"WOODRIDGE, _April_ 30.
"MY DEAR MRS. EVAN,

"I am going into gardening in earnest this spring, and I want you and
Aunt Lavinia to tell me things,--things that you have done yourselves
and succeeded or failed in. Especially about the failures. It is a great
mistake for garden books and papers to insist that there is no such word
in horticulture as fail, that every flower bed can be kept in full
flower six months of the year, in addition to listing things that will
bloom outdoors in winter in the Middle States, and give all floral
measurements as if seen through a telephoto lens. It makes one feel the
exceptional fool. It's discouraging and not stimulating in the least.
Doesn't even nature meet with disaster once in a while as if by way of
encouragement to us? And doesn't nature's garden have on and off
seasons? So why shouldn't ours?

"There is a quantity of _Garden Goozle_ going about nowadays that is as
unbelievable, and quite as bad for the constitution and pocket, as the
guarantees of patent medicines. No, _Garden Goozle_ is not my word, you
must understand; it was invented by a clever professor of agriculture,
whom Bart met not long ago, and we loved the word so much that we have
adopted it. The mental quality of _Garden Goozle_ seems to be compounded
of summer squash and milkweed milk, and it would be quite harmless were
it not for the strong catbriers grafted in the mass for impaling the
purses of the trusting.

"Ah, if we only lived a little nearer together, near enough to talk over
the garden fence! It seems cruel to ask you to write answers to all my
questions, but after listing the hardy plants I want for putting the
garden on a consistent old-time footing, I find the amount runs quite to
the impossible three figures, aside from everything else we need, so
I've decided on beginning with a seed bed, and I want to know before we
locate the new asparagus bed how much ground I shall need for a seed
bed, what and how to plant, and everything else!

"I like all the hardy things you have, especially those that are mice,
lice, and water proof! If you will send me ever so rough a list, I
shall be grateful. Would I better begin at once or wait until July or
August, as some of the catalogues suggest?

"Bart has just come in and evidently has something on his mind of which
he wishes to relieve himself via speech.

"Your little sister of the garden,