272 
The Garden Magazine, January, 1924 
seedlings and say which shall be taken and which be left? 1 
shut my eyes tight and with a little prayer for forgiveness, I 
snatch the seedlings out in handfuls, wildly throwing them away 
where I shall not have to see their wilted remains. 
When one loves a garden one has forever put ennui aside. It 
may appear a peaceful spot; it may hold surcease from worldly 
cares and mental irritation, but be not deceived into thinking 
that time in the garden passes slowly or that life there is ever 
humdrum. On the contrary, the garden teems with excite¬ 
ment. It is, as Tomlinson says of the South Seas, “ monotonous 
with adventures.” There are the dangers, frost and blight, 
and marauding dogs and cats, upon which 1 have not the heart 
or time to dwell, and there are the high days which make garden¬ 
ing the joyful pastime that it is. There is the day in spring when 
the first Hepatica awakes and opens its ingenuous eye. Every 
year there must be the first time for the unfolding of the delicate 
Fern fronds, and what is so adorably new as a downy Fern 
youngling? There is the time in June—not every June but the 
once-in-a-while June—when the Peonies bloom late and the 
Roses bloom early, and the splendor of the two beautiful flowers 
in their generous, rich beauty is almost too great to bear, and 
we say to ourselves that surely now the fulness of our cup 
runneth over. 
There is the time late in June when the day we dreamed of 
through the long winter comes, the day when the stately Del¬ 
phiniums are at their best; when the tall spikes in their range 
of blues—the elatum with its hungry little “bee” in each blos¬ 
som—stand so fine and beautiful against the green of the hedge 
behind them. What a joyous day it was when the Calycanthus, 
tended and coaxed for so many years, condescended to bloom 
and one sniffed the fruity fragrance with long, long thoughts 
backward to the days when dear old ladies in gray and lavender 
crushed the brown blossoms for their scent in delicately thin 
handkerchiefs. 
There is the day on which the nestful of young wrens, or 
robins, or thrushes makes its first appearance on the lawn in 
charge of nervous parents and is the cause for alarms and anxious 
watching for cats and squirrels. There is the foolish old toad 
who grows restless and wanders away from his home near the 
refrigerator drain pipe where he has lived for so many years, 
to fall in, literally, with the gilded youth of the goldfish 
pond; snails, grasshoppers, humming-birds, strange bugs in 
bright hues; great, magisterial black and yellow spiders sitting 
arrogantly in their gossamer homes; colorful and interesting as a 
Bagdad street for those with eyes for the beauty of little things 
in every day. 
l he dusk of summer nights when soft dews release the fra¬ 
grance of Tuberose, Mignonette, and Nicotiana, and when moon¬ 
light makes unreal and romantic the accustomed scene of the 
commonplace morning; sweet and full of charm in the little gar¬ 
den as in the greatest of them if some one cares enough to make 
it so. 
Children brought up in touch with the soul of a garden, with 
its birds, bees, and butterflies, seem to grow up a little different 
from children deprived of such interests. The boy who builds 
bird houses and becomes familiar with the life and ways of their 
feathered occupants will not be found robbing birds’ nests or 
killing birds. It takes such a short time to transform the or¬ 
dinary “ back yard ” into a charming flower garden that any one 
with a love for flowers may successfully attempt the change 
and no space is too limited for some attempt at gardening. 
Perennials need little care. Color effects take care of them¬ 
selves; colors which in millinery would put one’s teeth on edge 
live amicably side by side in garden beds, thanks to nature’s 
wise selection of greens and browns for backgrounds. Not the 
least delightful of gardens are the friendly little ones, those 
opened into by kitchen and dining room windows and doors; 
where the hedge incloses a safe playground for the children and 
where the busy housekeeper may take much of the sewing and 
preparation of food to do it out-of-doors, sitting on a comfort¬ 
able seat placed conveniently near the kitchen door. 
What joy is to be found in the smallest and humblest of gar¬ 
dens if only the heart of a llower lover is there! How happy 
they should be to whom May ist means, not moving to an¬ 
other apartment, but the time for gathering the first spring 
blossoms for May baskets to set upon the doorsteps of neigh¬ 
bors and friends. All summer the gorgeous pageant goes 
by, from the earliest Crocus and Jonquil to the last Phlox and 
Aster. Each year the old miracles are being performed over 
and over! 
NOW'S THE TIME FOR PRUNING APPLE TREES 
T HE pruning of Apple trees in winter is advocated by the 
New York Agricultural Experiment Station because the 
operation can be more carefully and easily performed at this 
season of the year, when there is no foliage to prevent the 
gardener from seeing at a glance just which branches should be 
removed. Moreover, as soon as the trees commence to bear it 
is always difficult to take out wood which should perhaps be 
eliminated, because of the crop of fruit. 
Baldwin, Boiken, Esopus, Hubbardston, McIntosh, Spy, and 
Greening have been used in experiments on summer and winter 
pruning. In regard to these tests the Station workers say: 
“There are no differences to be noted in the size 
or shape of the trees. All are equally good, 
stocky, stout trees with large heads and typical 
of the variety in question. The general 
shape and size of the tops of both summer- 
and winter-pruned trees is the same. Prun¬ 
ing at different periods in the year, therefore, seems not to have 
affected the growth, shape, or character of the trees in anyrespect. 
“Summer pruning of Apples has been more difficult to per¬ 
form for the last three years than heretofore, due to the fact 
that the Apple crop has been sufficient to hinder the cutting 
or removal of certain branches which, had there been no fruit, 
would have been removed. Up until the time of the rather 
heavy crop of 1920 , summer-pruning was performed with com¬ 
paratively little effort and fully as much wood was removed as 
from the winter-pruned trees. 
“ In view of the results obtained in our experiments, the fruit 
grower may be assured that either practice of 
pruning will prove satisfactory while the trees 
are young, but that for the sake of conve¬ 
nience he may well adhere to the usual 
plan of winter-pruning when the frame¬ 
work of the tree is entirely visible.” 
