XXVII. NATURE'S OFFERINGS FOR SPRING 

 PLANTING 



"J should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, 

 Just to watch the happy l.'fe of my green things growing". 



— Dinah M. Muloch (Green Things Growing.) 



Planting time ! Time to get a spade and tear up the turf 

 somewhere : to clear a space and stir the soil and set in it the 

 roots of some lusty plant-foundlings, in hopes of seeing what 

 they will do when summer comes. This is what one's hands 

 are itching to do (if there be a drop of gardening blood in his 

 veins) when the snowdrops bloom, and the early buds are 

 swelling, and the filmy clouds of the shadbush are whitening 

 all the woodland slopes. Watching things grow, things that 

 his own hands have planted, is one of the chief joys of the 

 householder. 



Let us go, not to the garden to-day, but to the wildwood. 

 We know the times and the seasons and ways and uses of 

 radishes and peas and other things that nature lent us long 

 ago, and that we have made the staples of our gardens. Let 

 us seek out some of the little-used things, whose values are 

 chiefly decorative; things that minister to our esthetic 

 pleasure; things that nature has been keeping for us until 

 we should attain to an appreciation of them; and let us begin 

 to learn how to deal with them. 



Before there were nurseries, there was plenty of nursery 

 stock grown in the wildwood, seedlings and plants of all sizes. 

 Outside of the nurseries, there is plenty of it still growTi. 

 Let us go out and see what natiu-e offers. Let us find her 

 ancient niirseries. We will pass by the seeds: tho there 

 are many of them still hanging on the twigs in the spring, 

 they are for the most part slow to germinate. We will pass 

 by the bulbs, also : tho there are many of them shooting up 



