32 W0KCE8TEK COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1880. 



full flower, side bj side with plants ready to bloom, the bloom- 

 ing plants would all be sold before a customer was foundfor the 

 nice little plants, worth three times as much, which would give 

 some summer bloom and an abundance of blossoms all through 

 the autumn. The mania for over-grown plants in full flower 

 extends even to this modest flower. I should buy of reliable 

 parties, small plants, and not have the dissatisfaction of seeing them 

 droop and die in warm weather, as the large plants almost always 

 will. Then comes the glory of the late summer, the Asters. 

 Unlike many of the annuals, light frosts do not affect them, and 

 they give us varied and beautiful bloom after summer flowers are 

 gone. And, latest of all, comes the Chrysanthemum, the pride of 

 the autumn. All of us have grown them, more or less, still we 

 do not grow them and grow the new varieties as we ought. And 

 now the winter has come, and we must leave our summer flowers 

 to take their rest. 



I sometimes wish our climate were always summer, and then 

 the question comes up should we prize our out-door flowers as we 

 do now if it were always summer? I should like one thing, how- 

 ever, and that is a little more length at both ends of our summer. 

 As it is, everything takes us by surprise. The spring is late, and 

 warm weather finds us unprepared for it, simply because we have 

 waited so long. Then, wliile in the midst of summer weather, a 

 killing frost, like the one we had last September, comes, and we 

 awake to find our choicest flowers drooping and dying. There is 

 no other way if we stick to our rugged rocks and bleak winter 

 winds, but to be watchful and beware, knowing well that when 

 we least think it, the enemy of our friends the flowers, cometh. 



