February, 1909 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
one of the most wholesome; delicious in the 
house as it is delightful in the bed. You can 
not get too many of them. I shall add pansies, 
although they will give you some trouble and 
teach you a lot of lessons. Planted out from 
your hotbeds very early in the spring they will 
give their best flowers when it is quite cold 
weather; then they will die down in the heat 
of the summer, and you must have another lot 
ready to set out for autumn blooming. There 
are three of the annuals that I grow scattered 
about my grounds almost anywhere. Get the 
Drummond phlox and coreopsis and the an- 
nual larkspur into your grounds, and see that 
they are not all hoed up, and you will get a 
splendid chance for brilliant bouquets. The 
larkspurs are blue and white, the coreopsis 
yellow, and Drummond phlox of all shades. 
Mignonnette will generally reappear in the 
same way. Bachelors’ button is a fine old- 
fashioned thing and I think you can afford 
to give it room. 
(6) One or more flowers should be selected 
each year for a hobby. I found great satis- 
faction in growing dahlias for several years. 
I originated a fine set of seedlings of the cactus 
order, before they became popular. ‘There is 
no limit to the sporting of this flower from 
seed. Buy a half dozen of the choicest show 
doubles; give these rich, deep garden soil, with 
plenty of water and sunshine, and you will 
get splendid seed for experiments. The dahlia 
makes considerable trouble, because it has to be 
dug for winter. Dig on a dry day, dry off 
the bulbs under a shed for a week, then store 
in a dry cellar that will not freeze. The 
gladiolus has been a hobby of mine from the 
time the gandavensis had its first evolution. 
You can indulge in a thousand bulbs or bulb- 
lets, or half that number, and sow them in a 
trench of good soil three inches deep. If you 
get the ramosus sorts they will endure the 
coldest winters, and multiply without care— 
only you will have to thin them out occasion- 
ally. I tried seedlings also and had fine suc- 
cess. A third hobby to indulge in from time 
to time should be hollyhocks. “These can be 
planted along the edge of your corn field. In 
fact, if you get them well established they 
will sow themselves, and then can be hoed out 
where not wanted. I do not know anything 
finer than an avenue of hollyhocks running 
along through your fruit garden, or a border 
for your vegetable garden. “The old-fashioned 
singles are better than the new-fangled doubles 
any day, but try both. I am inclined to add 
one more to this list of hobbies, although the 
carnations do make considerable work. “They 
must be carefully covered in the winter with 
stuff that will not rot them, or they must be 
dug up and stored in a light room and oc- 
casionally watered. The clove carnation is 
about as good, and sweeter, and hardy. 
I do not advise anyone to do much in the 
way of bedding plants, but if big show is 
wanted a mass of geraniums (doubles are 
best) will do it quickly. For effect at a dis- 
tance cannas beat everything. In Florida I 
have a wild flower called the Cherokee bean 
that makes the grandest masses of crimson 
scarlet that I ever saw. It blossoms from the 
first of January well into the middle of May. 
A good substitute for this in the North is the 
Oriental poppy, a magnificent perennial that 
cpens its flowers seven or eight inches broad 
through the month of May. After blooming 
it soon dies down and is out of sight. It is a 
very good plant to use in a chrysanthemum 
bed or a canna bed, for early display. If you 
are of a quiet disposition and want something 
to fall in love with, grow verbenas. But I am 
surely running over my limits in naming some 
things that the home maker must not start out 
with. All these hobbies can come in as the 
(Continued on page xiv) 
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