IV 



POTTING AND REPOTTING 



AID a woman to me, not 

 long since, "While I'm 

 convinced there's a knack 

 to flower-growing that not 

 all of us can fully attain, 

 I'm convinced there's a 

 special knack to trans- 

 planting and repotting plants. I try to be very 

 careful when I do this kind of work, but some- 

 how I generally fail at it. My plants seem to 

 resent my interference with them, no matter 

 how much they require the attention, and for 

 weeks they sulk, and refuse to grow, while 

 those of my neighbor keep right on growing as 

 if nothing had happened to them. And she 

 don't bother with her plants, in potting or re- 

 potting them, half as much as I do. " 



In that last sentence this woman uncon- 

 sciously explained why she failed and her 

 neighbor succeeded. She "bothered" too 

 much. In other words she was over careful. 

 In plant-growing there are extremes. One is 



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