Bill Nye's Garden

I have planted the seed of the morning glory and the moon flower and dreamed at night that my home looked like a florist’s advertisement but when leafy June came, a bunch of Norway oats and a hill of corn were trying to climb the strings nailed up for the use of my non-resident vines. I have planted with song and laughter the seeds of the ostensible pansy and carnation, only in tears to reap the bachelor’s button and the glistening foliage of the sorgham plant. I have planted in faith and a deep, warm soil, with pleasing hope in my heart and a dark red picture on the outside of the page, only to harvest the low, vulgar, jimson weed and the night-blooming bull thistle. Does the mean temperature or the average rainfall have anything to do with it? If statistics are working these changes they ought to be stopped. For my own part however I am led to believe that our seedsmen put so much money in their catalogues that they do not have anything left to use in the purchase of seeds. Good religion and very fair cookies may be produced without the aid of caraway seed, but you cannot gather nice, fresh train figs of thistles or expect much of a seedsman whose plants make no effort whatever to resemble their picture.

source: The Waterloo Courier