54 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
seeds. They came up promptly—that is some of them—ran 
their brief race and disappeared—at least, most of them did. 
I could not imagine what was the matter, and planted more 
seed. I watered the bed daily, tilted up the glass covered with 
a piece of burlap so as to shade the bed from the extreme heat 
of the noonday sun. I sat by its side fondly, but my attentions 
were largely in vain. Rows of green here to-day were gone to- 
morrow. “The days of man are as grass; the wind passeth 
over it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no 
more.” Surely when David sang he must have known the 
sorrows of a hotbed. One day late in August I ran a hairpin 
down between the furrows to loosen the earth, and tumbled 
out a white grubworm, and for several days my one aim in 
life was to unearth grubs. 
Now the white grub is the son of that frazzled, trampish- 
looking brown beetle that had hovered in numbers over my 
hotbed earlier in the season. I shall never forget my first 
adventure with one. I had a well-manured open bed in early 
May where I was planting seeds, and was not a little annoyed 
by these beetles buzzing around. I had tried to kill them, 
but they are crusty creatures, and my little stabs at them 
were ineffectual. Finally one lit on the ground, and to 
silence him until I got through, I dropped a Neponset pot 
over him. I could not have treated him with greater civility; 
for later, when I lifted the pot, he was not to be found. I 
was guileless in those days, easily puzzled over a thousand 
nameless causes and too obvious effects, and I wondered if he 
had burrowed out as a woodchuck does, or what had hap- 
pened. I did not find out for a whole year, and when I 
learned their habits and saw them make a sudden dive into 
the ground, I pounced right after them with a stick; but I 
never went quick enough nor deep enough; for they burrow 
with incredible speed right down to the moist manure that is 
