Our potatoes
are buried in a jungle of autumn burdocks. Our radishes
stand seven feet high, uneatable. Our tomatoes, when last
seen, were greener than they were at the beginning of
August, and getting greener every week. Our celery looked
as delicate as a maidenhair fern. Our Indian corn was
nine feet high with a tall feathery spike on top of that,
but no sign of anything eatable about it from top to
bottom.
I look back with a sigh of regret at those bright, early
days in April when we were all buying hoes, and talking
soil and waiting for the snow to be off the ground. The
street cars, as we went up and down to our offices, were
a busy babel of garden talk. There was a sort of farmer-like
geniality in the air. One spoke freely to strangers.
Every man with a hoe was a friend. Men chewed straws in
their offices, and kept looking out of windows to pretend
to themselves that they were afraid it might blow up
rain. "Got your tomatoes in?" one man would ask another
as they went up in the elevator. "Yes, I got mine in
yesterday," the other would answer, "But I'm just a little
afraid that this east wind may blow up a little frost.
What we need now is growing weather." And the two men
would drift off together from the elevator door along
the corridor, their heads together in friendly colloquy.
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