Seeds 51 



boards, cover them with papers to sit on and it will be as warm 

 and cozy a work as if I were knitting by the fire." 



Adam never nags; he knows how far a prudent husband 

 should go, and having gone the full distance, he waves a fare- 

 well hand as I pursue my arbitrary way. On this occasion he 

 gallantly trundled the wheelbarrow down through the drifts 

 that still lay two feet deep in the runway, and up to the hot- 

 bed that was steaming under the glass. 



I filled my space with seeds of annuals, drawing shallow 

 furrows through the earth, dropping in a few seeds sparingly, 

 and smoothing the earth over them. One of the chief difficul- 

 ties with amateurs is that they sow seed too thickly. Seeds 

 look so small that it is hard to realize the space a single plant 

 will cover. I knew a man once who sowed three packages of 

 Shirley poppy-seed in a bed a foot wide and four feet long, and 

 then asked if he ought not to have put in more! The rule is 

 to plant seeds to the depth of three or four times their size, but, 

 if very fine, seeds should be merely scattered on the surface 

 and pressed in lightly. Some are too fine to strew properly 

 and may be mixed with a little fine earth, and then scattered. 

 After a row was sown I pressed down the earth until it made 

 a slightly depressed line in order that the water might settle 

 in these depressions and sink in gradually. Each row was 

 carefully marked with its name upon small portions of a 

 strawberry box that had been torn into inch strips. 



I hovered about that hotbed like a bee 'about a honey pot, 

 lifting the front edge a trifle each sunny day to let in the air, 

 carefully replacing it at night. As the weather grew warmer 

 the lid was raised still higher, so that the young plants should 

 be gradually hardened. By the middle of May I had perhaps 

 thirty varieties of annuals ready to set out, and felt the same 

 triumph a physician would, who had brought a community 

 through a cholera epidemic without losing a life. 



