Fig. 594.
Fig. 593. side edges of your board. Have three strips cut from it, one eighteen inches wide for your garden fence, the other two each twelve inches wide and about three feet long for trellises for your vines. Fit the fence around the board, bending it sharply at the corners, and tack in place along the edge of the board, using double tacks, called staple tacks, for the purpose. Paint the board and wire netting dark green, and, when dry, lift it out of the window, and, resting the board on the outside window-sill, slip the screw-eyes on the hooks in the wall, as in Fig. 592. With two staple tacks fasten the ends of the fence to the wall.
Now you are
Ready for Your Boxes
Get two strong wooden ones from your grocer, about eight inches deep and of a size to fit the board at either side of your window, and another to fit between the two end ones. Bore several holes in the bottom of each box, bind the edges where they meet with strips of tin, as shown by the dark strips in Fig. 594. Have the tinsmith cut the tin the required lengths and also bend it to fit your boxes. It will then be easy work to tack it on yourself.
Binding the boxes in this way makes them strong and prevents their bursting apart, as they are very apt to do with nothing to stay them. Paint the boxes dark green, like the board, and on the bottom of each place a layer of charcoal, next a layer of sand and then fill with earth, enriched with fertilizer obtained at the drug-store. Weave two straight sticks, about four feet long, in and out through each piece of wire netting for your trellises. Stand a trellis upright in either end box by pushing the end of the sticks deep into the soil.
It is a country, not a city, garden you want, is it not? Then don’t be persuaded into buying geraniums, fuchsias, verbenas, etc. They are very lovely, but you can have them all winter long, if you wish. What you are trying for now is
A Real Summer Garden
—one where you plant the seeds and have the excitement of seeing them come up, then watching them grow, and finally of discovering the first buds which so soon are to blossom and reward you with their beauty and fragrance for all the care bestowed upon them.