PLANNING AND THE CATALOGUES 21 



been anticipating spring, too, by cutting some 

 twigs off the great old forsythia bushes, which 

 after two or three days in the water-filled vases, 

 and in a dark place, and two weeks more in what- 

 ever sunshine we have — ^yet in the vases, of course 

 — are shaking their golden bells for us, just as 

 brightly as their outdoor sister twigs will do in 

 mid-April. It is a pleasant foretaste of the spring 

 feast of flowers, and easily obtained. 



Even in January the catalogues called to me, 

 and now I know I must settle down to conclusions, 

 so that orders may go to the seedsmen and the 

 plantsmen whose aid we invoke. This catalogue 

 lure is an old one, but it is a perennial surprise 

 that I should never acquire immunity to it. As 

 may without much difficulty be ascertained, I 

 print catalogues for a living, and thus I truly live 

 with them every work-day in the year. Just now 

 I am in thankfulness that the recurrent push to 

 have the seedsmen satisfied in January has been 

 met; yet I turn to the pages of these books, as 

 some of them are, with as much garden zest as if 

 I had not worried for months to get them ready. 

 It is, I suppose, a sort of automatic change of 

 personality that happens, when I cease to see the 

 catalogue as a printer and begin to gloat over its 

 offerings as a garden maker. 



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