249 



DECEMBEB 



Orehid-growing on a small scale — Miss Jekyll's articles in the 

 ' Guardian ' — Winter vegetables — Laver as a vegetable — Advice 

 to housekeepers — Cooking sun-dried fruit. 



December 5th. — For anyone with a small stove I can 

 thoroughly advise growing some of the more easily 

 cultivated Orchids. 'Ear many years all Orchids seemed 

 to me to smell of money, and to represent great expendi- 

 ture ; but this is not the case at all. They only want the 

 treatment suited to them, and the same care and atten- 

 tion required by other plants that are grown in heat 

 Cypripediums come in most usefully at this time of 

 year ; they last well in water, and continue to flower at 

 times all through the winter. There are endless varieties 

 of them to be bought, and some of the least expensive 

 plants are often as good as the costly ones ; it is only 

 the new varieties that are dear. Some that I have 

 — green, spotted with brown, and with clear white tips 

 — are lovely. They have looked well lately on the 

 dinner-table, arranged with little branches of a shrubby 

 Veronica, called, I believe, V. speciosum. It is a plant 

 well worth growing for the charming Ught green of its 

 leaves out of doors at this time of year, when fresh green 

 is so rare. Unlike most of the shrubby Veronicas, it 

 lasts well in water. It has a long white flower in July, 

 which is not especially pretty. We also grow very suc- 

 cessfully Dendrobmm nobile, Oncidium sphacelatum, and 



