40 MY GROWING GARDEN 



and did the other things that wasted time and 

 effort — ^but gave me humility! 



Now I am working more intelligently, and 

 making fewer mistakes. The mistakes were for my 

 good; for they made me think out the problems 

 for myself, as I could not have done had I been 

 holding to a plan made wholly by someone else. 

 True, I have had and have held to Mr. Manning's 

 admirable general plan; but he has only sketched 

 the essential outhnes, leaving me to fill in the form 

 and color and personality. Just so I could wish 

 any other maker of a growing garden might do. 



I have in an earlier chapter confessed the lure 

 of the catalogue as it applies to seeds. That brown 

 pin-point of a seed is so httle, so apparently 

 trifling, that it seems each time a greater marvel 

 that any thing should come from it. Yet come it 

 does; and the sheer sport of expecting and of 

 waiting makes the seed-adventure the more pleas- 

 antly alluring. 



The shrubby plant and the tree are, somehow, 

 quite different in catalogue appeal. One seems to 

 know more completely what is to happen with 

 them. Then, too, there is quite a price-difference 

 between ten cents a packet of hvmdreds of seeds, and 

 fifty cents or more for one little plant. Thus it is 

 easier to keep close to shore on the plant orders. 



