The importance of these calls is not confined to the advancement of good
gardening. They promote fellowship among neighbors and kind feeling
between widely parted elements of society. Last year this committee made
nearly eleven hundred such visits.
Meanwhile a circular letter has been early mailed to the previous year's
competitors, urging them to re-enroll by post-card. Last year hundreds
did so. Meanwhile, too, as soon as the enrolment is completed, the
institute's general secretary begins a tour of official inspection, and
as he is an experienced teacher of his art, his inspections are expert.
His errand is known by the time he is in sight, and, as a rule, the
householder joins him in a circuit of the place, showing achievements,
reciting difficulties and disappointments, confessing errors, and taking
tactful advice.
And what room he finds for tact! He sees a grave-like bed of verbenas
defacing the middle of a small greensward--a dab of rouge on a young
cheek; a pert child doing all the talking. Whereupon he shrewdly pleads
not for the sward but for the flowers, "You have those there to show off
at their best?"
"Yes. Don't they do it?"
"Not quite." He looks again. "Nine feet long--five wide. If you'll plant
them next year in a foot-wide ribbon under that border of stronger
things along your side boundary they'll give you at least forty feet of
color instead of nine, and they'll illuminate your bit of sward instead
of eclipsing it.
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