By way of conclusion I want to urge women with "nerves" to take the gardening treatment. Many housewives are martyrs to a prison-life. They are shut up in the house from year's end to year's end, away from pleasant sights, sounds, fresh air, and sunshine. If we can get such a woman into the garden for a half-hour each day, throughout the summer, we can make a new woman of her. Work among flowers, where the air is pure and sweet, and sunshine is a tonic, and companionship is cheerful, will lift her out of her work and worry, and body and mind will grow stronger, and new life, new health, new energy will come to her, and the cares and vexations that made life a burden, because of the nervous strain resulting from them, will "take wings and fly away." Garden-work is the best possible kind of medicine for overtaxed nerves. It makes worn-out women over into healthy, happy women. "I thank God, every day, for my garden," one of these women wrote me, not long ago. "It has given me back my health. It has made me feel that life is worth living, after all. I believe that I shall get so that I live in my garden most of the time. By that I mean that I shall be thinking about it and enjoying it, either in recollection or anticipation, when it is impossible for me to be actually in it. My mind will be there in winter, and I will be there in summer. Why—do you know, I did a good deal more housework last year than ever before, and I did it in order to find time to work among my flowers. Work in the garden made housework easier. Thank God for flowers, I say!"
Yes—God be thanked for flowers!
Gardening Books
By Eben E. Rexford
The Home Garden
A practical book for the use of those who own
a small garden in which they would like to grow
vegetables and small fruits.
Eight full-page illustrations. 12mo. 198 pages,
cloth, ornamental, $1.25 net.