128 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



keep in check sucking insects. I kept my roses in healthy con- 

 dition all summer merely by spraying them with strong Ivory 

 soap-suds at intervals of a week or ten days. I found no rose- 

 bugs on any rose except Madame Plantier, and not more than 

 a dozen on that. 



Contrary to the accepted opinion, I consider bees an enemy 

 in a garden an enemy to beauty; and bumble bees are 

 rougher in their habits than honey bees. I have felt an angry 

 protest, when observing the wanton destruction of a poppy 

 bed made by the bumble bee, as it tumbles about among the 

 stamens and loosens the petals so that they drop within a few 

 hours. I have also observed when both bumble bees and 

 honey bees are numerous, that the bumble bees vacate the 

 poppies and give precedence to honey bees, betaking them- 

 selves to the hollyhocks instead, where they load up with pol- 

 len unmolested. There is something about hollyhock pollen 

 that fuddles a bumble bee completely, and at early twilight, 

 when all respectable bumble bees should be sitting by their 

 firesides relating the day's adventures to the young, a tall hol- 

 lyhock resembles a thirteen-story apartment house without its 

 shielding walls to hide the occupants, and every flower has 

 become a bed-chamber where one or more bumble bees, help- 

 lessly intoxicated and unable to go home, find shelter for the 

 night. Nor do they always sleep off the effect by morning, 

 for I have found them at nine o'clock still torpid and unable 

 to move. 



There are many minor pests more or less destructive in the 

 form of flies that puncture the leaves of the aster, Chrysanthe- 

 mum maximum, and tender leaved plants, leaving round dark 

 dots; also those that pierce a stem to lay their eggs, causing 

 a white spittle-like foam to ooze from the spot. Then there 

 are special diseases of plants so numerous as to require tech- 

 nical study to meet them wisely. For example, the larkspur 



