Ethel Mortons Enterprise | Page 3

to pull them up at different ages and see how they looked."
"You pulled that out so gently I don't believe it will be hurt much."
"Probably it will take a day or two for it to catch up with its neighbors. It will have to settle its roots again, you see."
"What are you doing this planting for?" asked Dorothy.
"For the class at school. We get all the different kinds of seeds we can--the ones that are large enough to examine easily with only a magnifying glass like this one. Some we cut open and examine carefully inside to see how the new leaves are to be fed, and then we plant others and watch them grow."
"I'd like to know why you never told me about that before?" demanded Ethel Brown. "I'm going to get all the grains and fruits I can right off and plant them. Is all that stuff in a horse chestnut leaf-food?"
"The horse chestnut is a hungry one, isn't it?"
"I made some bulbs blossom by putting them in a tall glass in a dark place and bringing them into the light when they had started to sprout," said Ethel Blue, "but I think this is more fun. I'm going to plant some, too."
"Grandmother Emerson always has beautiful bulbs. She has plenty in her garden that she allows to stay there all winter, and they come up and are scrumptious very early in the Spring. Then she takes some of them into the house and keeps them in the dark, and they blossom all through the cold weather."
"Mother likes bulbs, too," said Dorothy, "crocuses and hyacinths and Chinese lilies--but I never cared much about them. Somehow the bulb itself looks too fat. I don't care much for fat things or people."
"Don't think of it as fat; it's the food supply."
"Well, I think they're greedy things, and I'm not going ever to bother with them. I'll leave them to Mother, but I am really going to plant a garden this summer. I think it will be loads of fun."
"We haven't much room for a garden here," said Helen, "but we always have some vegetables and a few flowers."
"Why don't we have a fine one this summer, Helen?" demanded Ethel Brown. "You're learning a lot about the way plants grow, I should think you'd like to grow them."
"I believe I should if you girls would help me. There never has been any member of the family who was interested, and I wasn't wild about it myself, and I just never got started."
"The truth is," confessed Ethel Brown, "if we don't have a good garden Dorothy here will have something that will put ours entirely in the shade."
The girls all laughed. They never had known Dorothy until the previous summer. When she came to live in Rosemont in September they had learned that she was extremely energetic and that she never abandoned any plan that she attempted. The Ethels knew, therefore, that if Dorothy was going to have a garden the next summer they'd better have a garden, too, or else they would see little of her.
"If we both have gardens Dorothy will condescend to come and see ours once in a while and we can exchange ideas and experiences," continued Ethel Brown.
"I'd love to have a garden," said Ethel Blue. "Do you suppose Roger would be willing to dig it up for us?"
"Dig up what?" asked Roger, stamping into the house in time to hear his name.
The girls told him of their new plan.
"I'll help all of you if you'll plant one flower that I like; plant enough of it so that I can pick a lot any time I want to. The trouble with the little garden we've had is that there weren't enough flowers for more than the centrepiece in the dining-room. Whenever I wanted any I always had to go and give a squint at the dining room table and then do some calculation as to whether there could be a stalk or two left after Helen had cut enough for the next day."
"And there generally weren't any!" sympathized Helen.
"What flower is it you're so crazy over?" asked Ethel Blue.
"Sweetpeas, my child. Never in all my life have I had enough sweetpeas."
"I've had more than enough," groaned Ethel Brown. "One summer I stayed a fortnight with Grandmother Emerson and I picked the sweetpeas for her every morning. She was very particular about having them picked because they blossom better if they're picked down every day."
"It must have taken you an awfully long time; she always has rows and rows of them," said Helen.
"I worked a whole hour in the sun every single day! If we have acres of sweetpeas we'll all have to help Roger pick."
"I'm willing to," said Ethel Blue. "I'm like Roger, I think they're darling;