“MISSOURI

Come Again.

I have been not quite a year a member of the SUCCESS circle, but have many times wished ‘to speak in meeting.’  Silence has become unbearable.  I shall try to be heard, but if like Paul you bid me be silent and consign this to the waste basket–so be it; but I shall still want to talk.  Let me tell you of my Roses.  For five long weeks in May and June last Summer we had no rain.  The slugs, spiders, bugs, beetles and worms eating up those bushes, bud and branch.  Ashes, powders and washes of various kinds were tried, all to no avail.  If one thing left another still survived to do worse havoc.  The situation was desperate.  The ‘war of Roses’ was wages in earnest, for my mind was intent on deadly things.  I took carbolic acid and boiling water (a teaspoonful to a quart), and an old paint brush and washed those bushes from roots to topmost feathery spray.  There were sixteen bushes, large ones too, but not a slug nor spider, nor brown worm survived–nothing save a large black night beetle who still made nocturnal feasts of the tender green leaves and buds.  These I flavored at night with cayenne pepper–which, by the way, will drive ants off Peony buds.  I shook the pepper off in the morning.  I was left complete victor of the field.  Those Roses nod their heads in triumph and fling out their hands full of proud sweet blossoms whose laughing faces smile at me their thanks for the aid I gave them in their hour of direst need.

On returning home from a visit I was told, ‘Your Pansies are all turning yellow.  They must be through blooming.’  Through blooming indeed!  They were very near it, of a truth.  That thief in the night, the brown spider, had spun weds and built nests until there was a veritable spider city!  I tried the carbolic acid and hot water, but the vines were too thick and long and the dirt too light.  The spiders ambushed.  I then then took the vines, some of them eighteen inches long, stripped all withered yellow leaves from them and buried the stem up to where the fresh green leaves were.  Some were buried to the very tip.  Many taken off and burned.

I washed them again and again with the carbolic acid water.  I murdered the spiders by scores–buried the remains and sprinkled the earth with ashes and hellebore and put quantities of this into every cranny and crevice where I thought a spider might hide.  Again I am triumphant.  My Pansies are vigorous and green and are bursting into a butterfly carnival of blooms.

Spiders are the natural foes of flowers.  They must be hunted down and killed. Even the sturdy Sweet Pea vine dies of their poison, and the only way is to powder, poison and kill them–to rid our floral friends of their baleful presence.

Sometime, if I may come again, I would like to tell about our flower class at school, and about some of the lovely hardy perennials I have in my garden.

Can any one tell me how to make Forget-me-nots bloom?  Mine are in a cool shady place with rich moist soil, but they are all glossy green bunches of leaves.

HATTIE W. WARE, Brookfield, Mo.”

Reference Data:

Success With Flowers, A Floral Magazine, Vols. 5-6 1844, page 192