"As I tell you, some of these beds were easy to cultivate, that
means to take care of Daisy, and others were very hard. There was
one particularly sunshiny little bed that might have been full of
fruits and vegetables as well as flowers, only it wouldn't take any
pains, and when the man sowed, well, we'll say melons in this bed,
they came to nothing, because the little bed neglected them. The
man was sorry, and kept on trying, though every time the crop
failed, all the bed said, was, 'I forgot.' "

Here a general laugh broke out, and every one looked at Tommy,
who had pricked up his ears at the word "melons," and hung down
his head at the sound of his favorite excuse.

"I knew he meant us!" cried Demi, clapping his hands. "You are
the man, and we are the little gardens; aren't we, Uncle Fritz?"

"You have guessed it. Now each of you tell me what crop I shall
try to sow in you this spring, so that next autumn I may get a good
harvest out of my twelve, no, thirteen, plots," said Mr. Bhaer,
nodding at Nat as he corrected himself.

"You can't sow corn and beans and peas in us. Unless you mean we
are to eat a great many and get fat," said Stuffy, with a sudden
brightening of his round, dull face as the pleasing idea occurred to
him.

"He don't mean that kind of seeds. He means things to make us
good; and the weeds are faults," cried Demi, who usually took the
lead in these talks, because he was used to this sort of thing, and