38 THE JOY OF GARDENS 



The bird choirs have assembled robins, bluebirds, and 

 other songsters who wake with the dawn. Gardening is 

 play work when the sun is shining, the heavens are of 

 April blue, and music fills the air. The garden books 

 have not marked the red-letter day of planting just yet, 

 but the flutter of nest building and the leafing of tree 

 and shrub warn that nature is going ahead with her plans. 

 She does not stay, or linger, dreading a busy season. 



Who will be to blame by and by if the seeds do not 

 come up 1 ? Yonder lie your heap of perennial roots and 

 bundles of shrubs. You wonder humorously to yourself 

 why your friend the florist does not post a sign, "No gar- 

 den without a spade." 



The man in search of work, the man out of a job, the 

 man who yearns to earn an honest dollar, is not hunting 

 industry on the highroad at garden-making time in the 

 village. You may lean on your rake in the sunshine 

 under the robin's tree for sixty minutes perhaps for a 

 whole morning and the man with a hoe, or the anxious 

 laborer, will not loom up on the hilltop. The critical 

 moment of decision has come; you must set the alarm 

 clock an hour earlier, and toil if you would have your 

 reward. 



Break up the hard clods with a mattock, get the chil- 

 dren to help with rakes, and when the surface is fine and 

 smooth, the soil pulverized, a thrill of satisfaction will 

 creep over your weary body, and genuine happiness greet 



