Finally after the garden is fertilized with basic slag, we put our 
Delphiniums to sleep with a good covering of rotted manure and 
then can do nothing more for them but dream all winter of those 
great blue spikes that seem climbing to the skies in our little Paradise. 
Helen S. Clarkson, 
Lenox Garden Club. 
The Sand Dunes of Lake Michigan 
In what I have read of the Dunes of Indiana such emphasis is 
always laid on the flora, that I would like to say a word for the other 
great beauties, the landscape and scenic effects. 
A two hours' motor ride from Chicago; and by the way, the roads 
are the best that ever laid out-doors; and you find yourself on the most 
rugged, wild and barren hill imaginable. Sand everywhere, a few 
giant trees dead, and bare of small branches, only the gaunt trunks 
and sturdiest arms left, polished by the blowing sand to the silvery 
sheen of drift-wood. Waves and ripples of sand, an oasis of gray 
beach-grass, and more sand, a mound piling higher and higher, finally 
to slip of its own weight into the valley beyond, — the undaunted, 
inexorable march of the traveling dune. 
You look down at Lake Michigan, gray and leaden, or turquoise 
and emerald, a glassy mirror, or a restless sea. If your gods have been 
good, and your day is hung with fleecy clouds in a bright blue sky, you 
turn from the lake to the fairest landscape you could hope to see. 
Hills slipping off to the horizon, broad plains with islands of forest set in 
waving meadows, and sunlight and shadow dancing over the varying 
beauty of the view until it seems there must be days instead of hours 
between you and the flat city. 
Go down the hill, and you are in a jungle of sycamore and tulip- 
trees, tall spires reaching to the very top of the hills. If you are 
lucky, you will find a clump of Florida dogwood blooming near the 
half open, pale yellow tulip buds. Ferns in endless variety, and lovely 
flowers carpet the jungle. Truly two plants have grown where there 
seemed only room for one. 
Farther on the pines are master, and soft walks lead to the more 
open spaces where it seems as though nature had hunted the whole 
country over to find just the flower that would best set off a rolling 
hill or gentle swale. There are literally carpets of sand violets and 
lupines, masses of columbine, lady-slippers, cress and phlox, the pink 
not the blue. All the lovely things, in fact, that will not grow for us. 
A day at the Dunes is an adventure, but you must go with the 
