The Gardener's Year by Karel Capek

Author:Karel Capek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

ON MARKET GARDENERS

THERE ARE certainly some people who, when reading these instructive meditations, will say indignantly: “What! this man here talks of every uneatable root, but he never mentions carrots, cucumbers, kohlrabi or savoys, cabbages, cauliflowers and onions, leeks and radishes, nor celery, chive, and parsley, not forgetting a nice head of cabbage! What a gardener is this, when partly out of pride, partly out of ignorance, he omits the most beautiful things that a garden can produce, as, for instance, this bed of lettuce!”

In reply to this charge I say that in one of the numerous phases of my life I also ruled over some beds of carrots and savoys, of lettuce and kohlrabi; I did it certainly out of a feeling of romanticism, wanting to indulge in the illusion of being a farmer. In due time it was obvious that I must crunch every day one hundred and twenty radishes, because nobody else in the house would eat them; the next day I was drowning in savoys, and then the orgies in kohlrabi followed, which were terribly stringy. There were weeks when I was forced to chew lettuce three times a day, to avoid throwing it away. I do not intend to spoil the pleasure of market gardeners by any means; but what they have grown let them eat. If I were obliged to eat my roses or nibble the flowers of lilies-of-the-valley, I think I should lose the respect which I have towards them.

Besides, we gardeners have already enemies enough: sparrows and blackbirds, children, snails, earwigs, and plant-lice; I ask you, should we declare war on caterpillars? Should we set the white butterflies against us?

Every citizen dreams sometimes of what he would do if for one day he became a dictator. For my part I should order, found, and suppress, thousands of things on that day; besides others, I should issue a Raspberry Edict. It would enact that no gardener, under the penalty of having his right hand cut off, must plant raspberries near the hedge. Tell me, what has a gardener done to have everlasting raspberry suckers from his neighbor’s garden sprouting in the middle of his rhododendrons? These raspberries sprawl underneath the ground for miles; no hedge, wall, or trench, not even barbed wire or a warning notice, will stop them; a raspberry sucker will shoot up in the middle of a bed of carnations or evening primroses, and there it is! Every single one of your raspberries ought to become black with lice! Raspberry suckers ought to sprout in the middle of your bed. Warts as big as ripe raspberries ought to grow on your face. But if you are a gardener of virtue and rank, you will not plant near your hedges any raspberries, or knot-grass, or sunflower, or other plant which, so to speak, will tread on the private property of your neighbor.

Of course, if you wish to please your neighbor, plant melons along your fence. It once happened to me that

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