Spring Crocuses 



them by the hundred for it, but cannot imagine a grade of 

 society so refined as to clothe their pennies in these paper 

 jackets. 



For seed collecting they are Ai though, and I generally 

 wear half a dozen in the ticket pocket of my coats, even 

 my Sunday best, and have often acquired a new plant by 

 having one at hand when a pod or two of poor little orphan 

 seeds were crying out for adoption. Next time I go to the 

 A. and N. Stores for some cook's forks and pence envelopes 

 shall I find a queue at either counter ? The seeds are best 

 sown as the year's harvest is gathered in, but they will be 

 none the worse (unless lost or devoured of mice) for being 

 kept unsown until the middle of September. Then you 

 will remember the pots are plunged out in the open in a 

 bed of ashes for two years, until the cormlets are gathered 

 together as peas in a pod at the bottom of the pots. 



Then they get turned out in August, cleaned a little 

 of worn-out coats, and are pricked out in rows in a specially 

 prepared bed of rather gritty soil in an open, sunny place, 

 and are left there to flower. Here we always have two 

 seasons' pots sunk in the ashes, and three seed-beds, each 

 with one year's seedlings in it, so that in their third year 

 the seedlings go out into a bed and should begin flowering, 

 but it is in their fourth year that the main crop of flowers 

 should appear, and in the fifth the lag-behinds should show 

 if they are good for anything. After that we turn that bed 

 out, sort out what is left, and prepare it for another batch 

 of two-year-olds. 



Yes, we treat Crocuses seriously here, even alluding to 

 them sometimes as Croci, but I could never bring myself to 

 67 



