54 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



seeds. They came up promptly that is some of them ran 

 their brief race and disappeared at least, most of them did. 

 I could not imagine what was the matter, and planted more 

 seed. I watered the bed daily, tilted up the glass covered with 

 a piece of burlap so as to shade the bed from the extreme heat 

 of the noonday sun. I sat by its side fondly, but my attentions 

 were largely in vain. Rows of green here to-day were gone to- 

 morrow. "The days of man are as grass; the wind passeth 

 over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no 

 more." Surely when David sang he must have known the 

 sorrows of a hotbed. One day late in August I ran a hairpin 

 down between the furrows to loosen the earth, and tumbled 

 out a white grubworm, and for several days my one aim in 

 life was to unearth grubs. 



Now the white grub is the son of that frazzled, trampish- 

 looking brown beetle that had hovered in numbers over my 

 hotbed earlier in the season. I shall never forget my first 

 adventure with one. I had a well-manured open bed in early 

 May where I was planting seeds, and was not a little annoyed 

 by these beetles buzzing around. I had tried to kill them, 

 but they are crusty creatures, and my little stabs at them 

 were ineffectual. Finally one lit on the ground, and to 

 silence him until I got through, I dropped a Neponset pot 

 over him. I could not have treated him with greater civility; 

 for later, when I lifted the pot, he was not to be found. I 

 was guileless in those days, easily puzzled over a thousand 

 nameless causes and too obvious effects, and I wondered if he 

 had burrowed out as a woodchuck does, or what had hap- 

 pened. I did not find out for a whole year, and when I 

 learned their habits and saw them make a sudden dive into 

 the ground, I pounced right after them with a stick; but I 

 never went quick enough nor deep enough; for they burrow 

 with incredible speed right down to the moist manure that is 



