It is often said that the gardener’s year begins in November, because that is when you would make a new bed, or feed and alter an old one. If you make a bed well one autumn and grow things that like to be left alone, you would obviously not make it all over again the next. You would ‘mulch’ any part of it that required food or protection—_i.e._, you would supply a top dressing, a winter blanket of manure that would both keep things warm, and, with the help of the air and rain, send them food. When the spring comes, these top dressings look untidy, and they are either lightly and carefully forked in or taken away. By that time they are chiefly straw. When you are making a new bed, or reorganizing an old one completely, you cover the soil three inches thick with manure, make trenches, and take care that it is all buried at least ten inches deep, because very few plants like to come into contact with it when it is first put into the ground. It is an operation that you cannot manage at all for yourself if you are a girl. You must get a gardener or an elder brother to do it for you. If you tried digging in manure, your nurse would say to you what the nurse in Leech’s old picture said to the child who stirred her tea with the snuffers: ‘Miss Mary, you are not to stir your tea with the snuffers. It is not at all ladylike, and I am sure your papa would not approve of it.’ [Illustration: THE TIDY GARDENER.] The manure used should not be quite fresh, or it will make the earth ‘sick,’ as gardeners say, and kill your delicate plants and seedlings. After it has been dug in, the winter frosts and rains do a great deal to ripen it, and in the spring, when you plant, your flowers will be vigorous and plentiful, because they will find the food they need ready for them. But if you live in a town you may not be able to get farm manure easily, and then you would find a chemical one useful. Clay’s Fertilizer is a well-known manure, and so is Shefa, but many people have killed their plants by using too much of them. A tablespoonful to the square yard is enough, and it should be scattered evenly over the surface before it is dug in. There are many other chemical manures, but it is not necessary for you to know much about them yet. If your grown-ups understand them, they will provide you with what your soil needs; and if they do not, you can get on very well with the manures described here. Do not use chemical manures if you have a damp, heavy soil. In any garden it is a good plan to collect all the rubbish you can—old rags and toys, for instance, dry dead leaves, and small dry sticks—for a bonfire. The ashes left provide a food that all plants like, and they should never be wasted, but dug into the soil. In the country soot is good for your soil, and most useful in keeping off slugs. In a town you would not use it at all except as a defence against slugs. Leaf-mould is good for all soils, but it is not a rich food.