THE FIRST PLANTING 
19 
bound some green paper muslin around the outside 
of the trays after they had been placed in the sunny 
library window, and we all quite ceased to think 
that they were only ugly soap boxes filled with dead- 
looking seeds. We already imagined the little 
plants shooting up through the earth. 
Joseph said it was too bad to have made three 
boxes and three glass covers for but three kinds of 
flowers. I told him, however, that I would rather 
have a good many flowers of one kind early in the 
year, than to have only a few later of a great many 
kinds. 
Little Joseph knew as I did that It was not neces- 
sary to plant the baby’s breath, the ten-weeks stocks 
or the cardinal-flowers Indoors. We could have 
waited and sown them In the open when the frost 
had left the ground. But Little Joseph’s fingers and 
mine also were tingling to plant something. We 
could not wait with patience until the farmers began 
to plough. The window-boxes made us feel that 
some things were already started. In fact, they 
were our first experiments. Joseph was pleased 
besides to think that he had done something which 
was not mentioned in “An Ambitious Boy’s Gar- 
den.” That boy had not a bit of glass on his place 
as large as a camera plate. But then this was not 
the first year that he had had a garden. 
The closet that Little Joseph uses for his tools, 
seeds and spraying outfit is in the hall opening on 
the south veranda. It Is a convenient place, since, 
