first two little beds.

"Papa, you haven't told us a word about my nasturtiums yet, and they're so lovely. Not a single story or anything, nor about their family relations, or where they came from – not a thing."

"Well, that's so," said the Chief Gardener, "perhaps because I wanted to make a family affair of it. You see, Davy's radish is a sort of a name-cousin of your nasturtium, and I've been thinking that when I told about one I'd tell of the other, too, and that I'd call the story

IV
A PEPPERY FAMILY

"Nobody seems to know just where the Cross family came from. You can find them in every part of the world now, some of them growing as weeds, some as flowers, and some as very fine vegetables. But wherever they came from, in the beginning, they were certainly of very sharp, biting natures, and never could agree. Why, they were so cross that even their flowers were shaped like little crosses, and people called them cruciferous, which means cross-shaped, and used to say of them,

 
"'Cross by name and cross by nature,
Cross of fibre, face, and feature,'
 

and did not want them in their gardens, because they disturbed the other vegetables and flowers, and might make them cross, too.

"Well, the Cross family became tired of this, at last, and made up their minds to be either useful or ornamental: at least, most of them did. So they got together, and after a great deal of quarrelling among themselves to begin with, for, of course, they couldn't help that when they had been unpleasant so long, they at last began to work together and decide what each wanted to be, and how it could be brought about.

"'I think,' said a fat one who was always better-natured than any of the others, 'I should like to be a nice sweet vegetable that people were very fond of and gave a good place to, in their gardens, where I should be well taken care of.'

"So the Clerk of Plants, who was alive then, like the Weather Clerk, you know, put down 'Cabbage,' which was the fat fellow's name, and wrote after it, 'Sweet vegetable – needs care.'

"'I,' said another, 'would like to be a sweet vegetable, too, but I want to grow mostly under the ground, so that I will need less care to keep off insects and worms.'

"So then the Clerk of Plants wrote 'Turnip,' and put after it, 'Vegetable with sweet, wholesome root; needs little care.'

"So they went on with those who wanted to be vegetables. But most of the others did not want to be quite so sweet in their nature as the turnip and the cabbage. They said they liked people with a little temper of their own, so the radish, who was a fat, red little chap, was put down as a vegetable rather sweet, but with sharp flavor, and 'Horseradish' was put down, 'Very sharp and biting, to be used only for seasoning.' The Clerk was about to turn to those who wanted to be flowers, when a little green plant, who had been named 'Nose Torment,' because he made people's noses itch and burn, spoke up and said, 'I should like to be beautiful and useful, too – a pretty green dressing that people like, and I will grow in the water, which may wash away some of my ill manners.'

"So then the Clerk of Plants dropped the name of 'Nose Torment' and wrote down, 'Water Cross, a fine table-salad – grows in clear streams.'

"'But I don't like the name "Cross,"' said the little plant.

"'Oh, well,' said the clerk, 'spell it with an "e" then – make it Cress.' So Water-cress it became, and all the others spelled their family name with an 'e,' too, and became the Cress family instead of the Cross family, just as people often change the spelling of their names to-day.

"But the Clerk of Plants wasn't through, for there were a good many who wanted to be flowers. Some of them wanted to be very sweet flowers, and some, like mustard, wanted to be flowers and useful, too. So the Clerk wrote down 'Wallflower,' and 'Stock' and Candy tuft,' and a good many others, but there was one gentle little blossom which said, 'Oh, I want to be white and pure, and have a sweet and delicate perfume that all people will love.' And this was 'Alyssum,' and when the Clerk wrote it down, he wrote it 'Sweet Alyssum,' and so it has been called ever since.

"And then, when the Clerk was all through, he said, 'There are some who have not come to the meeting. Where is your brother, Mustard? And yours, Alyssum, the one we call Pepper-grass, because he is so fiery?'

"Mustard and Alyssum shook their heads sadly.

"'Well,' said the Clerk, 'they have had their chance. They are wild and will always be,' so he wrote down. 'Wild Mustard' and Pepper-grass,' and after these names he put the word 'Weeds.'"

"But my nasturtium, Papa, what about that?"

"Why, that's so, I forgot all about your nasturtium. Well, you see, it doesn't really belong to the Cress family, but is only a name-relative. The word nasturtium comes from two Latin words, nasi tormentum, which means Nose Torment, and it was Nasturtium that little Water-cress had sometimes been called."

"But," said Prue, "my nasturtium isn't water-cress."

"No, but when it was discovered, and the people tasted the leaves and the flowers, and sometimes used them for salad, and especially when they found it had a sharp-tasting seed, they called it Cress, Indian Cress, and then they took the name that little Water-cress had dropped and called it Nasturtium. So you see it isn't really a Cress or a Nasturtium. It is only called that. It's true name is Acriviola, or Sharp Violet, because of its taste, and the flower, which is shaped something like a violet. All the true Cress family have a corolla of but four petals, shaped like a cross, and nearly all the flowers, and especially the seed-pods, have a sharp flavor. Even the Sweet Alyssum has the least touch of the old flavor, and mustard is very sharp. On the whole, the Cress family has become a most useful and ornamental family, and the Acriviola or Nasturtium, which is neither a violet nor a nasturtium, but a geranium – of the geranium family, I mean – need not be at all ashamed of its adopted names."

V
FOR IN THAT DISH WAS DAVY'S CORN

When big Prue's birthday came, there was much excitement. Of course, there were the presents which must be hidden until the very morning, but even the presents were not of the very greatest importance this year. Oh, no, this year it was the garden. Big Prue's birthday was to be a regular garden feast.

For now the days had become warm and bright. Already the children had been to the woods for hepaticas and violets, and everywhere the trees were tinged with green. The little garden had fairly filled the window so that now you had to look between the vines to see. Even in the garden outside, the Chief Gardener had made some more beds, and the first ones – the radishes and lettuce – were so well along, that early on the morning of big Prue's birthday he brought in some tiny radishes and some tender green salad leaves, almost as good, Davy said, as the first ones from his garden.

"These are for breakfast," he said. "You and Prue will have to supply the birthday dinner."

And that is just what they did.

First of all there was a lovely bunch of sweet-pease on big Prue's plate – these, of course, being from Prue's garden. There was a little bunch of pansies for Prue, while for the Chief Gardener and Davy there were round, bright sunflowers, one each for their buttonholes.

In the center of the table there was a wonderful little glass bowl of nasturtium flowers, that were so fresh and pretty that one must be hungry just to look at them.

Then it was Davy's turn.

In a pretty salad-dish on a little side table, there was a lettuce salad that looked like a great green bloom, and lying upon another smaller dish at the side, were four of the roundest, reddest radishes imaginable, the very last of the little garden crop. But now something came in in two small covered dishes, something that steamed, and behold, when they were opened, in one were Davy's beans, ever so many, white and mottled, all cooked and hot and ready to be eaten, and in the other Davy's pease! But that was not all. Still another steaming dish came in, and when that was opened, everybody fairly shouted, "Oh, my!" for in that dish was Davy's corn! Think of it! Two whole ears of corn, one large one to be divided between little Prue and Davy.

Never was there such a birthday dinner as that. The flowers were beautiful, the beans and the pease splendid, while the corn, why the corn was just the sweetest and best corn that was ever raised. They all said so, and Davy got excited and said he was going to plant a thousand acres of corn just as soon as the Chief Gardener would let him.

And then they began to plan for the new garden of summer-time, which was to be made outside.

Most of their things they thought they would take out of the windows, and reset in the open garden, but, of course, there were no radishes or lettuce to take now, and the corn and pease were no longer of value, while the vines would be hard to move. So they decided to take out all but the vines. Prue could reset her pansies and nasturtiums and sunflower, and the sweet-pease, which would bloom all summer, perhaps, leaving the morning-glories and scarlet runner in the windows, to bloom as long as they would.

"My windows would look very bare without even the vines left of the little gardens," said big Prue, "but it is getting so green outside, that we won't miss them so much now, and, of course, everything must go, sometime."

"And we are going to have them next year," said Davy. "We will begin then earlier, and have other things, too, but first we are going to have ever and ever so much outside, in the real garden. Prue is going to have flowers, and I am going to have, oh, ever and ever so many good things to eat!"

And so with big Prue's birthday dinner, the little garden in the windows saw its greatest glory, and the month of April, which had been its happiest season, came to a happy end.

MAY

I
SWEET-PEASE HAVE TO BE PUT DOWN PRETTY DEEP

IT was May and the apple-trees were in bloom. In the garden outside was the Chief Gardener, with Prue and Davy – one on each side – hoeing and digging and raking. The early plantings, like radishes and lettuce and pease, were already well along, but it was just time, now, for a second planting of these things, and for the first planting of such things as corn and beans, and most of the kinds of flowers.

Some sweet-pease, it is true, little Prue had planted earlier, one warm day in April, when the Chief Gardener had dug for her a trench along the fence, and she had put in the pease, one at a time, and just so far apart, so that they wouldn't crowd, she said, or get in each other's way. The trench was quite deep – most too deep, Prue thought, but then sweet-pease have to be put down pretty deep, and the soil dragged up to the vines as they grow, to give them strength. Now, she planted some sweet-williams, and pansies, and mignonettes, and alyssum, and had brought most of her pots from the house, and set the things in a little row by themselves, so that they might still be company as they had been through the long winter and late spring.

Davy, too, had made a fine garden, with six hills of sweet-corn, one hill of cantaloupes, a row of pease, a little row of onions, lettuce, and radishes, besides a very small row of sweet herbs, such as marjoram, fennel, and thyme. Each garden was fully eight feet square, which is really quite a good-sized garden, when you remember that it must be kept nicely tilled and perfectly clean of weeds.

"I think I will have a hill of cucumbers, too," said Davy. "I like cucumbers."

"But they won't do, near your cantaloupes," said the Chief Gardener. "You see, cucumbers and cantaloupes belong to the same family, and one of the most twining, friendly families I know of. Each member left to itself is very good in its way, and often ornamental, but let them run together ever so little and before you know it they begin to mix up and look like one another, and even have tastes alike. A cucumber-hill there, Davy, would spoil the taste of your cantaloupes, and the cucumbers would not be good either. It's the same way with watermelons, and citrons, and pumpkins, and all the rest of the gourds."

"Gourds!"

"Why, yes, they all belong to the Gourd family, and they will all look and taste like gourds if you give them a chance. It's really, of course, because the pollen of one blows into the bloom of the other, and the members of the Gourd family are so closely related that pollens blend and mix. Different kinds of corn will do the same thing. That is why we have our popcorn as far from our sweet corn as we can get it. There are other families that do not mix at all. We grow apples and plums and peaches and roses, side by side – even different kinds of each – and they never mix."

"But apples and plums and peaches are not roses, are they?" asked little Prue.

"Just as much as strawberries, and pears and quinces are," said the Chief Gardener.

The children looked at him rather puzzled.

"How about blackberries and raspberries?" asked the Chief Gardener. "Don't you think they look a little, a very little, like wild roses, only the flowers are smaller and white, instead of pink?"

"Why, yes, so they do!" nodded Davy.

"And doesn't the bloom of a blackberry look like the bloom of a plum, and a cherry, and a pear, and an apple, and all those things?"

"A good deal," said Prue, "and wild crab blossoms look just like little wild roses, and they smell so sweet, too."

"And the wild crab has thorns like a rose, only not so sharp," said Davy.

"And a rose has little apples after the bloom falls," said the Chief Gardener. "I have known children to eat rose apples, though I don't think they could be very good."

Davy had run down to the corner of the garden and came back now with something in his hand. It was a wild rose that grew by the hedge there; a pretty, single pink blossom. Then he stopped and picked a strawberry bloom, and one from the apple-tree that hung over the fence. These he brought over to the little bench where Prue and the Chief Gardener had sat down to rest.

The Chief Gardener took them and held them side by side.

"There, you will see they are all very much alike," he said.

The children looked at them. Then Prue ran across the lawn and came back with a little yellow bloom.

"Isn't this flower one of them, too?" she asked. "Some people call it wild strawberry, and some sink-field."

"That," said the Chief Gardener, "is cinque-foil. I suppose the name sink-field comes from that. It is French, and means five-leaved, but sink-field is not so bad a name either, for it often grows in moist places. Yes, that is a rose, too."

"Then buttercups must be roses," said Davy. "They look just like that."

"No, Davy, that is one place where our eyes must look sharp. Can you find a buttercup?"

"Oh, plenty," said Prue, and ran to bring them.

Then the Chief Gardener took a buttercup and an apple-bloom, and held them side by side. There was a difference, but not very great. Then he took his knife, and divided the blossoms in half.

"Now look again," he said, and he took a small magnifying-glass from his pocket and held it so that they could see. "The petals and the sepals (that make the corolla and the calyx, you know) are a good deal the same," he said, "but, you see, there are many more stamens in the buttercup, and then the seed pod or pods, which we call the pistils, are not at all alike. The buttercup has a lot of tiny pods or pistils inside the flower, while the apple-bloom has one round pod below the flower, and this forms the fruit. The buttercup does not make fruit. It belongs to the Crowfoot family, and is a cousin of the hepatica and of the larkspur, which you would not think from the shape of the larkspur's bloom. The Crowfoot family is not so beautiful nor so useful as the Rose family, which is, perhaps, the most useful family next to the Grass family, and certainly one of the most beautiful families in the world."

"I think the Rose family is nicer than the Grass family," said Prue.

"Oh, no," said Davy. "We couldn't do without wheat and corn, and we could do without fruit and flowers – that is, of course, if we had to," he added with a sigh.

"I couldn't," said little Prue. "I like flowers best, and jelly and jam to eat on my biscuits, and you like all those things, too, Davy, and shortcake, and berry pie."

"Of course! but how would you have biscuits and shortcake without wheat to make the flour of?"

The Chief Gardener smiled.

"We can't decide it," he said. "They go together. It is said that we shall not live on bread alone, and I don't think we could live altogether on fruit and flowers, though I believe some people try to do so. Jam and bread go together, and a shortcake must have both crust and fruit to be a real shortcake. Wheat fields and orchards march side by side, and taking these together we have peach pudding and apple tart."

Prue was looking out over her little garden where the smoothly patted rows of beds made her quite happy, just to see them.

"I've got four things that begin with sweet," she said. "Sweet-pease, sweet-williams, sweet-mignonette, and sweet-alyssum."

"And my little Sweetheart is the sweetest flower of all," said the Chief Gardener.