56 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



bottom dressing, and had about seventy-five varieties under 

 way I thought. Many rows came up and my heart was 

 glad; then a drought befell us, and grasshoppers were sore in 

 the land, and katydids and crickets found my tender greens 

 fresh and appetizing, and again I saw young life mowed down 

 by the relentless sickle of Fate. I went out ten times a day to 

 shoo the ravaging horde away. Then I covered the frames 

 closely with cheese-cloth, only to find at any hour of the day 

 a couple of dozen fat sleek crickets basking under the cool 

 shade, eating at their leisure. So, droughty as it was, I trans- 

 planted everything that was large enough to risk, sowed more 

 seeds in the bare rows, and played Providence to the remain- 

 ing nurslings that were too tiny to be lifted. In the autumn 

 the wind drifted the leaves into the cold frames and I left the 

 nursery, well content to have so good a shelter provided. 



The following spring I hurried home from the South, eager 

 to see how the little things throve under their deep blanket of 

 leaves. When I reached those beds I stood by veritable 

 graves. I had decided not to cover them with sashes because 

 of the heavy snows that pile up five and even six feet on the 

 level, and I feared that the plants would suffocate and the 

 sashes to my frames be ruined. And there were my sunken 

 beds submerged under a foot of water that had melted from 

 a recent snowfall, while the earth frozen solid under the 

 blanket of leaves prevented it from sinking in. There were no 

 funerals, though the dead from drowning were unnumbered. 

 Another winter I tried covering the cold frames with boards, 

 weighted down with stones to keep them in place; but I leave 

 home too early in winter and return too late in the spring 

 to give them proper attention. Everything was moldy or 

 rotted, and I saved but little. I discovered in the spring, when 

 the beds were thoroughly overhauled, why they had suffered 

 so from drought the previous summer. Forest trees over 



