GARDENING FOR LITTLE GIRLS 



broken twigs or branches, to hold the stems and 

 keep the flowers in position without crowding. 

 Breaking up a few ferns to illustrate, he dropped 

 them in a cut glass dish, and then stuck in a dozen 

 stalks of pale pink primroses. The result was an 

 inexpensive table decoration as beautiful as any 

 costly display of roses. Personally, I did not ap- 

 prove of his ferns, as they would very quickly de- 

 cay in the water : but as a child I had learned from 

 my grandmother his better idea of half-filling the 

 dish with clean sand. It holds the stems exactly 

 as placed, and can be entirely hidden by the foliage. 



Roses, the gentleman also told us, draw up water 

 above the surface only one-half the length of the 

 stem in the water, and consequently should not ex- 

 tend more than that height above the water, — else 

 the forcing power*' (as it is called) will not carry 

 it far enough to sustain the flowers at the end of 

 the stems, (This may account for my own success 

 in keeping roses often for a week, for I usually take 

 them out of the water, lay them in a wet box or 

 paper, and place them flat in the ice-box over night 

 so the water in the stems can flow to the extreme 

 end.) He also said they should never be crowded 

 together, but rather be separated as the primroses 

 were. Both the leaves and the thorns under water 

 should be removed, as the leaves quickly foul the 



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