LITTLE GARDENS 



bloomed only once. It has large, handsome 

 flowers, when they grow, but I found the old- 

 fashioned kind the more reliable. They tell me 

 that I should not have given a place to it in the 

 usual garden-bed, but made a deep trench for it, 

 filled it with old manure and rich loam, and 

 watered it, no end. It is one of the disadvan- 

 tages of rare strains that they require special 

 treatment, such as you do not bestow on the 

 contents of the old home garden, for most of 

 the flowers I have named thus far ask little that 

 is not given to their neighbors. The iris leaves 

 can be cut off in the late fall, and after the frosts 

 we will partly dismantle the garden, if only for 

 appearance' sake, tearing up the annuals and the 

 frozen plants, and housing such as will live 

 through the winter in a sheltered situation, like 

 the parlor. 



Beside the iris there is another old friend 

 that would be sadly missed if it were not in view 

 from our windows: to wit, the pansy. This 

 charming little blossom, with its quaint, inno- 

 cent face painted on the petals, and its refined, 

 elusive fragrance, is a development from the 

 violet. The latter is not largely grown by us, 

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