the place early in the season, but sown thinly and once fairly rooted
and kept free from dead flowers and pods, the vines will go on yielding
quite through September, though on the coming of hot weather the flower
stems shorten.

I often plant seeds of the climbing nasturtium in the row with the sweet
peas at a distance of one seed to the fist, the planting not being done
until late May. The peas mature first, and after the best of their
season has passed they are supplanted by the nasturtiums, which cover
the dry vines and festoon the supporting brush with gorgeous colour in
early autumn, keeping in the same colour scheme with salvia, sunflowers,
gaillardias, and tritomas. This is excellent where space is of account,
and also where more sweet peas are planted for their early yield than
can be kept in good shape the whole season. Centaurea or cornflower, the
bachelor's button or ragged sailor of old gardens, is in the front rank
of the worthies. The flowers have almost the keeping qualities of
everlastings, and are of easy culture, while the sweet sultan, also of
this family, adds fragrance to its other qualities. The blue cornflower
is best sown in a long border or bed of unconventional shape, and may be
treated like a biennial, one sowing being made in September so that the
seedlings will make sturdy tufts before cold weather. These, if lightly
covered with salt hay or rough litter (not leaves), will bloom in May
and June, and if then replaced by a second sowing, flowers may be had
from September first until freezing weather, so hardy is this true, blue
_Kaiser-blumen_.

All the poppies are worthy, from the lovely Shirley, with its
butterfly-winged petals, to the Eschscholtzia, the state flower of
California.