Winter Meeting. 337 



next season it uiis more convenient to plant pansies on the east side 

 of the house, where they had sun half a day. I put them there, but 

 with many misgivings, for I had "learned" the year before that the 

 north side of the house was the place for them. 



Aly pansies were far finer and a month longer in period of active 

 bloom than they had been the year before. Now I was sure I knew 

 how to grow pansies — they must have sun just half the day. Again I 

 planted on the east side of the house, and the same year, having a lot of 

 plants on my hands and no other place to put them, I planted a large 

 bed out in the open, where they had no shade. The pansies by the 

 house did as well as they had the year before, but the bed out in the 

 full glare of the sun was the marvel of the neighborhood. It began 

 to bloom in early May, and was a blaze of color until hard frost in 

 October. They bloomed so freely that it was a burden to pick them to 

 keep them from seeding, and I enlisted the help of the children in the 

 neighborhood, who thought I was generous in giving them flowers, when 

 in reality I was working them to keep my pansy bed clean for nothing. 

 The past season the place that seemed to invite the pansies was a 

 raised bed near a large elm that shaded it until 10 o'clock, and having 

 more faith in the partial shade advice of the catalogues than in my 

 experience of the year before, I put them there. They bloomed well 

 in April, amazingly in May and early June, and then began to peter 

 out. In July I ripped them all up, for the bed had become an eyesore. 

 At the same time a small bed planted from the same stock, at the 

 same time, in my little girl's garden, where there was not a suggestion 

 of shade, bloomed as my sunny bed had bloomed the }ear before, from 

 early spring to killing frost. I think I have learned that pansies want 

 more sun than most people give them. At least, I suggest that those 

 of you who want quantities of pansies over a long season try the sun 

 plan. 



And those of you who do not should sow your pansy seed in the 

 fall. Sow liberally in the open ground, where poppies or other early 

 blooming plants have come oflf. Pansy seed is cheap, if you avoid the 

 loudly advertised novelties, which are almost never worth bothering 

 with. Buy an eighth of an ounce for a quarter in August, and at the 

 first favorable opportunity in September — that is, as soon as the ground 

 has become workable after a good rain — sow a third of your seed. 

 If the weather comes on very hot and dry, or if you have a beating rain 

 before the seedlings come up, you may have to sow again. Even a 

 second failure will leave you time enough to grow good plants before 

 severe freezing. The point is to begin early enough so that if your 



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