XXVIII. NATURE’S OFFERINGS FOR SPRING 
PLANTING 
“T should like to live, whether I smile or grieve, 
Just to watch the happy life of my green things growing'’. 
—Dinah M. Muloch (Green Things Growing.) 
Planting time! Time to get a spade and tear up the turf 
somewhere: to clear a space and stir the soil and set in it the 
roots of some lusty plant-foundlings, in hopes of seeing what 
they will do when summer comes. This is what one’s hands 
are itching to do (if there be a drop of gardening blood in his 
veins) when the snowdrops bloom, and the early buds are 
swelling, and the filmy clouds of the shadbush are whitening 
all the woodland slopes. Watching things grow, things that 
his own hands have planted, is one of the chief joys of the 
householder. 
Let us go, not to the garden to-day, but to the wildwood. 
We know the times and the seasons and ways and uses of 
radishes and peas and other things that nature lent us long 
ago, and that we have made the staples of our gardens. Let 
us seek out some of the little-used things, whose values are 
chiefly decorative; things that minister to our esthetic 
pleasure;. things that nature has been keeping for us until 
we should attain to an appreciation of them; and let us begin 
to learn how to deal with them. 
Before there were nurseries, there was plenty of nursery 
stock grown in the wildwood, seedlings and plants of all sizes. 
Outside of the nurseries, there is plenty of it still grown. 
Let us go out and see what nature offers. Let us find her 
ancient nurseries. We will pass by the seeds: tho there 
are many of them still hanging on the twigs in the spring, 
they are for the most part slow to germinate. We will pass 
by the bulbs, also: tho there are many of them shooting up 
ie 
