22 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



conduct. The evil that we do lives after us. The early cos- 

 mos quoted as three feet high was given the whole length 

 down the middle of a bed; but in my virgin soil it grew ovei 

 five feet, and when a long rainy season occurred while it was 

 in full flower, it leaned over and completely blocked one of 

 my paths; and I let it do so, because I did not know any better. 

 I never thought of stakes in those days. The pentstemon, a 

 gift, grew lustily, and when September arrived with no visible 

 bloom I thought it wise to look up its credentials, and found 

 that while it was very desirable, it was a tender perennial. As 

 I knew nothing of shielding delicate constitutions from our 

 northern severities, its place knew it no more after that first 

 summer of green promise. I had been attracted by the high 

 praise given to the Nicotiana affinis, and I planted a whole 

 paper of seeds, watered and watched them advance from their 

 first seed leaves. Occasionally I questioned why the nicotiana 

 appeared all over the plot, but thought it was due to the scat- 

 tering of seeds by the birds, that sat daily on my rustic fence to 

 fly down during my absence and nip off the heads of the blue 

 annual larkspur. This was a vague inference about the cause 

 of the decapitated heads that were found on the ground until 

 the cosmos grew over the walk like the leaning tower of Pisa, 

 and further access to the larkspur was cut off. So I went on 

 in bland ignorance, and fingered the woolly leaves of my nico- 

 tiana, and by September I began to wonder why there was no 

 bloom. 



One day I had a visitor, a young woman of prompt and 

 ready action, who had made a special study of botany. She 

 looked patronizingly on my bit of cultivated rock heap with its 

 fading beauty, while I apologetically set forth my plans for an 

 extension another year. She suddenly made a dive and 

 plucked out one of my nicotianas and tossed it aside. 



"Why what are you doing?" cried I in dismay. 



