THE LATE SEVERE WINTER. 



HAVE observed the tale of woe 

 that has come from fruit growers 

 from all the peach districts over 

 the distraction of trees from the 

 severe frosts of the past winter. I can 

 readily lend my voice to that same sad 

 tale. The past winter has been the 

 most severe and destructive in this sec- 

 tion of the county experienced for 

 twenty-seven years. And it is only 

 now that the extent of the damage done 

 is showing itself. Many trees that 

 came out in leaf in the spring are now 

 dying away. All my Burbank plum 

 trees succumbed ; the Imperial gage, 

 Munro and Abundance will not pull 

 through this season. Two Dempsey 

 pears and one Marguarite are quite 

 killed while, strange to say, Bartletts 

 are showing no signs of having suffered. 

 I would have supposed that the Demp- 

 sey, being of Canadian origin, would 

 have stood a lower temperature than 

 the Bartlett or Duchess. 



But it is with my roses that I have 

 suffered the greatest loss. I am invit- 

 ing nobody to see them this year ; or 

 rather see where they used to be. Out 

 of 130 varieties I will have, maybe, 50 

 that will bloom this year. Quite a few 

 varieties were totally killed, among them 



Margaret Dickson, Mad. Gabriel 

 Luizet, Ulrich Brunner, La France, 

 Victor Verdier and Meteor. Many 

 others are starting again from the roots, 

 but will not bloom this year, and indeed 

 will never bloom again with me as I in- 

 tend to reduce my collection to at 

 least sixty varieties this season. One 

 very peculiar thing this season is that 

 not one of the moss varieties are bloom- 

 ing except the crested, though they are 

 all vigorous in growth. All my roses 

 were well covered with leaves, though 

 there was very little snow over them at 

 the time of the cold snap when the 

 thermometer went down as low as 35 

 degrees below zero, a thing never 

 known before here. 



Among the small fruits the Hilborn 

 black and Loudon red raspberries came 

 through all right. The Gregg black and 

 Schaffer purple were badly kijled ; the 

 Cuthbert red and Golden Green were too 

 much injured to give more than half a 

 crop. Let us hope that such winters as 

 the one we have just passed through 

 and suffered from may be few, with 

 many years between. 



T. H. Race 



Mitchell. June 20th. 



Summer Care of House Plants. — 

 A very satisfactory shelter for house 

 plants may be made by setting up four 

 posts in a square, to which strips of lath 

 or boards can be nailed about an inch 

 apart. Make a roof of the same ma- 

 terial, and put on m the same way as 

 the strips on the sides, which should be 



in a sort of lattice. Such a shelter will 

 admit all the air ihat is stirring and all 

 the sunshine that the plants will need, 

 and not prevent any one of them from 

 getting the benefit of dews and showers, 

 while It will break the force of strong 

 winds. — Ladies' Ho7ne Journal. 



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