OBJECT OF INTEREST. 8 1 



spirea, wild verbena, Solomon's seal. The children can 

 look for them on their very birthdays, and thus add two 

 months to the pleasures of their gardens. 



WHAT CHILDREN LOVE. 



It is well to know that many plants, roses, honey- 

 suckles, etc.,, will go on blooming almost double the 

 time, if the withered flowers are immediately cut off. 

 Children in a school garden will like nothing better than 

 to use the scissors for that purpose. The small experi- 

 ence gained in kindergardens that have a garden (these 

 are very few, alas !) is sufficient to prove how children 

 love the work, and how they carry the love of it away 

 from the kindergarden ; and what personages plants be- 

 come to them, as favorite kittens and dogs do who be- 

 come part of a family circle. One little fellow whose 

 parents had a magnificent garden, asked the kinder- 

 garden teacher, when she visited the family, to go with 

 him to his home garden. He did not take any notice 

 of the splendid flowers that dazzled her eyes as she fol- 

 lowed him. At last they came to the spot. The object 

 of interest to the little boy was a potato vine, on which 

 a few blossoms had appeared. The teacher had ad- 

 vised the children, who had home gardens, to plant each 

 a potato, and watch it. She had no garden in the kin- 

 dergarden, except in flower-pots in the window, where 

 each had planted a few .peas. These peas were well 

 watched and tended ; and actually bore, not only flowers, 

 but a pod or two, which pods were duly gathered and 

 taken home to be boiled. Another little boy of five, 

 worked an hour or two to dig up and pot a geranium 

 that he feared the frost would spoil in the garden border, 

 and lugged it up to the house with great difficulty. Even 



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