72 GARDENING BY MYSELF. 



sprinkled with grass seed and clover : even 

 a light dressing of fine barn-yard manure 

 will do much. All rubbish of sticks and 

 stones — the drift of winter storms — should 

 have been raked off long ago. Dig up any 

 wild onions that show their presumptuous 

 heads, getting the start of the grass ; and if 

 sorrel appears here and there, give it such a 

 dusting with wood-ashes that it will be glad 

 to hide. Just now, while merely in leaf, you 

 notice it less ; but by and by, when it is in 

 flower, the red patches will spoil the lawn 

 effect, pretty as they may be in themselves. 



Put fresh gravel upon the walks wher- 

 ever it is washed or worn away ; and the 

 Quaker storm, when it comes, will beat all 

 down into smooth compactness. 



In and about the flowerbeds, too, there is 

 work. Honeysuckles need support and 

 clipping, and roses need tying up. A tall- 

 growing rose is twice as handsome if it is fast 

 bound to a tall stake ; then the buds start out 

 on every side, and yovi have a pyramid of 

 rose? Prune off all the dead or half-dead 



