A Little Garden Calendar for Boys and Girls. Paine Albert Bigelow

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      Beneath the last layer there was warm, dark earth. The Chief Gardener filled the basket he had brought, and they hurried back to the basement to fill the pots.

      "Not too full – we must leave room at the top for digging and watering, without spilling dirt and water on the floor. Then the plants will help fill up by and by, too, and I think we would better put in a little of this compost at the bottom. When the roots run down they will be glad to find some fresh, rich food. Don't pack the earth too tightly, Davy; just jar the pot a little to settle it, and it should be fine and quite dry. Perhaps we'd better dry it a little," the Chief Gardener added, as he saw by the children's hands that some of the earth was rather damp and sticky.

      So he brought out a flat box, emptied all the pots into it, and set the box on top of the furnace.

      "While it's drying, we'll go upstairs and pick out the seeds," he said.

      "Oh, see my beans! How pretty they are!" cried Davy, as the Chief Gardener pointed out the purple-mottled seeds of the scarlet runners.

      Prue looked a little envious. She was fond of pretty things.

      "But my pease are better-looking than those crinkly things of yours," she said; "mine are most like little beads; and see my nasturtium seed! They look good to eat, like little peanuts."

      It was Davy's turn now to be envious. Anything that looked like peanuts must be very good to eat.

      "People often pickle nasturtium pods," said the Chief Gardener. "They are fine and peppery. So Prue will really have something to eat in her garden, while Davy will have beautiful flowers on his scarlet runners."

      "See my morning-glory seed, like quarters of a little black apple, and how tiny my pansy seeds are!" cried Prue, holding out the papers.

      Davy was looking at the little round, brown kernels that the Chief Gardener had said were radish seeds, and the light little flakes that were to grow into lettuce.

      "What makes seeds so different?" he asked soberly.

      "Ah, Davy, that is a hard question," answered the Chief Gardener. "A great many very great people have tried to answer it."

      He opened a little paper and held it out for them to see.

      "What funny little feather-tops!" said Prue.

      "Like little darts," said Davy. "What are they?"

      "Marigold seeds. They are very light, and the little tufts or wings are to carry them through the air, so they will be scattered and sown by the wind. Many seeds are given wings of different kinds. Maple seeds have a real pair of wings. Others have a tuft of down on them, so light that they are carried for miles. But many seeds are hard to explain. Plants very nearly alike grow from seeds that are not at all alike, while plants as different as can be grow from seeds that can hardly be told apart, even under the magnifying-glass."

      The pots filled with the warm earth were brought up and ranged in the windows.

      "How deep, and how many seeds in a pot?" asked Davy.

      "That depends," the Chief Gardener answered. "I believe there is a rule that says to plant twice as deep as the seed is long, though sweet-pease and some other things are planted deeper; and you may plant more seeds than you want plants, so that enough are pretty sure to grow; four beans in each pot, Davy – two white and two colored, and three grains of corn in the large center pot."

      The children planted the seeds – the Chief Gardener helping, showing how to cover them with fine earth – the corn and beans quite deeply, the sweet-pease still deeper, fully an inch or more, the smaller seeds thinly and evenly: then how to pat them down so that the earth might be lightly but snugly packed about the sleeping seeds.

      "Now we will dampen them a little," he said, "and when they feel their covering getting moist, perhaps they will think of waking."

      So he brought a cup of warm water, and the children dipped in their fingers and sprinkled the earth in each pot until it was quite damp. Then they drew up chairs and sat down to look at their garden, as if expecting the things to grow while they waited.

      IV

      I THINK SEEDS KNOW THE MONTHS

      But the seeds did not sprout that day, nor the next, nor for many days after they were planted.

      Prue and Davy watered them a little every morning, and were quite sure the room had been warm, but it takes sunshine, too, to make seeds think of waking from their long nap, and the sun does not always shine in January. Even when it does, it is so low in the sky, and stays such a little time each day, that it does not find its way down into the soil as it does in spring and summer time.

      "You said that corn sprouts in a week," said Davy to the Chief Gardener, one morning, "and it's a week to-day since we planted it, and even the radishes are not up yet."

      Prue also looked into her little row of pots, and said sadly that there was not even a little teeny-weeny speck of anything coming up that she could see.

      "I'm sorry," said the Chief Gardener, "but you know I really can't make the sun shine, and even if I could, perhaps they would be slow about coming, at this season. Sometimes I think seeds know the months as well as we do, for I have known seeds to sprout in June in a place where there was very little warmth or moisture and no sunshine at all. Yes, I think the seeds know."

      "And won't my pansies come at all?" whimpered little Prue.

      "Oh, I think so. They only need a little more coaxing. Suppose we see just what is going on. You planted a few extra radish seeds, Davy. We will do as little folks often do – dig up one and see what has happened."

      So the Chief Gardener dug down with his pocket-knife and lifted a bit of the dirt, which he looked at carefully. Then he held it to the light and let the children look. Sticking to the earth there was a seed, but it was no longer the tiny brown thing which Davy had planted. It was so large that Davy at first thought it was one of his pease, and on one side of it there was an edge of green.

      "It's all right, Davy boy. They'll be up in a day or two," laughed the Chief Gardener. "Now, we'll try a pansy."

      "Oh, yes, try a pansy! try a pansy!" danced little Prue, who was as happy as Davy over the sprouting of the radish.

      So the Chief Gardener dug down into the pansy-pot, but just at first could not find a pansy seed, they were so small. Then he did find one, and coming out of it were two tiny pale-green leaves, and a thread of white rootlet that had started downward.

      Prue clapped her hands and wanted the Chief Gardener to dig in all the pots, but he told them that it would not be good gardening to do that, and that they must be patient now, and wait. So then another anxious week went by. And all at once, one morning very early, Prue and Davy came shouting up the stairs to where the Chief Gardener was shaving.

      "They're up! They're up!"

      "My pansies!"

      "And my radishes! They've lifted up a piece of dirt over every seed, and there's one little green point in the corn-pot, too!"

      The Chief Gardener had to leave his shaving to see. Sure enough! Davy's radishes and Prue's pansies were beginning to show, and one tender shoot of Davy's corn. And in less than another week Davy's lettuce and pease and beans were breaking the ground above each seed, while Prue's garden was СКАЧАТЬ