Ivy Chain
Flower Show
A flower-show competition is an excellent garden game. A handkerchief on sticks forms the tent. Underneath this is a bed of sand in which the flowers, singly or in groups, can be fixed. Some one can easily be persuaded to come out of the house to act as judge.
Garden Shop
Shop in the garden or out-of-doors is played with various things that resemble articles of food. Thus you can get excellent coffee from sorrel, and capital little bundles of rhubarb can be made by taking a rhubarb leaf and cutting the ribs into stalks. Small stones make very good imitation potatoes, and the heads of marguerite daisies on a plate will easily pass for poached eggs.
Flower Symbols
In this place a word might be said about some of the curious things to be found in flowers and plants. If you cut the stalk of a brake fern low down, in September, you find a spreading oak tree. The pansy contains a picture of a man in a pulpit. A poppy is easily transformed into an old woman in a red gown. The snap-dragon, when its sides are pinched, can be made to yawn. The mallow contains a minute cheese. By blowing the fluff on a dandelion that has run to seed you can tell (more or less correctly) the time of day. An ear of barley will run up your sleeve if the pointed end is laid just within it; and an apple's seeds make exquisite little mice.