CHAPTER II. 

 CLIMATIC CHARACTERS AND ADVANTAGES. 



Wherever you choose a home in California, you will not be denied 

 the joy of flower-growing. This joy may be conditioned upon knowing 

 what flowers to grow and how to grow them, but whoever shirks the 

 mastery of such knowledge, either does not know that joy or does 

 not deserve it. Elaborate analysis of California climates is not 

 essential to the purposes of this writing because it is intended to avoid 

 all considerations of commercial floriculture. In other horticultural 

 works, which the writer has undertaken from the point of view of 

 profitable production, the general characters of California climates 

 are sketched and local modifications and their effects upon plant 

 growth, are described with some detail. * These characters are also 

 related to the growth of flowering plants and in choosing locations 

 for commercial production of bloom or seed must be most seriously 

 considered, but the amateur should resolve to grow every plant which 

 gives him satisfaction, rejecting after trial those which refuse to 

 accept the conditions which he provides. It is for him to derive ad- 

 vantage from every plant he attempts to grow, his successes give him 

 joy, his failures give him wisdom. And then, failures and successes 

 with plants are often so near together that some little art of protec- 

 tion or culture may lift a plant from one category to the other and 

 reward him with the consciousness of triumphant discovery. 



Therefore, it is not well to try to decide theoretically exactly what 

 flowers to grow in any place, but rather to try whatever you admire. 

 Least of all is it wise to reject plants because some looal wiseacre 

 may declare: "them plants don't do nothin' here." At the same time, 

 of course, each of the many local climates of California does have its 

 limitation in adaptation and one can often escape disappointment by 

 adopting the conclusions of earlier resident planters providing their 

 success with some plants assures you that they really have plant-love, 

 intelligence and industry and that they have fairly demonstrated the 

 ill-adaptation which they confide to you. Still the writer is skeptical 

 and perverse enough to urge the amateur not to accept such con- 

 clusions too readily. There is such a knack of doing things aright 

 in point of time and method, that plants sometimes accept gratefully 

 conditions generally held to be adverse and reward successful efforts 

 most generously. And there is such satisfaction .and joy in it. This 

 writer, is always alert and sympathetic when, in his wide rambling 



* "California Fruits and How to Grow them," chapters 1 and 2; "California Vege- 

 tables in Garden and Field," chapter 3; Circular 121, University of California Experi- 

 ment Station. 



