20 MY GROWING GARDEN 



This old mansion-house was the operating 

 center of a farm of hundreds of acres, and could 

 afford an encircling road about the home. But 

 now with only two acres, such a road would bite 

 too deeply into the lawn that must give repose 

 and dignity to the house. A carriage approach 

 from the new street on the west is therefore part 

 of Mr. Manning's plan, and I have been staking 

 it out these February days, finding the ground 

 unfrozen under the snow that has given us days 

 of good sleighing. 



A February variation has appeared to my 

 husky son, who has acquired a pair of skees, or 

 more precisely ski, on which at first he tumbled 

 entertainingly, but with which now he skims the 

 new-fallen snow, and scales the hills which give us 

 a changing vista each day. And while my fifty- 

 year bones are not ski-inclined, I am rejoiced that 

 by proxy I am thus freed from the trammels of 

 street and sidewalk, because we are in and 

 growing a garden. 



To hurry our sight of flowers in spring we have 

 placed a modest coldframe in a sheltered spot, 

 where in these sunny February days we get a 

 glimpse now and then of a violet, and see the 

 readiness to grow of the pansies, campanulas, fox- 

 gloves and other carried-over perennials. We have 



