VI 
WINTER 
i73 
nice little holes and corners for the ferns 
among the stones and roots, and fill them up 
with the good earth. There are numbers of 
common ferns you might try to grow. The 
“Male fern” and the “Lady fern” polypody, 
harts’-tongue, hard fern or blechnum, spleen- 
wort and ceterach, oak and beech, and among 
the rarer ones, the holly and ostrich feather 
ferns, and green spleenwort, Asplenium viridi , 
that has a green instead of a black “back 
bone” up each frond, and one of the bladder ferns, 
Cystopteris fragilis. A very fine one is the royal 
fern Osnmnda regalis, but it requires water. A 
pretty one, easy to grow and uncommon, is the 
American maiden hair Adiantum pedatum. 
When there is no special work to be done 
among the plants, and all leaves are removed 
and delicate treasures protected, there is fre¬ 
quently an interval which could profitably be 
devoted to making a garden-seat or some sort 
of little tool or summer-house. If children can 
get some strong pieces of wood for the four 
legs, and a board for the seat, they can very 
often manage to collect bits of wood and find 
sufficient material to make a rustic back and 
arms to it; or if the sticks are strong enough, 
they can even manufacture the seat itself out 
of the rustic pieces twisted and nailed together. 
A more ambitious work would be a tool or 
