486 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



June 1 



more beautiful plant in the whole floral king- 

 dom than a penciled azalea. It looks as if one 

 had taken a delicate brush, and, with more 

 gorgeous colors than any painter ever mixed, 

 wrought forms of tantalizing beauty. Yes, I 

 could honestly say to the children that this 

 kind of painting and coloring was God's own 

 handiwork. I asked Ernest to take a picture 

 of the azalea alone, but he took in also a mag- 

 nificent brughmancae ; and after 1 had gone 

 he turned his apparatus on the greenhouse in 

 general, and here it is. 



The picture shows you how cheaply the 

 beds and paths are constructed. At the left, 

 overhead, you get a glimpse of the annex we 

 put on last winter. Right below the annex 

 there is a golden-leafed salvia that has been 



are six or seven kinds, and all different. 

 Over in another bed, off to the right, not 

 shown, we have a lemon-tree with half a doz- 

 en nice lemons on it. A guava from Florida 

 is just full of bloom. It bore one nice fruit 

 that Mrs. Root sampled when I was in Flori- 

 da. She said it was splendid. In this bed 

 are a great lot of pelargoniums. Our friend 

 Pike, of St. Charles, 111., sent us an assorted 

 lot of rooted cuttings about a year ago. We 

 planted them outdoors, and got a lot of strong 

 vigorous plants a foot high or more. They 

 were put in the greenhouse last fall, and just 

 grew and grew, without showing any signs of 

 bloom until along in April. Then they just 

 outdid themselves in the multitude of blos- 

 soms. They are not only of all colors of the 



A GLIMPSE INSIDE OF THE LITTLE GREENHOUSE IN MARCH. 



bearing scarlet blossoms, and loads of them, 

 for one whole year continuously, and each 

 blossom contains quite a little drop of honey. 

 Beyond the salvia there are tomatoes. Away 

 over in the corner, at the end of the path, are 

 roses. Right near the roses you can get a 

 glimpse of one of the tiles where we let in wa- 

 ter for sub-irrigation. The beds are all water- 

 ed in the same way. Just beyond the brugh- 

 mancae there is a clematis that has been bearing 

 beautiful clusters of white flowers all winter. 

 At the right of the big plant, just under one 

 of the great blossoms (nearly if not quite a 

 foot long), there is a bed of fuchsias. These 

 fuchsias have been blooming and blooming all 

 through the latter part of the winter. There 



rainbow, but many of them are spotted, speck- 

 led, splotched, and penciled, with such a 

 wilderness of beauty as to almost be-" wil- 

 der " one. 



In the cut showing the azalea, at the right, 

 you can get a faint glimpse of some of the 

 large pelargonium-blossoms. The penciling 

 is so faint, however, that it does not show in 

 the half-tone, although it can be seen very 

 plainly in the photo. They grew in very rich 

 soil with sub-irrigation, and the plant made 

 such a rank growth I presume the blossoms 

 are unusually large. Some single blossoms 

 are an inch and a half across. 



The front of the greenhouse is now raised 

 up. When the women -folks go along the 



