“All the columbines are dead,” said the small sage, somewhat disconsolately, as he sat down to luncheon the next day; “and some of the sweet-williams and the veronicas.”
“Oh, no,” said the big one, “they ‘ve gone on their vacations; that ’s all.”
“Well, they look dead. Their tops are dead.”
Uncle Ned laughed. “You mean,” said he, “their old clothes, I presume, Yes, those they ’ve thrown away; and every one will come back with a brand-new outfit in the spring,”
“If they ’re old clothes, and thrown away, I should think they ought to go into the rag-bag,” ventured the small sage, slyly.
“Right you are!” cried Uncle Ned, unexpectedly, with his hearty laugh again; “that ’s just the place for ’em, and we ’ll go out and put ’em there the first thing after luncheon.”
Which was rather mystifying; but I ’ll wager you don’t know, either, what a garden rag-bag is! There, what did I tell you? Well, it ’s the compost heap, of course, that pile of all kinds of vegetable rubbish which every careful gardener makes and keeps, to spread over beds and borders for protection sometimes, or to spread over his garden generally when it is forked over, thus returning to the soil of it a goodly proportion of what has been taken from it when the plants grew, Before you do any of the fall work of picking up and making ready for winter, therefore, you must do this much toward starting a compost heap: you must decide where it shall be located.
Choose a place that is not very far away, of course, and yet one that is not in plain view from the garden, for it is hardly to be expected of a rag-bag that it shall be decorative. Drive four stakes into the ground—four long stakes, let us say from thirty inches to three feet long, marking the corners of a square space of about four feet. Drive them down until each stands eighteen inches out of the ground; then stretch chicken wire of this width around them. Into the wire box thus made put all the dead leaves that are raked up, all clippings from the lawn, and all tops of plants when these are cut away, as they must be—which presently you shall hear about. Anything from the garden, indeed, providing that it is healthy growth and perfectly free from insect pests, should go into the compost heap; but usually I burn the tops of plants and use their ashes, This does away with the slightest chance of harboring a disease or a noxious creature of some kind, and ashes are particularly good in the compost.
Finally, late in the fall, after all the cleaning up is quite done, sprinkle lime liberally over the entire pile. This will leach down through it during the winter, and when spring comes, the whole mass will be the very finest kind of plant-food, ready to mix with the soil of flower beds or borders, or of the seed-bed, or that wherein house-plants are to be planted. The uses of compost, indeed, are almost too many to mention; and this garden “rag-bag” is as much a part of the complete gardener’s equipment as his spade, or hoe, or rake,
After the last passenger has gone, on the very last ship that sails to the Isle of Between, and all the old discarded livery of last summer is lying about, faded, and ragged, and brown, and rattling in the wind; after all the busy leaves have danced gaily away from every tree and shrub; after most of the birds have gone, and everything looks bare, and still, and uninteresting, then is the time to gather the “rags.” Cut away every old stem and stalk with a pair of sharp shears, right down to the ground. Rake up, and pick up, and tidy up; and then wait until the ground freezes before doing anything more.
Just as soon as it is frozen, however—right away!—put the blankets on the beds, For, of course, they must have blankets, even if they are only garden beds, This seems odd—does it not?—to blanket frozen things; but, you see, the trick is to catch Jack Frost under the blankets, once he comes in, and hold him prisoner until winter is absolutely over, and he is willing—yes, indeed, anxious—to run away and stay away, It is when he is not caught and held fast that he does his damage, for he can slip out sometimes, even in mid-winter; and then the garden-folk are likely to mistake the season, and return too soon from their long vacation. And then he rushes back upon them, the treacherous rascal, and catches and kills them in no time.
There are several kinds of blankets to use on garden beds, and some are much better than others, for some hold much less water than others. Of them all, oak leaves, raked out from under big oak-trees in the woods, or from the lawn if an oak-tree grows there, are the very best of all, because they lie loosely packed, yet are thick and dense enough to be an ideal protection. If you cannot get oak leaves, however, straw will do nicely, or hay, or marsh-grass—or even stable manure, if it is old and not steaming, and has plenty of litter and straw in it.
Whatever you use, put it evenly all over the beds to a depth of four inches. Manure will hold itself in place, and so will straw or hay; but leaves are likely to blow about unless they are anchored in some way. Branches of almost anything laid across them will keep them in place; or