rl Gicoihoiisc Jur a Short Purse. 73 



A GREENHOUSE FOR A SHORT PURSE. 



By C. B. DzNsoN, Pittsboro', N. C. 



Many are the lovers of flowers who feel themselves shut out from all 

 their treasures, through lialf the year, for want of a golden key. Our 

 journals of horticulture and our florists' ledgers would show far longer 

 lists of receipts if the great masses in the middle and southern districts 

 of our country knew how easy it was to keep plants in bloom, in per- 

 petual succession, through the year. How simple is the charm by 

 which, when spring's well-tried perennials and summer's gay annuals 

 are over, new claimants for our love and care, in the greenhouse, awake 

 to give us joy through all the dreary winter days, until the bulbs spring 

 forth to join the links of the perpetual chain ! 



How shall we obtain this winter bloom ? Parlor 23lants do not meet 

 the want in tlie south. Our houses, built without the double wall, in- 

 side and outside shutters, etc., are without the protection, in winter, 

 which our northern friends enjoy ; our fires are not of coal, but of 

 wood, and we are without pijDCS or furnaces. It follows that when 

 our few really cold days come, from December 15 to January 35, the 

 wood fires are built high and generous in our sitting-rooms during 

 waking hours ; but, dying out after the family has gone to rest, Jack 

 Frost makes his visit in the early morning hours. We arise to find ice 

 in our rooms, and our cherished plants all dead, that were, perhaps, the 

 day before in bud or bloom, under the warmth of the room, and the 

 sunshine that often invites us to raise our windows in the very heart 

 of Januai-y. As they hang all limp and black, we vow never to try to 

 keep parlor plants again. 



So that, living in the land of flowers through one half of the year, it 

 must yet be confessed that it is a rare thing to see, in winter, any collec- 

 tion of even half a dozen plants in as many hundred homes through 

 our widely-extended country. This ought not so to be. Providence 

 has so blessed Eastern Virginia, the Carolinas, and the country south 

 thereof, that artificial heat is not required for plants which do not de- 

 mand more than 45° of temperature. 



