"How queer it is that when you're interested in something you keep seeing and hearing things connected with it!" exclaimed Ethel Blue about a week after her birthday, when Della Watkins came out from town to bring her her belated birthday gift.

The present proved to be a slender hillock covered with a silky green growth exquisite in texture and color.

"What is it? What is it?" cried Ethel Blue. "We mentioned plants and gardens on my birthday and that very evening Margaret brought me this grapefruit jungle and now you've brought me this. Do tell me exactly what it is."

"A cone, child. That's all. A Norway spruce cone. When it is dry its scales are open. I filled them with gra.s.s seed and put the cone in a small tumbler so that the lower end might be damp all the time. The dampness makes the scales close and starts the seed to sprouting. This has been growing a few days and the cone is almost hidden."

"It's one of the prettiest plants--would you call it a plant or a greenhouse?--I ever saw. Does it have to be a Norway spruce cone?"

"O, no. Only they have very regular scales that hold the seed well. I brought you out two more of them and some gra.s.s seed and canary seed so you could try it for yourself."

"You're a perfect duck," and Ethel gave her friend a hug. "Now let me show you what one of the girls at school gave Ethel Brown."

She indicated a strange-looking brown object hanging before the window.

"What in the world is it? It looks--yes, it looks like a sweet potato."

"That's what it is--a sweet potato with one end cut off and a cage of tape to hold it. You see it's sprouting already, and they say that the vines hang down from it and it looks like a little green hanging basket."

"What's the object of cutting off the end?"

"Anna--that's Ethel Brown's friend--said that she scooped hers out just a little bit and put a few drops of water inside so that the sun shouldn't dry it too much."

"I should think it would grow better in a dark place. Don't you know how Irish potatoes send out those white shoots when they're in the cellar?"

"She said she started hers in the cellar and then brought them into the light."

"Just like bulbs."

"Exactly. Aunt Louise is having great luck with her bulbs now. She had them in the cellar and now she is bringing them out a pot at a time, so she has something new coming forward every few days."

"Dorothy doesn't care much for bulbs, but I think it's pretty good fun.

You can make them blossom just about when you please by keeping them in the dark or bringing them into the light. I'm going to ask Aunt Louise to give me some of hers when they're finished flowering. She says you can plant them out of doors and next year they'll bloom in the garden."

"Mother has some this winter, too. I'll ask her for them after she's through forcing them."

"I like them in the garden, too--tulips and hyacinths and daffodils and narcissus and, jonquils. They come so early and give you a feeling that spring really has arrived."

"You look as if spring had really arrived in the house here. If there wasn't a little bit of that snow man left in front I shouldn't know it had snowed last week. How in the world did you get all these shrubs to blossom now? They don't seem to realize that it's only January."

"That's another thing that's happened since my birthday. Margaret told us about bringing branches of the spring shrubs into the house and making them come out in water, so we've been trying it. She sent over those yellow bells, the Forsythia, and Roger brought in the p.u.s.s.y willows from the brook on the way to Mr. Emerson's."

"This th.o.r.n.y red affair is the j.a.pan quince, but I don't recognize these others."

"That's because you're a city girl! You'll laugh when I tell you what they are."

"They don't look like flowering shrubs to me."

"They aren't. They're flowering trees; fruit trees!"

"O-o! That really is a peach blossom, then!"

"The deep pink is peach, and the delicate pink is apple and the white is plum."

"They're perfectly dear. Tell me how you coaxed them out. Surely you didn't just keep them in water in this room?"

"We put them in the sunniest window we had, not too near the gla.s.s, because it wouldn't do for them to run any chance of getting chilled.

They stayed there as long as the sun did, and then we moved them to another warm spot and we were very careful about them at night."

"How often do you change the water?"

"Every two or three days; and once in a while we spray them to keep the upper part fresh--and there you are. It's _fun_ to watch them come out.

Don't want to take some switches back to town with you?"

Della did.

"They make me think of a scheme that my Aunt Rose is putting into operation. She went round the world year before last," she said, "and she saw in j.a.pan lots of plants growing in earthenware vases hanging against the wall or in a long bamboo cut so that small water bottles might be slipped in. She has some of the very prettiest wall decorations now--a queer looking greeny-brown pottery vase has two or three sprigs of English ivy. Another with orange tints has nasturtiums and another tradescantia."

"Are they growing in water?"

"The ivy and the tradescantia are, but the nasturtiums and a perfectly darling morning glory have earth. She's growing bulbs in them, too, only she doesn't use plain water or earth, just bulb fibre."

"What's that?"

"Why, bulbs are such fat creatures that they don't need the outside food they would get from earth; all they want is plenty of water. This fibre stuff holds enough water to keep them damp all the time, and it isn't messy in the house like dirt."

"What are you girls talking about?" asked Dorothy, who came in with Ethel Brown at this moment.

Both of them were interested in the addition that Della had made to their knowledge of flowers and gardening.

"Every day I feel myself drawn into more and more gardening," exclaimed Dorothy. "I've set up a notebook already."

"In January!" laughed Della.

"January seems to be the time to do your thinking and planning; that's what the people who know tell me."

"It seems to be the time for some action," retorted Della, waving her hand at the blossoming branches about the room.

"Aren't they wonderful? I always knew you could bring them out quickly in the house after the buds were started out of doors, but these fellows didn't seem to be started at all--and look at them!"

"Mother says they've done so well because we've been careful to keep them evenly warm," said Ethel Brown. "Dorothy's got the finest piece of news to tell you. If she doesn't tell you pretty soon I shall come out with it myself!"

"O, let her tell her own secret!" remonstrated Blue. "What is it?"

You know that sloping piece of ground about a quarter of a mile beyond the Clarks' on the road to Mr. Emerson's?"

"You don't mean the field with the brook where Roger got the p.u.s.s.y willows?"

"This side of it. There's a lovely view across the meadows on the other side of the road, and the land runs back to some rocks and big trees."