Read "Elizabeth and her German Garden" by Elizabeth Von Arnim online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
There has been no rain since the day before Whitsunday, five weeks ago, which partly, but not entirely, accounts for the disappointment my beds have been. The dejected gardener went mad soon after Whitsuntide, and had to be sent to an asylum. He took to going about with a spade in one hand and a revolver in the other, explaining that he felt safer that way, and we bore it quite patiently, as becomes civilised beings who respect each other's prejudices, until one day, when I mildly asked him to tie up a fallen creeper -- and after he bought the revolver my tones in addressing him were of the mildest, and I quite left off reading to him aloud -- he turned round, looked me straight in the face for the first time since he has been here, and said, "Do I look like Graf X -- -- (a great local celebrity), or like a monkey? " After which there was nothing for it but to get him into an asylum as expeditiously as possible. There was no gardener to be had in his place, and I have only just succeeded in getting one; so that what with the drought, and the neglect, and the gardener's madness, and my blunders, the garden is in a sad condition; but even in a sad condition it is the dearest place in the world, and all my mistakes only make me more determined to persevere.
The long borders, where the rockets were, are looking dreadful. The rockets have done flowering, and, after the manner of rockets in other walks of life, have degenerated into sticks; and nothing else in those borders intends to bloom this summer. The giant poppies I had planted out in them in April have either died off or remained quite small, and so have the columbines; here and there a delphinium droops unwillingly, and that is all. I suppose poppies cannot stand being moved, or perhaps they were not watered enough at the time of transplanting; anyhow, those borders are going to be sown tomorrow with more poppies for next year; for poppies I will have, whether they like it or not, and they shall not be touched, only thinned out.