ROSE LEAVES.
My rose bushes are almost as much admired for their beautiful foliage as for their lovely roses. “I never saw such handsome leaves, why they look exactly like wax.” This is an exclamation I am growing quite accustomed to hear from friends, and it is really true; but I think any one who grows roses as house plants may have just as handsome foliage if the proper care is taken of the plants. Once or twice every week (just as is most convenient) I wash every leaf with clean, weak soapsuds, under side as well as upper side. With the small-leaved Polyanthas it is too tiresome to wash each leaflet individually, but the foliage can be sprayed well, and then very carefully and gently a branch of leaves may be wiped at once, and in this manner one can go over quite a number of plants in half an hour. The leaves may be left without wiping, of course, but the foliage is apt to be marred unless it is done, as the soapsuds dries on the leaves in white, unsightly spots. Roses treated in this way will very rarely be troubled with pests of any kind, and such rich waxen green foliage as they will possess is more beautiful than many flowers.
It is something quite remarkable here, where the thermometer falls to 40° and 50° below zero, to see roses blooming outside of a conservatory, But mine have been doing beautifully in the bay window all winter, and small as the plants are they have flowered wonderfully well. At night the plants are moved away from the window to a place where they are secure from frost Queen’s Scarlet seems to make a special effort to surpass itself each time some other rose comes into bloom, and every rose it produces is, I think, more beautiful than its predecessor. It is in every way one of the loveliest of roses, and although lacking in the rich fragrance of many others, it yet possesses a delicate sweetness of its own. The first time that American Beauty bloomed for me it bore two exquisite roses, and the little bush was barely eight inches high, one of the shoots which produced a flower being only four inches out of the soil, and the rich, exquisite sweetness of these large, deep pink roses is surely unsurpassed by any other.
Sometimes when the buds seem very slow about unfolding I take a cup of lukewarm water and gently bending each bud give it a few minutes immersion. This certainly hastens their development and in no way injures them. If I could only have one rose Queen’s Scarlet would be my choice; if I could have others American Beauty would certainly be the next one.
Mrs. S. H. Snider.
Care of Seeds.—The smaller the seeds the less covering required. Fine seeds may be scattered on the moist soil, or at most have a sprinkling of sand over them.
PAYSON’S INDELIBLE INK