GREEN DRAPERIES 41 



former is too well known to need description and too 

 entirely accommodating to require special treatment. 

 There is nothing it will not do for you, from clothing 

 with a garment of respectability the spot where the 

 garbage receptacle reposes, to rejuvenating, with its 

 vitality and brilliance, a dead tree or rotting stump. It 

 is as proud to climb the netting around the chicken- 

 yard as to scale the dizzy heights of fashion in the 

 flower garden. Nasturtiums do best planted in a soil 

 of very moderate richness. High living makes them run 

 to great juicy stalks and luxuriant foliage, but few 

 flowers. 



The Sweet Pea is not quite so simple a proposition in 

 our sun-baked American gardens, and though loveliest 

 and most desired of annuals it is not often seen satis- 

 factorily grown, at least in the Middle and Southern 

 States. I think early planting is the main considera- 

 tion, and to this end we prepare in the autumn a trench 

 about ten inches deep. The ground has been pre- 

 viously deeply dug and enriched with well-rotted cow 

 manure, and the seed is sown thinly at the bottom of the 

 trench about the middle of March, and covered with 

 about two inches of soil. Later, when the little plants 

 begin to grow, the earth is gradually filled in around 

 them, until the trench is even with the surrounding 

 surface and the shrinking roots buried deep in the cool 

 earth, and safe from the burning rays of the summer sun. 

 If the flowers are planted in the vegetable garden, or in 



