You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self- 
confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope; as old as your despair. 
So long as your heart is attuned to receive messages of beauty, hope, cheer, 
courage, grandeur and strength from nature, from men and from the Infinite, you 
are young. 
You are still young when you arise in the morning, joyfully anxious to accomplish 
something, to give something to the world about you, to serve. 
But when the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism infiltrate your soul, 
then you have become old indeed and probably useless as well. 
My apologies are due to the unknown author of the above. I cannot use quotation 
marks as I have changed some portions to better fit my own ideas and my own way 
of expressing them, but with no claim of improvement. 
Now, we should talk a little about Gardening and Gardeners. There are two kinds 
of gardeners. Most of us are gardeners principally because we love plants and especially 
flowers. Therefore we grow them. But there are a few whose primary motive is to 
collect. Both motives are good but the love of flowers (or plants) should be in the 
ascendancy. 
The kind who most of all loves flowers, likes to give flowers. He is always giving 
them to others. The purely collecting sort of gardener always wants to have more than 
any one else. He is not anxious to share his own but he will beg them from you. 
When he visits a garden, he may be inclined to add to his collection in a way that 
is not orthodox. He will sometimes bear watching. But not always. Even the average 
collector is honest. It is just a few who will acquire the leaf cuttings of your African 
Violets if you turn your back, or your prized seed pod. 
Let us find our pleasure in growing fine flowers and in sharing them with others. 
Gardening is good exercise for the body, the mind and even for the soul. 
Our interest is not merely to sell you plants. We do not want to sell a single item 
to any one who is unlikely to be able to derive benefit from it. Naturally we do need 
a large volume of sales in order to remain in business. But we do not want this for 
the mere profit. 
In order to serve you better we would like to point out a few facts and a few of 
our items. Note please that we are lowering many prices. Especially note our prices 
of Anthuriums which are much reduced. Only the few plants or bulbs that we must 
buy and pay a higher price for are up a little. In many cases we have paid more but 
sell at the same price. Books and Supplies are not advanced in this catalog but they 
have been advanced in recent years as a result of the increased cost of labor and 
materials. 
One of the oldest and most satisfactory bulbs for pots or for the outside garden 
in mild climates is the Amaryllis. Our grandmothers grew them and their grandmothers 
before them and often the grandfathers. But they did not grow the modern types. The 
world makes progress and modern Amaryllis are much finer than those of even 50 
years ago.. 
Prominent in the breeding of plants is the famous wholesale nursery of Howard 
and Smith, of California. We are proud to offer their Amaryllis under our name of 
Select Strains. Only a few from other sources have been included under this classification 
and a few of them are our own seedlings produced by crossing Howard and Smith’s 
with other strains, including imported Dutch Amaryllis. Our prices remain the: same 
but our profits are a little less. 
By spring we expect to list a few of the Royal Dutch Strain, the very best from 
Holland. If the Dutch Amaryllis are dug too early in order to compete with American 
grown bulbs for fall sales we are inclined to fear that results may be unfavorable. We 
have tried it a couple of times. 
We therefore decided to wait for late dug bulbs and to list them in the spring. 
We have imported a few thousand Dutch Amaryllis at various times. We have had the 
iB 
