all, square back yard one of whose bounds was the
back fence of the house. On a second side was a low, mossy,
picturesquely old wing-building set at right angles to the larger house,
its doors and windows letting into the yard. A third boundary was the
side of one well weathered barn and the back of another, with a scanty
glimpse between them of meadows stretching down to the Connecticut
River. The fourth was an open fence marking off a field of riotous
weeds. When the tenant mistress of this unpromising spot began to occupy
it the yard and alley were a free range for the poultry of the
neighborhood, and its only greenery was two or three haphazard patches
of weedy turf. One-fourth of the ground, in the angle made by the open
fence and one of the barns, had been a hen-yard and was still inclosed
within a high wire-netting; but outside that space every plant she set
out had to be protected from the grubbing fowls by four stakes driven
down with a hammer. Three years afterward she bore off our capital prize
in a competition of one hundred gardens. Let me tell what the judges
found.

[Illustration: "Beauty can be called into life about the most
unpretentious domicile."

One of a great number of competing cottages whose gardens are handsomer
in the rear and out of sight than on the street-front, though well kept
there also.]

[Illustration: "Those who pay no one to dig, plant or prune for them."

The aged owner of this place has hired no help for twenty years. Behind
her honey-locust hedge a highly kept and handsome flower and shrubbery
garden fills the whole house lot. She is a capital prize-winner.]

Out in the street, at the off side of the alley-gate, between a rude
fence and an electric-railway siding, in about as much space as would
give standing room to one horse and cart, bloomed--not by right of
lease, but by permission of the railway company--a wealth of annual
flowers, the lowest (pansies and such like) at the outer edge, the
tallest against the unsightly fence. This was the prelude. In the alley
the fence was clothed with vines; the windows--of which there were
two--were decked with boxes of plumbago--pink, violet, white and blue,
and of lady-ferns and maiden-hair. The back yard was a soft, smooth turf
wherever there were not flowers. Along the back doors and windows of the
house and the low-roofed wing a rough arbor was covered with a vine
whose countless blossoms scented the air and feasted the bees, whil