"It seems so funny to go and dig up a potato," she declared. "I've always felt that potatoes _just were_. But to see the whole process of growth is quite another matter. Oh, John, it makes them so much nicer!" "Especially when you are getting seventy-five cents a bushel for them," I laughed. The loaded tomato vines, too, with the red fruit hanging out from the wire frames and sending a pungent odour into the surrounding air, appealed to Stella endlessly. I used to see her now and then, as I glanced from the south room of a morning, eating a raw tomato like an apple, her head bent forward so that the juice would not spoil her dress. And there were the apples! Already a red astrachan tree invited us on every trip to the brook, and other old trees were bearing fast reddening fruit. I had wanted to set out more orchard, but we agreed that we could not afford it that year, if we were to build chicken houses against the spring, so I reluctantly gave up the idea. But our old trees, in spite of (or perhaps because of) my spring pruning, were doing fairly well. We had enough for baked apples and cream all winter, anyhow, Stella reckoned, smacking her lips at the thought. Every day, on our way to the pool, one or the other of us took a hoe along and scraped a tree for five minutes, gradually getting the old bark off, and making a final preparation for a thorough spraying the next winter just so much easier. I used to prune a bit, too, in spare moments, so that by the end of the summer considerable renovation had been accomplished. And now came the foxglove transplanting. According to the gardener's directions, we took two long rows where the early peas had stood (and where Mike had disobeyed my instructions to spade the vines under, that being a form of green manuring your old-time gardener will not see the value of, I have discovered), trenched them, put in manure and soil, and set out at least 300 foxglove plants six inches apart. It was a cool, cloudy day, and they stood up as though nothing had happened. Then, as an experiment, we moved scores of tiny hollyhocks from the crowded seed beds into their permanent position as a screen between the south kitchen windows and the sundial lawn, and as a border on the west side of the same lawn. They, too, were quite unaffected by the change. Meanwhile, we ordered our bulbs--hyacinths, daffodils (which in our climate refuse to take the winds of March with beauty, cowardly waiting till May), a few crocuses, _Narcissus poeticus_, Empress narcissus, German iris, Japanese iris, and Darwin tulips. We ordered the iris and tulips in named varieties. "They have such nice names," said Stella, "especially the Japanese iris--Kimi-no-megumi, Shirataki, Momochiguma! The tulips are nice, too. Here is Ariadne and Kate Greenaway hobnobbing with Professor Rauwenhoff! What's the use of having plants that aren't named? We must show them as much respect as Antony and Cleopatra, or Epictetus and Luella!"