MY GROWING GARDEN 



CHAPTER I— JANUARY 

 THE PLACE AND THE PROSPECT 



ACTUALLY, we — that means the family four 

 y ^^ of us — are to have a real outdoor garden! 

 Not a "handkerchief" garden, in a white- 

 fenced, shaded back yard, such as has mocked us 

 for nearly twenty years, but a garden with borders, 

 and beds, and walks, and maybe a sundial; to 

 say nothing of a possible hly-pond, a longed-for 

 rose-hedge, a dreamed-of orchard of dwarf fruit 

 trees. 



And it has happened suddenly, too, this garden 

 prospect. Tired of the close-by asphalted street, 

 wearied of the twenty hours of trolley cars that 

 banged past every five minutes not forty feet from 

 our very ears as we went through the motions of 

 sleep, we were looking abroad for the place of om: 

 dreams — a garden place. Twice our hopes of a 

 half-acre had been shattered; first by the sheer 

 cruelty of the hard-hearted real-estate man's price- 

 demand, when we foimd that old apple orchard 



A (1) 



