dam!"

Yours, &c.

LETTER III.

A good rule
Is a good tool.

DEAR LITTLE FRIEND,

January is not a month in which you are likely to be doing much in
your little garden. Possibly a wet blanket of snow lies thick and
white over all its hopes and anxieties. No doubt you made all tidy,
and some things warm, for the winter, in the delicious opportunities
of S. Luke's and S. Martin's little summers, and, like the amusing
American I told you of, "turned away writing _resurgam_ on the
gate-post."

I write _resurgam_ on labels, and put them wherever bulbs lie buried,
or such herbaceous treasures as die down, and are, in consequence, too
often treated as mere mortal remains of the departed, by the
undiscriminating hand of the jobbing gardener.

Winter is a good time to make plans, and to put them down in your
Garden-book. Have you a Garden-book? A note-book, I mean, devoted to
garden memoranda. It is a very useful kind of commonplace book, and
soon becomes as fascinating as autumn and spring catalogues.

One has to learn to manage even a Little Garden chiefly by experience,
which is slow teaching, if sure. Books and gardeners are helpful; but,
like other doctors, they differ. I think one is often slower to learn
anything than one need be, from not making at once for first
principles. If one knew more of these, it would be easier to apply
one's own experience, and to decide amid conflicting advice.

Here are a few rough and ready "first principles" for you.

_Hardy flowers in hedges and ditches are partly fed, and are also
covered from cold and heat, and winds, and drought, by fallen leaves
and refuse. Hardy flowers in gardens have all this tidied away from
them, and, being left somewhat hungry and naked in proportion, are all
the better for an occasional top-dressing and mulching, especially in
autumn._ It is not absolutely necessary to turn a flower border upside
down and dig it over every year. It may (for some years at any rate),
if you find this more convenient, be treated on the hedge system, and
_fed from the top_; thinning big clumps, pulling up weeds, moving and
removing in detail.

_Concentrated strength means large blooms._ If a plant is ripening
seed, some strength goes to that; if bursting into many blooms, some
goes to each of them; if it is trying to hold up against blustering
winds, or to thrive on exhausted ground, or to straighten out cramped
and clogged roots, these struggles also dem