LITTLE GARDENS 



the plants every ev^ening. Gardeners all deplore 

 light watering, and it has this disadvantage : that 

 it does not give to a plant what it wants, any 

 more than a spoonful of drink slakes thirst; that 

 under a merely superficial moistening the roots 

 that should strike deep, in search of moisture, 

 thereby holding the plant firmly in its place and 

 giving it lease of life through the winter, may 

 turn to the surface, and thus give but a shallow 

 foothold. So we must regard our plants as reg- 

 ular topers, whatever their simplicity of coun- 

 tenance. But I have found that a hasty trip 

 about one's yard in town with a watering-can, 

 if not a rapid turn with the hose, is good prac- 

 tise, for the reason that a city is a dusty place 

 and the object of the sprinkle is not to give drink, 

 but to wash the plants free from dust, that they 

 may breathe the better. There is something 

 pitiful, something wrong, in the aspect of a rose 

 or lily powdered with grit or fragments or street 

 droppings, and something unseemly in the cover- 

 ing of bushes with fragments of straw and spots 

 of dirt. The retention of heat by the enormous 

 spaces of brick and stone in a city, and the giv- 

 ing off of that heat through the night is inimical 



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