THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 
phlox, will discover the utmost art in draining its water 
toward the thick roots of its favorite, give it sun and 
shadow, sweat and labor for it. If you snatch the 
hateful progeny from its arms, leave only the slightest 
portion of root behind, and that patient, devoted garden 
will nurse the battered and wounded thing back again 
to life and health, to flaunt triumphantly in bed and 
border. 
Foiled of its propensities for bugs and weeds, a gar¬ 
den has other ways of annoying you. Sometimes it 
manifests what looks like the healthiest interest in de¬ 
veloping whatsoever plants you give it to the lustiest 
growth imaginable; but it confines this growth to leaf 
and branch, allowing not so much as one tiny floweret 
to appear. At other times it turns its attention to 
frustrating your color schemes, changing everything 
magenta, or bursting out in screaming yellow where 
you had planned a heavenly harmony of blues. 
Again, refusing to grow grass in the circle around the 
sun-dial, it assiduously struggles to bring it up in clumps 
and patches in the paths. Occasionally, a garden will 
become addicted to a spindly habit. Plant what you 
will, everything shoots up on long, sickly stems, with 
wads of leaf and pale flowers high in the air. Or pos¬ 
sibly it will take a contrary direction, and shrubs that 
ought to bear up bravely will lie lankly on the ground, 
while even sunflowers and hollyhocks show short and 
squat of limb. 
