'i? A MOUNTAIN GARDEN 5 



hours of sunlight, I need not say, accelerate the 

 growth of garden plants and give the com and 

 peas and other vegetables such succulence and 

 richness of flavor as you will not easily find 

 elsewhere. 



If my way of gardening — original in some 

 details and unconventional on the whole — ^has 

 given such satisfaction on a knoll exposed to 

 fierce mountain blasts and the other disadvan- 

 tages referred to, it surely cannot fail in gardens 

 more favorably located. 



But, no matter how well situated and cli- 

 matically favored your garden may be, you will 

 have to have your wits about you, looking 

 ahead all the time. 



With all my alleged brains, and after a gar- 

 dening experience of over half a century, I 

 made a stupid blunder in the summer of 1920, 

 which taught me a lesson for the next half 

 century. (I mean almost literally what I say, 

 for my gardening has done such wonders for my 

 health that at sixty-seven I feel like thirty- 

 seven in every way, and I fully expect to reach 

 the age of one hundred.) 



In that summer there was a nation-wide 

 express strike, and freight moved not much 

 faster than a glacier. By delaying to order my 

 seed potatoes till I thought it would be safe to 

 ship them north, I had to pay nine dollars a 

 bushel for what I could get, but some of the 

 fancy extra varieties I wanted to plant could 



