leaves, possibly three. The following year perhaps you will have a 
real stem with two or three leaves branching off from it; and in the next 
year you begin to look for buds. 
Probably there will be a few on the strongest of your seedlings, 
but you will have disappointments to bear, for none of them are likely 
to mature; however, a bud on a plant one year means bloom the next, 
and you will already be counting the number of plants from which you 
will have your first bloom, in 1921. From that time on your joy is 
assured, if, as I assume, you have been planting seed every autumn; 
for every year brings its new surprises, and you will now begin to 
wonder why you did not start your sowing years earlier. Such joys 
as are yours every spring, how many years earlier might you not have 
had them? 
Your first plants to bloom are likely to be singles, probably pink 
singles; and you will think them the handsomest peony blooms you ever 
saw. Later on, as better things come along, you will grow sterner 
toward your firstlings, and within a year or two they will be on the 
dump heap. 
Three or four years after your first plants have reached the 
blooming stage you will have a few that you will watch with a new 
kind of interest. These are the really grand ones. If you have been 
very careful to sow only the highest quality of seed (not the five-cent 
kind I ) you should have among your seedlings, say, 10 per cent, of 
really fine kinds, which you will now keep under observation for sev- 
eral years, studying their habit and quality year after year. A few will 
disappoint you, and have to be thrown out, but others will grow more 
wonderful with every season. 
The final ordeal comes when you carry boxes of cut blooms of 
your best ones to a peony show, and stage them alongside the heroes 
and heroines of earlier times — Duchesse de Nemours, Eugene Ver- 
dier, Martin Cahuzac, Therese, and all the rest. Then if yours have 
the right quality you will see that even in such lofty company they can 
still hold up their heads, unashamed. 
A. P. Saunders, 
Secretary of American Peony Society. 
More suggestions for the true enthusiast who likes to begin at the 
beginning. 
Babltas from Seefc 
Save some seed from your best dahlias! 
When the leaves of the plants have been killed by frost, if the 
flowers have not been closely picked early in the season, there will be 
large, loose, dry pods that are easily gathered. 
