156 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



her steamed complexion, heightened by rouge and cosmetics, 

 adopts a restricted diet, massage and Delsarte to preserve her 

 fast-waning beauty. When locks grow thin, they can at least 

 be parted neatly; and a careful removal of faded and dead 

 growths keeps a September garden trim and neat. 



One more reason for my garden, if any further be needed, 

 is that it affords the most delightful and wholesome exercise 

 imaginable. True, one is not beautiful in big, stout boots, in 

 short skirt and too often collarless waist. Freckles and sun- 

 burn and roughened hands are not the usual weapons of co- 

 quetry. What matter these disqualifications when you have 

 plotted a whole week for a free day in the garden? I have 

 risen at half past five o'clock to get a good start; I have worked 

 in the hot sun until I was forced to retreat for a few minutes 

 under a tree to cool off; I have paused from sheer fatigue mid- 

 way to the garden with a wheelbarrow of stones for a wall to a 

 new terrace, and questioned if that present moment yielded 

 the pure joy I had been anticipating for a whole week. I have 

 rested shovel in hand while digging into a bank, to wipe my 

 weeping brow just as a street laborer does, and recovering 

 breath, asked myself why I was eager to do such work ? To 

 none of my questions have I ever found an answer, save that 

 it was for the joy of the doing, and for the results that justify 

 the hard work. Without these preparatory labors the gar- 

 den could not have existed. From the very start I decided 

 that I should have nothing done that I could not do myself; 

 this was to be my one plaything, devised for my individual 

 pleasure and exercise, and when it became too ambitious for 

 my hands to tend, I'd give it up. 



All I know of these specially appointed days is that they 

 are too short, too few; the hours do not exist. I have clumped 

 into the house at six at night having taken only a reluctant 

 period of rest at noon during a hasty dinner so tired and 



