In the Garden
It is necessary to work in the potager to appreciate fully the proverbial value of March dust. The primroses, the daffodils, the flowering prunuses (such as Pissardii), the guelders, the purpling of the elms, the budding of the quick corms, are quite second in the eyes of the country gardener to a nice friable surface that responds immediately to the rake and ensures a congenial bed to the tiny seeds. Such offerings are to be seized with avidity by all gardeners, whether of vegetables or flowers. It was a real pleasure to watch the puffs of dust behind the farmer's drill and potato-planting machine (driven by women). "Oh, what a dusty answer " is a cry of joy on the land and the most important of all conditions precedent to good crops. A few warm, dusty days at the right date—and the timing this March was perfect—may well be worth, say, a million pounds within this little island.
W. BEACH THOMAS.
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