"I thought all you had to do in a garden," said Mab, "was to plant the seed and it would grow into cabbage, radishes, corn, beans or whatever you wanted."
"You are beginning to learn otherwise," spoke her father, "and it is a good thing. Mother Nature is wise and good, but she does not make it too easy for us. She will grow beautiful flowers, and useful fruits and vegetables from tiny seeds, but she also grows bad weeds and sends eating-bugs that we must fight against, if we want things to grow on our farms and gardens. So we still have much work before us to make our gardens a success."
"We haven't had much to eat from them yet," said Mother Blake, who had been hoeing among her carrots. "I hope we can pick something soon."
"We had radishes," said Hal.
"And well soon have tomatoes," added his father. "Now that I have driven away the eating worms the vines will grow better and the tomatoes will ripen faster."
A week later on some of the vines there were quite large green tomatoes. Hal and Mab watched them eagerly, noting how they grew and swelled larger, until, one day, Mab came running in, crying:
"Oh, one tomato has a red cheek!"
"That's where it got sunburned," said her father with a smile. "That shows they are getting ripe. Soon we will have some for the table."
In a few days more tomatoes on the vines had red, rosy cheeks, some being red all over. These Daddy Blake let Hal and Mab pick, and they brought them in the house.
"Oh, we shall have some of our own tomatoes for lunch!" cried Mother Blake when she saw them. "How fine! Our garden is beginning to give us back something to pay us for all the work we put on it."