"There ain't no such animule"

In The Busy Woman's Garden Book by Ida D. Bennett (Small, Maynard & Company, 1920), Bennett included chapters on groups of vegetables including early spring vegetables, mid-season vegetables, vegetables of the vine family, and vegetables less commonly grown.

But she gave asparagus its own chapter.

In the asparagus chapter, Bennett concludes with, "Salt was formerly considered essential to successful asparagus culture and certainly does no harm, but its chief value is in keeping down weeds and this can be quite as successfully done by hand cultivation; this is better than to form the habit of depending on some quick, laborless road to clean beds -- in the annals of gardening "There ain't no such animule.""

I now feel somewhat chastised at even the slightest thought of considering the idea that I might "form the habit of depending on some quick, laborless road..." to anything in the garden.