AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



children call it Maplewood Park, ask to walk 

 about it or, with their dolls, to sit upon its two 

 settles to enjoy its flowers and watch its minia- 

 ture pond, where grow, and early grew, the first 

 pink pond lilies in that section of the country. 

 The Department of Public Works or its good- 

 natured employes may be induced to give street 

 sweepings to your garden. They should be piled 

 or spread with a loose covering of earth, or if 

 need be of lime. If piled, wet them down a 

 little and leave them a few days to ripen. The 

 covering will prevent the breeding of pernicious 

 flies.* Before school gardens were heard of, we 

 have occasionally seen boys gathering into home- 

 made carts street refuse to fertilize their own, or 

 more likely their father's, small backyard gardens. 

 Recently, in crowded lower New York, I watched 

 a small boy with a pointed stick industriously 

 spearing street manure with a businesslike grav- 

 ity that boded ill to the urchin who interfered 

 with him or guyed him. The little collector had 

 learned that it was filth only as it lay in the 

 street breeding flies and disease. He had also 

 learned that, in the wise economy of nature, though 

 manure was a waste product, it was in itself 

 full of rich food for the plants in his garden 

 which if well nourished would grow into nutritious 

 fruits and bright flowers. 



* Some day, show a fly's foot under the microscope or an en- 

 larged drawing of it. Emphasize the fact that it can carry typhoid 

 and other disease germs and urge the humane killing of the fly. 



102 



