asparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork it
in, and top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer of
chloride of sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, and
the neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl.
58-5, or not.

I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as if
the devil was in them. I know a lady, a member of the church, and a
very good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of that
class, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, in
going through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keeping
the ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. I
asked her which one, but she said, all of them: one felt like
breaking the whole lot. The sort of weed which I most hate (if I can
be said to hate anything which grows in my own garden) is the
"pusley," a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and the
most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the
dictionary) plant I know. I saw a Chinaman, who came over with a
returned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of it
in a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with relish, -"Me likee
he." It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they come
to do our gardening. I only fear they will cultivate it at the
expense of the strawberries and melons. Who can say that other
weeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remote
people or tribe? We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible that
we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some
other place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are
virtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that this
thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weeds
are.