222 State Horticultural Society. 



seasons, while the more permanent woodbine or clematis are getting a 

 .i;ood start. I have had these last two vines make shoots 20 feet long 

 in the third year. Where the climate permits, the grape is, of course, 

 ideal as a covering. 



I was entertained recently at a large, roomy farmhouse with not a 

 sign of porch or balcony anywhere. The hospitable mistress told me 

 that she had lived there 14 years and the one desire of her heart was 

 for a porch, but lumber and shingles were so high and the mill so far 

 away that they had never felt that they could afford it. Within a quarter 

 of a mile from this house was the edge of a forest, with abundance of 

 rustic material, stately tamaracks in every size, pine, cedar and birch. 

 Sand, too, was within half a mile. A very little labor could have built 

 leafy shelters everywhere she desired them. 



A resourceful farmer's wife out on the wide, treeless prairie, who 

 lived in a sod house miles from mills or timber, built a little court about 

 her door with great posts of slabs of sod piled squarely. She wove a 

 lattice of iron weed stalks over the top and planted about it the cherished 

 seeds brought from the far distant eastern home. All the long, hot 

 summer, this shelter was a comfort to the isolated family, and the in- 

 frequent wayfarer blest it for its coolness. 



She had never heard of such a thing as a "pergola" in her life, but 

 unconsciously hit upon the same principle which led the first Italian 

 peasant to build up pillars to support his grapes, or the desert dweller 

 to shut out the sun and leave a place for the wind to enter. 



Plant trees ! Plant all of them you can find room for, and if they 

 ■do not give to you the full measure of their blessing, it vv^ill fall on the 

 beads of the next generation. But in the meantime borrow the sturdy 

 trunks and branches of yesterday and clothe them with the leaves of 

 today and you can bring the shade of the forest to the new home in one 

 season. — Orange Judd Farmer. 



BULBS. 



(Read before the Greene County Horticultural Society by F. R. Alexander, of Springfield, 



Missouri.) 



Bulbs are of two classes: 1st, those that bloom in the spring, and, 

 2nd, those that bloom in the late summer and fall. The first class has 

 T)y far the most varieties, of which the catalogues offer dozens, but nar- 

 cissus, hyacinths and tulips are the kinds that are most valuable. Of 

 the millions of these bulbs that are planted in the United States each 



