64 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
high in price, and the higher the price of a package is, the 
more surely you are guaranteed in getting something rare and 
difficult to obtain, or an exceptionally fine selected strain. 
This is also true of plants. No firm can market strong healthy 
plants at retail for less than ten to fifteen cents apiece for the 
common varieties, and a correspondingly higher price for 
rare ones; and when a plant is offered for five cents, postage 
prepaid, it is so small that it is worth about two. Get a few 
plants each year from the best house you know, and you will 
have in time a collection that is worth while. 
I have in mind the futile experiment I have made to secure 
Eremurus robustus, that is quoted from two to three dollars a 
plant. I could not afford to pay so much, and bought seed at 
twenty-five cents a package, and planted them with the 
greatest care. They take a whole year to germinate—which 
I did not know—and the second year I found six tiny triangu- 
lar spears of green where Eremurus was marked. I was very 
happy until I discovered that the brown cutworm was also 
interested in my collection, and three of them had already met 
with an untimely end. I transplanted the remainder at once 
from the hotbed—this was before my emancipation from that 
snare—and put on a double patrol to guard them. A few days 
later two more had yielded up the ghost. I visited my one ewe 
lamb at least ten times a day, and it was growing in stature 
and wisdom until, about three weeks later, I got out one morn- 
ing just after the tooth of the serpent had laid low the sole 
survivor. I could have wept, but did not; for I made such a 
savage chase for the destroyer that grief was lost in wrath. 
Here were two years lost, and I was just where I began. I 
bought more seed and planted again, waited another year for 
the seed to germinate, and the next, which was the third 
spring, found nineteen little threads of green up. I trans- 
planted them and their place was carefully marked, for they 
