34 PIOTORIAL PRACTICAL ROSH GROWING. 
Chapter 7.—Bow to Prepare the Roses. 
THE Roses are here, the ground is ready. No longer is the 
. Rose grower a navvy; he has become an artist. 
With a complacent eye he surveys the bed. which is swollen 
like a boa constrictor after a heavy meal. With a snarp knife 
in hand he picks up the first Rose. 
Reader, have you tasted the joy of that moment? If not, 
make haste to do so. If you read this in the autumn, pass on 
to the chapter giving selections, sit down, make out your list, 
post it, and then take up the book again to read what I am 
going to say about planting. 
If you read it in the winter, do likewise, but give the nursery- 
man a little latitude about the varieties, because he may have 
sold out of some of them. 
If you read it in the spring, visit the nursery if you can, and 
pick your plants from the best of those left. Allow a wider 
margin for substitutes if you post the order. 
If you read it in summer, try and see the Roses that I shall 
presently chat about, either at a show, or in a garden, and so 
strike up a personal acquaintance, that will ripen into a warm 
friendship, or even a deep attachment, later on. 
All these stages centre on one thing—that proud, exalted, 
glorious moment when you stand in the garden, tree and knife 
in fist, ready to trim and plant. 
The hint given above as to substitutes tells of one reason why 
it is wise to order early. The Rose planting season is like the 
wait for refreshments of the limited mail—there are always a 
great many people tumbling over each other to be first served. 
When you read that a wait of twenty minutes is allowed for 
breakfast, you settle down comfortably. How often have you 
looked sleepily at a watch, got out of bed, tubbed, shaved, 
dressed, breakfasted, and caught a train in eighteen minutes! © 
Of course, there is no hurry. But when the groaning express 
slows up, and everybody except yourself flies off and crowds the 
tables, and the rolls have run out by the time you saunter up, 
things look different. 
The Rose planting season extends from October to April— 
say six months. Well, when one has half the whole year to 
plant one’s Roses, why any unseemly haste? Why not proceed 
with dignified deliberation—think about it in October, fill up 
the inkpot in November, look for a stamp in December, send for 
a catalogue in January, lose it in February, write and abuse the 
nurseryman for not sending it in March, and finally get the 
th ie Oo 
