Which Reminds Me

Miss Murphy was my fourth grade teacher. I know that I had sometimes said third grade in the past but that was not true. She might have been Sammy's third grade teacher but the Stewarts were back in the U.S. the year that I was in fourth grade with Cheryl Davenport in the little kids' room, which comprised grades one through four. Mrs. Richardson was teaching the big kids that year, grades 5-8. That might have been the year that a vegetable garden was planted behind the little kids' school, little seeds planted in rows on a little strip of land behind the school so the garden would not be trampled at recess. Later there were carrots and radishes, I seem to remember. However, myself not being aware of the existence of Dr. Clark, I would not have any way of making comparisons to Dr. Clark's New England vegetable garden described so ably in his article for The Outlook: "Farming as a Moral Equivalent for War."

Dr. Clark says:

But not only does every tree have its own enemies, but every part of the tree has its foes. The bark has its borers and its scale, the leaf its lice and curlers, the blossom its moths, the fruit its borers. Each enemy knows exactly the weakest part of the citadel he has to attack. He knows the exact moment when his attack will be most effective. He has the accumulated experience of a thousand ancestors behind him. H e never makes a mistake in his maneuvers, or fails to avail himself of the psychological moment.

What, then, can I, a mere man, do with a thousand watchful, unwearied foes to combat—a mere man, with only one pair of hands and one poor brain to oppose these multifarious enemies; or, if I do not forget to count my Portuguese assistant farmer, two pairs of hands and two poor brains at the most and best? Shall I give up the fight and call myself beaten by the worm, and the moth, and the crow, and the weed—which I have hitherto forgotten to mention, but which is always ready to spring up and take my plants by the throat and strangle them?''