THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
just now perhaps sweet peas mark the very finest 
work, the genius and the patience of our best 
horticulturists. Brains also have been put into 
new cannas and gladioli; and what a supreme 
poem is such a rose as Virginia Coxe, or Balduin — 
a poem written equally by an inspired hand and 
soul! 
The tulip is my special delight, nor can I ever 
get too many of them, everywhere about my land. 
Let me tell you a secret. When you set a bed of 
strawberries, push tulips down four inches deep in 
all the rows, and six inches apart. Here they will 
blossom early in the spring, before the strawberries 
blossom, and they will get out of the way, all but a 
dry stalk, before you pick your berries in June. In 
this way you will have the most magnificent floral 
display, without decreasing in the slightest degree 
your crop of fruit. I am planting this year not less 
than a full bushel of bulbs in my new beds. Once 
in about three years your strawberry bed will have 
worn out, and must be renewed; dig tulips also 
once in three years, and follow up your new straw- 
berry beds. They multiply with great rapidity, 
and if you dig ever so carefully some bulbs will be 
left in the soil, so that in time tulips will show 
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