cyclamens.

Our erstwhile teacher places the Norway pines close under the palms;
the tree of shade and the tree of sun that sigh vainly for each other.
I like him for this. He knows that Titiana loved Bottom. He must know
it.

Very few care for my favourite flower--the narcissus. I always buy it,
and a fern. There are folk who despise ferns because they are nothing
but leaves but I like them for their history. They are the survival of
the fittest; types which Nature, in her great printing-press, never
breaks up. They are the old-timers of the vegetable world.

Also, I walk down the tomato avenue and take my pick--that is I do if I
have enough money, for, here, at the edge of the world, they are as
expensive as Jacob's mess of pottage. One does not dream of robbing
banks so much as stripping tomato-vines.

Tomatoes do not ripen out of doors (but you must not tell the Board of
Trade I said so) unless on a sunny slope, or by reason of some other
special dispensation.

Other vegetables thrive, and the cauliflowers attain a size and
perfection elsewhere undreamed of.

Never were there such toothsome red radishes as are grown here in the
north, large, firm, and flavorous. They are not so big, though, as the
radishes the Jews used to raise long ago of which it was said a fox and
her cubs could burrow in the hollow of one. I have, however, seen a
pumpkin large enough for a fox-warren, but candour compels the
confession that the gardener fed it daily with milk by means of an
incision which he made in its stalk.

Our strawberries are not the equal of those grown on the Pacific slope,
but are larger, sweeter and firmer than Ontario berries.

We do not sit under our own fig-tree (nor, alas, our apple-tree), but
why should we sigh when each summer the sunflower springs up to a
height of twelve or fifteen feet? It is the palm-tree of the north,
only more beautiful.

The Mormons on their exodus from Illinois to Salt Lake City sowed
sunflower seeds along the trail, and ever since it has been marked by
sunflowers. In the province of Saskatchewan, the Russian refugees
sometimes divide their fields by rows of poppies. In Manitoba, their
hedges are of sweet-peas; in British Columbia, of broom.

After awhile, when all our real-estate has been sold, and all our
companies have been promoted, we of Alberta shall have time and
inclination to consider our provincial plant.

Grant us then that it may be the sunflower!