GARDENING BY MYSELF. igy 



a basket of neglected onions, with slim 

 green shoots a foot long ! 



All, or almost all, advice about flowers, 

 must be received with a certain degree of 

 caution and mixed with a few grains of good 

 sense before using. Fifty miles off, the mid- 

 dle of October is quite another time of year 

 from our October 15th ; and a wet clay soil, 

 and a dry sandy one, make changes of sea- 

 son and condition that must by no means be 

 disregarded. While one place is revelling 

 in the golden glory of the fall, another is al- 

 ready fast in the chains of winter ; and the 

 late weeks of November, which find my 

 garden in perfect working order, in another 

 region come down upon an unmanageable 

 wilderness of wet or frozen clay. It is true 

 we prepare the soil for our bulbs, helping 

 them to forget these differences as far as 

 may be. But if we forget them, there will 

 be failures of some sort. 



A writer in one of the late papers says : 

 ** The earher bulbs are planted in this month 

 (October) the better." Now this is not al- 

 17* 



