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Work to be^done in the Garden . 
The best day for wheeling this would be a clear 
hard frost ; but then, unluckily, that does not do 
for spreading soil on the beds, for if the soil under- 
neath is hard frozen when you cover it up, the 
frost stays in the ground and chills your plants, 
and does a great deal of harm. 
If then you can find a fine dry day when there 
is no frost you can go to work nicely; or you may 
take advantage of frosty weather to wheel down 
your soil, and then leave it heaped till weather 
comes for spreading it. 
Your Rose-trees now will require attention, and 
here you must mind what you are about. You 
know those long tall shoots which Rose-trees send 
up so often ? If these grow too numerous, you 
get all shoots and no Roses. The thing to do 
is therefore to cut every other one down nearly to 
the root, and greatly to shorten all. Don’t, you 
know, be always cutting your Roses, but in Febru- 
ary generally you may shorten their branches a 
good deal with advantage. You should take care 
to cut sloping upwards, and just above a bud — I 
don’t mean a flower-bud, but a bud where leaves 
are about to come, so that you will not have an 
untidy piece of bare stem sticking up. This is a 
general rule in all kinds of pruning. You may 
