November, 1915 



THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



115 



young plant as I set them then nine inches 

 apart. 



When the leaves began to fall from the 

 trees I inclosed my Violets in a bottomless 

 box, 12 inches high at the back, 8 inches 

 high at the front, and any length and width 

 my old window sash would permit. I in- 

 closed the ends, banked the earth compactly 

 around the outsides of the box, and put on 

 my window sash, giving the Violets plenty 

 of air on all sunshiny days. I saw that 

 they did not become dry. Whenever the 

 thermometer showed signs of dropping 

 to 2 5 or lower, I covered the glass with a 

 bed made of burlap stuffed with straw till 

 about four inches thick, and tied at inter- 

 vals with cotton twine. 



I will never shut a Violet up in a living 

 room again without the humblest apologies 

 to her ladyship and a firm determination 

 to be thankful if I get half a dozen flowers 

 during the winter. If the above process 

 is repeated every season, in three years one 

 may be obliged to buy a whole square if one 

 lives in town, or surrender a cornfield if 

 one's home is in the country. The other 

 .alternative is to throw away the plants 

 there is no room for. 



In the process of becoming a violet queen 

 I discovered that, shocking as it may seem 

 to the other kind of queens, one must go 

 into trade. Though real queens and kings 

 and barons are never supposed to do 

 anything useful, a potato king must sell 

 potatoes; a cattle baron must sell cattle; 

 and, of course, a Violet queen must sell 

 Violets. 



Now a queen is always young and hand- 

 some to the public and the newspapers; 

 but, privately, I might whisper, if she is 

 going to pick 4,000 Violets a day, she is sure 

 to have freckles and rheumatism, no matter 

 how young and fair she is. For she must 

 get down on her knees in the sun and mud 

 and rain and snow, and keep that devo- 

 tional posture for several hours a day. 



So, after many years of picking Violets 

 from cold frames, a greenhouse seemed a de- 

 sirable thing. The other half of the house- 

 hold shook his head doubtfully. "Hardly 



worth while," he opined, "expensive and 

 troublesome; and, unless heated, no good." 



But, like John Brown, also of Kansas, 

 I "dared begin." 



One pleasant June day, armed with Gal- 

 loway's Commercial Violet Culture and at- 

 tended by the hired man, who, by the way, 

 was a deafmute, and could neither exas- 

 perate me with advice nor distract me with 

 questions except in the finger language 

 which I did not understand, I marched in 

 proud procession to a discarded barnyard. 

 The horses had surrendered to the auto; 

 and the field lay open to whatever conquer- 

 ing hero or heroine might wish to enter. 

 The book was laid open on the ground at 

 page 80, and with many signs and gestures 

 the hired man was directed to dig a ditch 

 16 inches wide, 12 feet long, and 2\ feet 

 deep. A retaining wall of the barnyard 

 fencing faced each side of the ditch, and re- 

 duced the width to 14 inches. It would be 

 impossible to tell how many times the queen 

 hopped nimbly and gracefully down into 

 that ditch to ascertain if it was the precise 

 width wished for. The hopping down was 

 easy enough. The scrambling out was 

 more difficult. When it was finally done 

 we looked lovingly on it, though it must be 

 admitted it was a little out of whack. I 

 had intended to run it exactly north and 

 south; but the north star must have swerved 

 a little, or the compass got a cramp in its 

 knee; for the ditch was really nor '-nor '-east 

 by sou'-sou'-west. However, nobody no- 

 ticed it but ourselves; or, if he did, he was 

 too polite to mention it. Carefully, on each 

 side of the ditch, was dug a bed four feet 

 five inches wide and nine feet long. The 

 finest and softest soil, thoroughly enriched 

 and sifted, filled the bed; and then it was 

 set with the plants from the boxes, nine 

 inches apart, and at its outer edge a 12- 

 inch plank was set up and the ends similarly 

 closed. As there was no shed, a mighty 

 awning, consisting of some old-fashioned 

 shutters that had once done duty on the 

 house, was set up in a sort of lean-to fashion 

 on the east side; some distant trees afforded 

 shade in the afternoon. 



The shutters had a most uncomfort- 

 able way of tumbling down on hot and 

 windy days and were exceedingly heavy 

 and awkward to restore; 'but though 

 we almost died struggling with them 

 out in the heat, like the old guard, we 

 "never surrendered." "All in a quiet 

 shady bed the modest Violet" must grow; 

 and how it did grow ! I never saw such 

 luxuriance! 



When fall came and frosts threatened, we 

 topped the 12-inch board with a 2" x 3 " 

 scantling; and as I had no real sash, only a 

 joblot of old windows, I expended 65 cents 

 (all the cash that was put into that green- 

 house) for a ridge-pole 2" x 6" x 12'; and, 

 falling back again on the barnyard fence, 

 the head of the house, who began by this 

 time to take an interest in the affair, set 

 up a post at either end to support the ridge- 

 pole, and joined the ridge and side plate 

 with such pieces of 2" x 4" as might be nec- 

 essary to hold the windows. We boarded 

 up the ends, being lucky enough to find 

 two transoms to put in the south end. We 

 put a door of a single plank 18 inches wide 

 on the north end, hung by leather straps. 

 The vestibule shown in the picture was not 

 built till the following year. This door 

 opened on an inclined plane which led under 

 the paper-covered extension of the orig- 

 inal greenhouse to the bottom of the 

 ditch which only gave five and one-half 

 feet head room. Most of the windows 

 were fastened down; but occasionally one 

 was hinged so it could be raised for pur- 

 poses of ventilation. 



When the weather became cold we banked 

 it well with manure; covered it nights and 

 cold days with the burlap straw beds ; hung 

 the door with an old carpet; and we had the 

 snuggest of places to pick Violets in on a 

 winter day. If the weather out doors were 

 hovering around zero, an oil stove warmed 

 the little house sufficiently to permit the 

 coverings being removed. And I not only 

 picked 6,000 Violets from the 150 plants it 

 contained but wintered over many a plant 

 that could get along with a minimum of 

 light and heat. 



From this practical Violet house, affording accommodation for 150 plants, a crop of 6,000 blooms is gathered during the winter 



