It will never do, however, for you simply to get your flower playhouse started, and then leave it to take care of itself! You must watch the baby plants as soon as they peep out of the ground, help the vines to grow in the right direction and water thoroughly whenever there is a dry spell. Cultivate around the roots every few days, as this breaking up of the hard crust which forms on top will prevent the moisture from escaping through the air channels in the soil, and keep the roots moist. Several times during the season dig in a trowelful of bonemeal around each plant, and then give a good wetting.
While the hardy vines, after once getting started, bloom every year without much more attention, the annuals have one advantage,—you can have a different kind every time. In other words, you would then be able to give your house a fresh coat of paint,—I should say, flowers—every summer.
CHAPTER XIII
The Work of a Children's Garden Club
I am ever being taught new lessons in my garden: patience and industry by my friends the birds, humility by the great trees that will long outlive me, and vigilance by the little flowers that need my constant care.
Rosaline Neish.
Did you ever see the boy or girl that did not want to get up a club? I never did; and the reason is that people, young and old, like to both work and play together. Now a garden club is really worth while, and although I might simply TELL you how to proceed after getting your friends to meet and agree on the purpose, you probably will get a much clearer idea if I relate what a certain group of little folks actually did accomplish.
Fifteen boys and girls living in old Greenwich Village,—today one of the poor, crowded sections of New York City, where even the streets are darkened by a tall, unsightly elevated railroad,—were invited to form a club that would be taken once a week out on Long Island to garden. A vacant lot, one hundred by one hundred and ten feet, in Flushing, about twelve miles away, had been offered for their use, and some of the older people saw that the ground was first properly ploughed up, for, of course, the children couldn't be expected to do that kind of hard work.