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ROSES: BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE GARDEN
IN THE WILDERNESS"
VER since I was a little girl, I've hoped each spring
some nice old uncle from India would send me fifty
dollars accompanied by a gruesome threat, such as:
"If you use one cent of this money for anything but
roses, the first night the east wind blows a blackbird
will come along and nip off your nose."    But as it
             hasn't really happened yet, I have to pretend along the
last part of April or first of May that it is about to happen and start
to work to select the fifty dollars' worth.
   It is so hard to advise another just which roses to get, because
my list of irresistible ones grows each year, and then the rose-growers
have been so generous sending me unlabeled gift roses it so happens
now that some of my loveliest roses' real names are unknown to me
-they've had to attain names as best they might. For instance,
that delicate pinky-white climber with the great loose clusters having
the odor of frankincense and myrrh, is known to us as the "horse-
bitten-rose," but to you that name would not be enlightening.
   Of course, we all have reminiscent reasons for wanting certain
roses, and, if you are like me, you'll keep on trying Marechal Niel
and Fortune's Yellow even though geography prohibits and zero
browbeats you. One of my rose prides is the Cherokee which I
have teased through three winters now, because of the great wild
hedges I remember along the highways in the South. Each winter
I lighten its protection, as I have a theory that if you can persuade
a delicate rose to survive several Northern winters it grows hardier,
following out Nature's old law of adaptation to condition.
UPPOSE we pretend together that the old uncle from India has
     stingily sent us only nine dollars and twenty-five cents instead
     of the expected fifty dollars, and make the best of it. Out of that
amount we'll have to get hybrid perpetuals, hybrid teas, plain teas
and climbers-and fee[ thankful all at the same time. The hybrid
perpetuals, you know, are the perfectly hardy roses, supposed only to
loom in June, though mine bloom spasmodically through the fol-
lowing months until winter. After each flowering I cut the branch
that has flowered almost back to the original stall, and then it puts
out new shoots which often blossom.
    The hybrid teas have a hybrid perpetual ancestor on one side
and will stand through a Northern winter with protection. They
are perpetual joys, blooming constantly until November. We'll have
to have the hybrid teas even if we economize on the hybrid perpetuals.
   The teas-if you live in the North-are the roses you'll keep
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