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OUR FLOWER-GARDEN. 
I will tell you of my success in the cultivation of 
plants. As it is my greatest delight, when I can 
possibly spare a few moments from my domestic 
pleasures I spend it in the garden among my pets. I 
have cultivated plants ever since I was ten years old, 
and I am now more delighted with my flowers than 
when I was a child. I find I learn something new 
every season as it regards the treatment of plants 
and shrubbery. I have a flower-garden sixty-two by 
two hundred feet. Ninety feet in front I use exclu¬ 
sively for flowers, the back part being used for shrub¬ 
bery and fruits. It has a southern exposure on the 
front, with an iron fence and a gate in the center, 
entering from the street into a walk three feet wide, 
which runs through the entire length of the garden. 
About eighty feet from the front gate there is a 
summer-house, which is entirely covered with vines 
—the Wisteria, Virginia or Silk Vine, Ampelopsis, 
Roses, Madeira, and Cinnamon Vines. The inside 
of this house is converted into a rockery, as it is very 
cool and shady. One side is used for the native 
Ferns and the other for exotics and Lycopodiums. 
It is built up two or three feet high with stone, and 
then filled in with leaf-mold and rich soil, in which 
we plant the Ferns and Lycopodiums. The latter 
grow beautifully. We often press specimens two 
feet long, which we use for decorating the walls in 
winter. The front of the garden is divided into six 
different parts by walks three feet wide. E ch part 
is divided into beds of various shapes, so as to form a 
circular bed in the center of each part, which bed is 
used every year for Verbenas. When the seed ripen, 
they drop, and come up the next spring, without 
planting, and produce a great many very beauiful 
varieties; and in this way I have very fine ones. 
When the plants have three or four leaves we add a 
little rich soil and stir the soil around the roots. I 
have used these beds for many years with great suc¬ 
cess in growing fine and handsome Verbenas. 1 
have tried several plants for bordering, but find noth¬ 
ing so good as the Dwarf Iris. The walks are all 
made of coal-ashes, which makes them very firm and 
prevents the grass from growing in them. I have 
one hundred and seventeen varieties of Rcses, in¬ 
cluding the Hybrid Perpetual, Bourbon Chinese, 
Teas, Noisette, Moss, Prairie, and many varieties of 
the June. It is beautiful beyond description to go 
into the garden in the months of May and June, to see 
the various colors and tints of the Rose. In the 
month of August I prune them. In the fall I have 
them mulched with well-rotted manure, and in 
the spring have it forked and spaded in; after which 
put about one pint of air-slacked lime three or four 
inches from the main stem, and fork it in so it will 
reach the roots. It is a great preventive from the 
bugs and worms. Early in the spring we rake all the 
leaves and trash from the beds and have it thrown 
into an obscure corner of the garden for a compost- 
heap, which supplies us with leaf-mold. We apply 
well-rotted manure to all the beds before spading. 
This makes the plants very thrifty. 
On each side of the front gate there is a bed of 
Pansies. In the center of each there is a large bunch 
of Lemon Lily. My Pansy beds have been a mass 
of bloom ever since the first of May, and now (snow 
on the ground) would afford several bouquets. I use 
liquid manure very freely all summer, and find it 
improves the color and size of the flowers, as a great 
many measure five inches in circumference and are 
of the most beautiful and brilliant colors. Early in 
May I take all my plants from the house to the gar¬ 
den (with the exception of a very few, such as the 
Fuchsia, Euchanis Amazonica, and Night blooming 
Cereus, which have bloomed beautifully in the house) 
and put them in beds, each class to itself, and culti¬ 
vate them accordingly. I use a rich soil for my Ger¬ 
anium beds and keep them well cultivated. My 
neighbors often ask me where I get my soil to make 
my plants bloom so finely. I tell them it is the good 
care they get. I use soap-suds once a week on my 
rose beds and keep the buds picked off, so that I can 
have them in bloom in winter, which they are doing; 
snd upon my beds of Phlox, Pinks, Asters, Petunias, 
Plumbago, Ivies, Gladiolus, Mignonette, Sweet WiL 
liam, Tuberoses, and various Lily beds I use noth¬ 
ing, but keep the soil well stirred once a week with 
my trowel and fork. I have very fine Oleanders— 
crimson, pink, and white—eight or ten feet high, 
which are very great ornaments to the garden and 
attract the attention of every one that passes by. X 
treat them to a pail of weak manure-water every 
week. The Bananas I gave the same treatment, and 
they grew very rapidly. I imagine such treatment 
suits them very well, as one grew to the astonishing 
hight of eight feet and had leaves measuring five feet 
and two inches in width in five months. On my 
Crape Myrtle I used soil from the pig-pen to great 
advantage, as it bloomed all summer very prefusely. 
I set my English Ivy out in June, and when I took it 
to the house in October it had grown astonishingly. 
One branch had grown seven feet and several others 
had grown five. I grew it entirely in the shade and 
sprinkled it once a day. My Grasses for winter bou¬ 
quets excelled all our expectations. The Erianthus 
Pravennce grew twelve feet high and had forty hand- 
seme plumes—enough for myself and a few of my 
friends for winter. These were in one small clump. 
Rose Geranium. 
FLOWERS, GREENHOUSES, BAY WINDOWS, 
Etc. 
Writing from the Empire State of the Sunny 
South, as I do, where perpetual summer is supposed 
to reign, my Northern friends, who are snow-bound, 
and whose pleasures of the garden are limited to a 
few house-plants, will expect to hear of a variety of 
garden treasures from this more fortunate clime. 
And I will not disappoint them. 
Though only the first weeks in January, we have 
blooming abundantly in the garden Camellias, Hya¬ 
cinths, Narcissus, and the invaluable, profuse bloom¬ 
ing little garden favorite, the modest Blue Violet. 
I have an extensive garden, comprising twelve large 
flower-beds, and each one has a bordering of Violels. 
Frequently the whole air is laden with their fragrant 
yet delicate perfume. 
My greenhouse, too, is an inexhaustible source of 
entertainment and pleasure. I have over two hun¬ 
dred plants. Many varieties of Geranium already bud¬ 
ding for the early spring blooming, while the scented 
varieties are indispensable for bouquets, for which 
the winter-blooming Begonias, Bouvardias, Primroses, 
Salvias, and the Coral Berries give me abundant 
materials. The rapid-growing Parlor or German Ivy 
makes a pretty garland around the entire greenhouse, 
occasionally straying from its course and entwining it 
self lovingly around the plants; while Ferns, Palms, 
and the stately Calla Lily add their tropical beauty to 
the whole. 
Now a word about bay windows. I think I would 
give them the preference over greenhouses, or, indeed, 
any other convenience for keeping house-plants, be¬ 
cause it enables one to have the constant companion¬ 
ship of their flowers, and that is what we need, what 
we, desire, and the reason why we give ourselves so 
much trouble for their cultivation. We need tbeir 
cheering influence, surrounding us constantly, as a 
bright oasis in the long, dreary desert of winter. Espe¬ 
cially do we need it in bad weather, rainy days, when 
we are prisoners to the house. The eye, weary with 
the dismal prospect outside, has but to turn and feast 
itself on the incomparable beauties which our fore¬ 
thought has provided as a relief against this dreary 
time, and immediately everything becomes as bright, 
as cheerful, and as hopeful as in spring-time. 
It may be urged against bay windows that the 
flowers cannot be watered abundantly; cannot be 
showered with a total disregard to carpets, etc., as 
in a greenhouse. I would never have the floor of a 
bay window covered. Have it painted, so that the 
boards will be impervious to water, and it will be 
much more satisfactory. The plants will not starve 
from insufficient watering. 
We cannot be too grateful to the obliging editor of 
The Cabinet for the space he gives us in his delight¬ 
ful paper to converse on the ever new and attractive 
subject of flowers. 
I have for three years entertained The Cabinet as 
an inestimably delightful visitor, and now, regarding 
it as so perfectly indispensable, have constituted my¬ 
self a life subscriber. 
Georgia. 
ABOUT THE CACTUSES. 
The Cacti possess the stiff form of the Aloe. 
Their fleshy stems exhibit bunches of hair and thorns, 
instead of leaves. The Torch Cactus rises to the 
hight of fifty or more feet, generally branchless, 
sometimes throwing out arms like a candelabra, while 
other kinds creep like ropes along the ground or 
hang snake like from the trees. The Opuntiss are 
without symmetry, constructed of thick, flat joints, 
springing one from another; while the melon shaped 
Echinocacti, longitudinally ribbed or covered with 
warts, remain attached to the soil. These plants vary 
astonishingly in size. One species, which grows in 
Mexico, attains several feet high and a yard in diam¬ 
eter and often weighs nearly two hundred pounds; 
while another dwarf Cactus is so small and slightly 
rooted that a dog passing over it may with his toes 
detach it from the soil. The splendid colors of the 
Cactus flowers are in vivid contrast with the un¬ 
gainly, unsightly stems. 
So, dear reader, we often notice pure, holy 
thoughts and rare gifts and talents outspringing 
from an ill-favored body. 
The Cactus family prefer the arid sands, the 
naked plains, where the tropical sun pours his vertical 
rays. They are a strange, wonderful feature of the 
barren desert. 
It is said that none of these plants existed in the 
Old World previously to the discovery of America. 
Be that as it may, they now have a wide range of 
growth. 
The Nopal (Cactus opuntia) skirts the Mediterra¬ 
nean, along with the American Agave, and from the 
coasts has penetrated far into the interior of Africa, 
everywhere showing conspicuously among the prim¬ 
itive vegetation of the land. Although chiefly trop¬ 
ical, the Cactuses have a perpendicular range peculiar 
to their species. From the low sand-bars of the coasts 
of Peru and Bi livia they ascend, over ridges and 
through valleys, to the high peaks of the Andes. 
Whether these wonderful plants hang dizzily over 
the mountain c iffs or blossom in the sandy desert 
wastes, they teach us still another lesson of Divine 
economy in fitting everything to its place; and an 
appreciative admirer of trees, shrubs, and flowers 
has a rich strata of poetic and artistic life underlying 
the uncongenial surroundings of every-day existence. 
M. J. Cummings. 
