y the foot, there is no excuse for the lack of seed beds for
both hardy and annual flowers (though these latter belong to another
record), in addition to space for cuttings of shrubs, hardy roses, and
other woody things that may be thus rooted.

If there is a bit of land that has been used for a vegetable garden and
is not wholly worn out, so much the better. The best seed bed I have
ever seen belongs to Jane Crandon at the Jenks-Smith place on the
Bluffs. It was an old asparagus bed belonging to the farm, thoroughly
well drained and fertilized, but the original crop had grown thin and
spindling from being neglected and allowed to drop its seed.

In the birth of this bed the wind and sun, as in all happy gardens, had
been duly consulted, and the wind promised to keep well behind a thick
wall of hemlocks that bounded it on the north and east whenever he was
in a cruel mood. The sun, casting his rays about to get the points of
compass, promised that he would fix his eye upon the bed as soon as he
had bathed his face in mist on rising and turned the corner of the
house, and then, after watching it until past noon, turn his back, so no
wonder that the bed throve.

Any well-located bit of fairly good ground can be made into a hardy seed
bed, provided only that it is not where frozen water covers it in
winter, or in the way of the wind, coming through a cut or sweeping
over the brow of a hill, for flowers are like birds in this
respect,--they can endure cold and many other hardships, but they quail
before the blight of wind.

For all gardens of ordinary size a bit of ground ten feet by thirty feet
will be sufficient. If the earth is heavy loam and inclined to cake or
mould, add a little sifted sand and a thin sprinkling of either nitrate
of soda or one of the "complete" commercial manures. Barn-yard manure,
unless very well rotted and thoroughly worked under, is apt to develop
fungi destructive to seedlings. This will be sufficient preparation if
the soil is in average condition; but if the earth is old and worn out,
it must be either sub-soiled or dug and enriched with barnyard (not
stable) manure to the depth of a foot, or more if yellow loam is not met
below that depth.

If the bed is on a slight slope, so much the better. Dig a shallow
trench of six or eight inches around it to carry off the wash. An abrupt
hillside is a poor place for such a bed, as the finer seeds will
inevitably be washed out in the heavy rains of