verbenas, etc.

Every spring the Christmas Monks go out to sow the Christmas-present
seeds after they have ploughed the ground and made it all ready.

There is one enormous bed devoted to rocking-horses. The rocking-horse
seed is curious enough; just little bits of rocking-horses so small
that they can only be seen through a very, very powerful microscope.
The Monks drop these at quite a distance from each other, so that they
will not interfere while growing; then they cover them up neatly with
earth, and put up a sign-post with "Rocking-horses" on it in evergreen
letters. Just so with the penny-trumpet seed, and the toy-furniture
seed, the skate-seed, the sled-seed, and all the others.

Perhaps the prettiest and most interesting part of the garden, is that
devoted to wax dolls. There are other beds for the commoner dolls--for
the rag dolls, and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls, but of
course wax dolls would look much handsomer growing. Wax dolls have
to be planted quite early in the season; for they need a good start
before the sun is very high. The seeds are the loveliest bits of
microscopic dolls imaginable. The Monks sow them pretty close
together, and they begin to come up by the middle of May. There is
first just a little glimmer of gold, or flaxen, or black, or brown as
the case may be, above the soil. Then the snowy foreheads appear, and
the blue eyes, and black eyes, and, later on, all those enchanting
little heads are out of the ground, and are nodding and winking and
smiling to each other the whole extent of the field; with their pinky
cheeks and sparkling eyes and curly hair there is nothing so pretty as
these little wax doll heads peeping out of the earth. Gradually, more
and more of them come to light, and finally by Christmas they are all