A SEASIDE GARDEN 235 



In the vegetable garden the wise man thinks out his 

 crop and arranges a variety for the table ; no one wishes 

 every vegetable known to the season every day, and why 

 should not the eye be educated and nourished by an 

 equal variety? 



We are all very much interested in your flower-holders 

 of natural wood, and I will offer you an idea in exchange, 

 after the truly cooperative Garden, You, and I plan. 

 In the flower season, instead of using your embroidered 

 centrepieces for the table, which become easily stained 

 and defaced by having flowers laid upon them, make 

 several artistic table centres of looking-glass, bark, moss, 

 or a combination of all three. 



Lavinia Cortright and I, as a beginning, have oval 

 mirrors of about eighteen inches in length, with invisibly 

 narrow nickel bindings. Sometimes we use these with 

 merely an edge of flowers or leaves and a crystal basket 

 or other low arrangement of flowers in the centre. 

 The glass is only a beginning, other combinations being 

 a birch-bark mat, several inches wider than the glass, 

 that may be used under it so that a wide border 

 shows, or the mat by itself as a background for 

 delicate wood flowers and ferns. A third mat I have 

 made of stout cardboard and covered with lichens, 

 reindeer moss, and bits of mossy bark, and I never go 



