| FOR BOTH AMATEUR AND PROFESSIONAL I 
! GROWERS OF THE GLADIOLUS, DAHLIA, IRIS, ETC. [ 
| PUBLISHED MONTHLY ON THE FIRST OF THE ! 
1 MONTH BY MADISON COOPER, CALCIUM, N. Y. j 
Our Garden in Winter. 
[Written express/v for ' The Flower drawer.] 
By Mrs. Gertrude Ellis Skinner. 
There are gardens below. 
Under the snow ; 
Crocus, Tulips in gay little row 
Hyacinths, Daffodils, Scillas a blow — 
Motley, merry and eager to show 
Under the snow. 
Pansy beds out where the high drifts have blown 
Daisies are there where icicles are shown 
Lilies of splendor— glory of rose 
Out where a garden of snow flowers grow 
Under the snow. 
O UR GARDEN in winter is a 
place of rest, a place of beauty 
and a place of wonder. It is 
the most restful place we know of. 
It’s sound asleep and nothing but 
dynamite can break the bed in 
which it slumbers. It is resting to 
the depth of eight feet. (This is 
merely an estimate for being a 
somnambulist ourself we are not 
going about in January to disturb 
the sleep of nature.) The tools 
with which we fret the plants and 
harrow the ground in summer are 
resting and we have a restful feeling 
in seeing them at rest. We know 
that in six weeks’ time they will 
give us a restless feeling but we 
feel in tune with nature just now. 
Down in that adamantine earth 
are slumbering the bulbs that will 
give us a great joy in the spring 
time — for the catalogues have 
promised us that joy. There are 
the crocuses that will bloom like 
the flowers of the fields of Ardath ; 
there are Daffodils that will turn 
our beds into ribbons of greater 
auriferous splendor than the famed 
Field of the Cloth of Gold, and 
Darwin Tulips with bowls as pure 
as that of the Holy Grail. Down 
in that frost riven ground are seeds 
of the Hollyhock, the Phlox and 
the Columbine. Nature has sown 
them with a prodigal hand. Na- 
ture is always at the job of sowing. 
Her seeding time seems never 
over. Even in January we see 
the tumble weed or the Russian 
thistle hurtling along on top of the 
snow crust, scattering its seed as it 
travels. Late in February we see the 
birch tree seed on the ermine covering 
in the woods. In sunny days in March 
the hard leones of some of the pines 
GLADIOLUS — MRS. O. W. HALLADAY. 
[For description see page 26.] 
pop open and shoot their tiny seed into 
the yet wintry air. Down in the earth 
of our'garden, nature has planted seeds 
of the “pusley,” smart weed, rag weed 
and all those other weeds that go to 
make up so much of Gray’s Botany. 
Perhaps they are not all there, but 
when we were hoeing last August 
we recall seeing most of them. It 
is) a strange thing about our gar- 
den. For twenty years we have 
hoed out every weed and there 
were just as many there at the last 
hoeing in September as there were 
two decades ago. That ground 
seems to just create weed seeds. 
But there are other things sleeping 
there besides seeds. There are 
cut worms that are dreaming of 
having on their spring breakfast 
table, plants that will cost us fifteen 
cents each. Then there are the 
lice that will hold as many conven- 
tions as there are roots to the 
Asters ; there are ants that will 
sport on the Peony blooms, run- 
ning in and out as though we 
raised the flowers for their benefit ; 
the wild cucumber bug that eats 
the bloom of the Gladiolus ; the 
Rose beetle and as many other va- 
rieties as we will have plants. 
There will be bugs for every plant 
except the weeds. O for a weed 
eating bug! One that will be a 
cross between the fire fly and the 
Aster beetle so it can eat at night 
as well as day. * * * * Seeds, 
roots and bugs and worms are all 
down there in our garden awaiting 
the trumpet that shall sound the 
resurrection of nature. 
But the mystery of it all. The 
life that is there in that seeming 
death. The big, juicy bulbs of the 
Lilies enfolding marvelous beauty 
and perfume ; the seed, the embryo 
of root, stem, leaf, flower and seed. 
The whole gamut of life in a 
microscopic case. Man takes a 
seed and he studies it under his 
microscope. He analyzes it and 
finds it is of the elements of the 
earth. He seeks for the mysterious 
spark "^called life and confronts the In- 
[ Concluded on page 36. ] 
