instructions of the seed catalogues, and the young
horticulturists also read and followed the advice of the pamphlets on
"Annual Flowering Plants" and "The Home Vegetable Garden" sent out by
the Department of Agriculture at Washington to any one who asks for
them.

[Illustration: A Flat]

They were prudent about planting directly in the garden seeds which did
not require forcing in the house, for they did not want them to be
nipped, but they put them in the ground just as early as any of the
seedsmen recommended, though they always saved a part of their supply
so that they might have enough for a second sowing if a frost should
come.

Certain flowers which they wished to have blossom for a long time they
sowed at intervals. Candytuft, for instance, they sowed first in April
and they planned to make a second sowing in May and a third late in July
so that they might see the pretty white border blossoms late in the
autumn. Mignonette was a plant of which Mr. Emerson was as fond as Roger
was of sweetpeas and the girls decided to give him a surprise by having
such a succession of blooms that they might invite him to a picking bee
as late as the end of October. Nasturtiums also, they planted with a
liberal hand in nooks and crannies where the soil was so poor that they
feared other plants would turn up their noses, and pansies, whose demure
little faces were favorites with Mrs. Morton, they experimented with in
various parts of the gardens and in the hotbed.

The gardens at the Mortons' and Smiths' were long established so that
there was not any special inducement to change the arrangement of the
beds, except as the young people had planned way back in January for the
enlargement of the drying green. The new garden, however, offered every
opportunity. Each bed was laid out with especial reference to the crop
that was to be put into it and the land was naturally so varied that
there was the kind of soil and the right exposure for plants that
required much moisture and for those that preferred a sandy soil, for
the sun lovers and the shade lovers.

The newly aroused interest in plants extended to the care of the house
plants which heretofore had been the sole concern of Mrs. Emerson and
Mrs. Morton. Now the girls begged the privilege of trimming off the dead
leaves from the ivies and geraniums and of washing away with oil of
lemon and a stiff brush the scale that sometimes came on the palms. They
even learned to kill the