rs in winter; but, if it is
in the south or west of the British Isles, I should be tempted to very
wide experiments with lots of plants not commonly reckoned "hardy."
Where laurels flower freely you will probably be successful eight
years out of ten. Most fuchsias, and tender things which die down, may
be kept.

_Very little will keep Jack Frost out, if he has not yet been in_,
either in the garden or the house. A "hot bottle" will keep frost out
of a small room where one has stored geraniums, &c., so will a small
paraffin lamp (which--N. B.--will also keep water-pipes from
catastrophe). How I have toiled, in my young days, with these same hot
water bottles in a cupboard off the nursery, which was my nearest
approach to a greenhouse! And how sadly I have experienced that where
Mr. Frost goes out Mr. Mould is apt to slink in! Truly, as Mr. Warner
says, "the gardener needs all the consolations of a high philosophy!"

It is a great satisfaction if things _will_ live out of doors. And in
a _little_ garden a good deal of coddling may be done. I am going to
get some round fruit hampers to turn over certain tender pets this
winter. When one has one's flowers by the specimen and not by the
score, such cossetting is possible. Ashes and cinders are excellent
protection for the roots, and for plants--like roses--which do not die
back to the earth level, and which sometimes require a screen as well
as a quilt; bracken, fir branches, a few pea sticks, and matting or
straw are all handy helps. The old gentleman who ran out--without his
dressing gown--to fling his own bed-quilt over some plants endangered
by an unexpected frost, came very near to having a fine show of bloom
and not being there to see it; but, short of this excessive zeal, when
one's garden is a little one, and close to one's threshold, one may
catch Jack Frost on the surface of many bits of rough and ready
fencing on very cold nights.

_In drought, one good soaking with tepid water is worth six
sprinklings._ Watering is very fatiguing, but it is unskilled labor,
and one ought to be able to hire strong arms to do it at a small rate.
But I never met the hired person yet who could be persuaded that it
was needful to do more than make the surface of the ground look as if
it had been raining.

There is a "first principle" of which some gardeners are very fond,
but in which I do not believe, that if you begin to water you must go
on, and that too few waterings do harm.