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"Hail, old October, bright and chill,
First freedman from the summer sun!
Spice high the bowl and drink your fill!
Thank Heaven, at last the summer's done!"
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An American divine wrote that October is nature's funeral month
and that the month of departure is more beautiful than the month of coming:
that October is more beautiful than May. Gardeners may well argue about
that, but they will agree that the sun of their gardening year is setting in
October. It is a time for reflection, for a judicial summing up of our
successes and failures.
Are our failures due to any lack in ourselves? Did we fail to
tackle those pests in good time or did those poor, worthless crops result
from a lack of fertility in our soil? The farmer, we are told, looks at
winter with spring n his eyes. So does the good gardener. For both the
practical couplet is this:
"In October dung your field,
And your land its wealth shall yield." |
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But the reader may say, "It's all very well for the farmer, but where can
I get dung?" Well, the answer to that has been given many many times; it is
simply this—if you can't get dung, make compost. And how few gardeners do,
yet compost will help them to keep their land fertile. THAT COMPOST
October is the picture month—the month for painted leaves,
as Thoreau, the American nature writer called it. That's a nice poetic
thought, but to the sensible gardener those painted leaves, when they drop,
become compost. Leaves of oak, beech and birch are very valuable for the
compost heap, but pine and spruce needles, together with lime and plane tree
leaves, are best burnt and the ashes used instead as a fertiliser. |
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