The young plants should not be allowed to flower in the autumn. Pick off the buds as they appear and they will be likely to give you bloom all summer long. I confess to an impatience that prompts to the buying of many baskets of Pansies in May, and thus securing flowers on the spot, besides selecting my favorite colors. These plants will not achieve much after their first season, but will grow "beautifully less" in size, and finally become like Lady's Delights, those pretty plebeian Violas that accept any soil, or situation, and show their cheery little faces among the cabbages, and even in the skimpy soil of the gravel walks.
"There's Pansy, that's for thought," says Perdita, in "Winter's Tale."
Pansy—French pensee, fancy or thought, from penser, to think. Heartsease—ease of heart—tranquillity of mind—is the poet's name of the flower. Of the common names one may choose between "Johnny Jump-up" and the more elegant Lady's Delight.
The Violet, though but a tiny unassuming flower, is (both in verse and prose) often classed with the regal Rose. Both are delightful in perfume, and in that respect equally popular.
Having small knowledge of rose-growing I do not presume to hold forth on "Rose Culture." Books on that subject are many and excellent, and I should but say with "Denis," the "Minister's double," when his turn came to make a speech at the committee meeting: "So much has been said, and so well said, that I will not further pursue the subject." Nevertheless, my next chapter shall be devoted to this "Queen-flower."
CHAPTER IX
The Rose
The Rose is no mushroom Queen. Her ancestry dates away back to the Garden of Eden, and if Eve did not there gather a rosebud boutonniere for Adam, it was because that primitive young man had not a buttonhole "to his name."