utiful flowers, and useful fruits and
vegetables from tiny seeds, but she also grows bad weeds and sends
eating-bugs that we must fight against, if we want things to grow on our
farms and gardens. So we still have much work before us to make our
gardens a success."

"We haven't had much to eat from them yet," said Mother Blake, who had
been hoeing among her carrots. "I hope we can pick something soon."

"We had radishes," said Hal.

"And well soon have tomatoes," added his father. "Now that I have driven
away the eating worms the vines will grow better and the tomatoes will
ripen faster."

A week later on some of the vines there were quite large green tomatoes.
Hal and Mab watched them eagerly, noting how they grew and swelled larger,
until, one day, Mab came running in, crying:

"Oh, one tomato has a red cheek!"

"That's where it got sunburned," said her father with a smile. "That shows
they are getting ripe. Soon we will have some for the table."

In a few days more tomatoes on the vines had red, rosy cheeks, some being
red all over. These Daddy Blake let Hal and Mab pick, and they brought
them in the house.

"Oh, we shall have some of our own tomatoes for lunch!" cried Mother Blake
when she saw them. "How fine! Our garden is beginning to give us back
something to pay us for all the work we put on it."

"But these are Daddy's tomatoes," said Hal. "He had the first thing, after
the radishes, for the table from his garden, and Mab and I haven't
anything. Daddy'll get his own prize."

"No, I promise you I will not take the prize for these tomatoes, even if I
did raise them in my part of the garden," said Daddy Blake with a smile.
"And I won't count the radishes we had before the tomatoes were ripe,
either. Those belonged to all of us.

"The prize isn't going to be given away until all the crops are
harvested, or brought in, and then we'll see who has the most and the best
of things that will keep over Winter."

"Can you keep tomatoes all Winter?" asked Mab of her father.

"Well, no, not exactly. But Mother can put them into cans, after they have
been cooked, and she can make ketchup and spices of them--chili sauce and
the like--as well as pickles, so, after all, you might say my tomatoes
will last all Winter.

"Sometimes you can keep tomatoes fresh for quite a while down in a cool,
dry cellar, if you pull the vines up by the roots, with the tomatoes still
on them, and cover the roots with dirt. But they