most elaborately and scientifically prepared compost. This is a matter
that both simplifies and guarantees better success to the woman who is
her own gardener and lives in a country sufficiently open for her to be
able to collect soil of various qualities for special purposes. Lilies
were always a very uncertain quantity with me, until the idea occurred
of filling my bed with earth from a meadow edge where _Lilium
Canadense_, year after year, mounted her chimes of gold and copper bells
on leafy standards often four feet high.

We may read and listen to cultural ways and methods, but when all is
said and done, one who has not a fat purse for experiments and failures
must live the outdoor life of her own locality to get the best results
in the garden.

Then to have a woman friend to compare notes with and prove rules by is
a comforting necessity. No living being can say positively, "I _will_ do
so and so;" or "I _know_," when coming in contact with the wise old
earth!

Lavinia Cortright has only had a garden for half a dozen summers, and
consults me as a veteran, yet I'm discovering quite as much from her
experiments as she from mine. Last winter, when seed-catalogue time came
round, and we met daily and scorched our shoes before the fire, drinking
a great deal too much tea in the excitement of making out our lists, we
resolved to form a horticulture society of only three members, of which
she elected me the recording secretary, to be called "The Garden, You,
and I."

We expect to have a variety of experiences this season, and frequent
meetings both actual and by pen, for Lavinia, in combination with Horace