Honesty's Garden Author:Paul Creswick General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1910 Original Publisher: Putnam Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select f... more »rom more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV I Have sustained a fall in pride: Gatherway has returned my Alfred typescript, with a note that it won't do at all. It's too informing, he states, and boys will not be preached at. The youthful mind likes it all story; keep the history " underneath the jam," writes Gatherway. Thus I have to resume a task which I had deemed complete -- in July, too! when the garden is calling me every minute. The weeds are growing faster than the flowers -- bother them! -- and the grass seems to need mowing as often as I need shaving. The carnations are all crying to be tied up; the sweet-peas are blooming themselves to an early death; and the ground should be continually stirred to keep it sweet. (I'm not a believer in watering. Stir and stir -- that's the secret; don't let the earth get crusty -- like any old bachelor!) As for the roses -- well, I give it up. Honesty is the only one who can grow roses to any sort of perfection. I can't imagine how she does it. Her garden is next to mine, as you know; it'sthe same identical soil, the same aspect. I work much harder than she does, too. I coax them, and syringe them, and disbud freely But I can't grow roses to nearly equal Honesty's. The impudence of her roses, the arrogance of them. Great flowers erect on thick stalks; foliage growth that is positively tropical. Her roses -- whether standards, half-standards, or bushes -- are all healthily alike; teas, noisettes, hybrid-perpetuals -- they all flourish. " It's continual attention," says Honesty, whenever I request her to confess the secret of this natural magic. " It's always wa...« less