gardening members of a family, whether young
or old, are very often not those vigorous people who can enjoy their
fresh air at unlimited tennis or a real good stretching walk over the
hills. They are oftener those weaker vessels who have to be content
with strolls, and drives, and sketching, and "pottering about the
garden."

Now, pottering about the garden in spring and autumn has many risks
for feeble vitalities, and yet these are just the seasons when
everything requires doing, and there is a good hour's work in every
yard of a pet border any day. So _verbum sap_. One has to "pay with
one's person" for most of one's pleasures, if one is delicate; but it
is possible to do a great deal of equinoctial grubbing with safety and
even benefit, if one is very warmly protected, especially about the
feet and legs. These details are very tedious for young people, but
not so tedious as being kept indoors by a cold.

And not only must delicate gardeners be cossetted with little
advantages at these uncertain seasons, the less robust of the flowers
gain equally by timely care. Jack Frost comes and goes, and leaves
many plants (especially those planted the previous autumn) half jumped
out of the ground. Look out for this, and tread them firmly in again.
A shovel-full of cinder-siftings is a most timely attention round the
young shoots of such as are poking up their noses a little too early,
and seem likely to get them frost-bitten. Most alpines and low-growing
stuff will bear light rolling after the frost has unsettled them. This
is done in large gardens, but in a Little Garden they can be attended
to individually. Give a little protection to what is too forward in
growth, or badly placed, or of doubtful hardihood, or newly planted.
Roses and hardy perennials can be planted in open weather.

But you will not really be very busy outside till March, and we are
not concerning ourselves with what has to be done "in heat," where a
good deal is going on.

Still, in mild climates or seasons (and one must always remember how
greatly the British Isles vary in parts, as to climate), the idea of
seedlings and cuttings will begin to stir our souls, when February
"fills dike," if it is "with black and not with white," _i. e._, with
rain and not snow. So I will just say that for a Little Garden, and a
mixed garden, demanding patches, not scores of things, you can raise a
wonderfully sufficient number of half-hardy things in an ordinary
room,