or will their centers be bright with new promise? It is a
moment to try the soul of the gardener, and no joy is quite like that
of finding them all alive, nor any sorrow like that of finding them
dead. At first I used to give up gardening forever when the perennials
and biennials were winter-killed, just as a beginner at golf gives up
the game forever each time he makes a vile score. Then I began to
compromise on a garden of annuals. Now I have learned philosophy--and
also better methods of winter protection. Likewise, I have learned
that a good many of the perennials which were stone-dead when the
covers were removed have a trick of coming to life under the kiss of
May, and struggling up to some sort of bloom, even if heroically
spindly like lean soldiers after a hard campaign. The hollyhocks,
especially, have a way of seeding themselves undetected, and
presenting you in spring with a whole unsuspected family of children,
some of whom wander far from the parent stem and suddenly begin to
shoot up in the most unexpected places. An exquisite yellow hollyhock
last summer sprouted unnoted beneath our dinning-room window, and we
were not aware of it till one July morning when it poked up above the
sill. A few days later, when we came down to breakfast, there it was
abloom, nodding in at the open window.

Another spring excitement in the garden is the pea planting, both the
sweet peas and what our country folk sometimes call "eatin' peas." No
rivalry is so keen as that between pea-growers. My neighbors and I
struggle for supremacy in sweet peas at the flower show in July, and
great glory goes to him who gets the first mess of green peas on his
table. We have tried sweet-pea sowing in the fall, and it does not
work. So now I prepare a trench in October, partially fill it with
manure, and cover it with leaves, which I remove at the first hint of
warm weather in March. The earth-piles on either side thaw out
quickly, and I get an early sowing, putting in as many varieties as I
can afford (my wife says twice as many as I can afford), jealously
guarding the secret of their number. The vegetable peas are planted
later, usually about the first or second day of April, as soon as the
top soil of the garden can be worked with a fork, and long before the
plowing. We put in first a row of Daniel O'Rourke's, not because they
are good for much, but because they will beat any other variety we
have discovered by two days at least. Then we p