Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial402dodg).pdf/466

912 as you would be with baking-powder and butter and sugar when making a cake.

Collect the lawn clippings during the hot weather and spread them around all your garden plants, to protect the earth above their roots from baking under the sun, as well as to keep the moisture from being drawn up out of it. This mulch of clippings acts just the same as the loose earth or dust mulch about which I told you a while ago—and it saves the work of going all over the ground to loosen it up and make a dust mulch. Then the clippings, as they disintegrate, work their way down into the earth and improve the soil by adding their little bit of humus, and may be spaded under when the time for spading comes around again.

It is not too late to make the seed-bed which I told you about last month, if you have not made it yet, nor to sow the seed of perennials for next year’s garden in it, if you do it at once. Whether you do this or not, however, keep everything tidy, and all old flower heads cut off. Pile them in a heap, with the rakings from the lawn that are not needed to mulch the flowers. These will be the beginning of a compost heap which you shall hear about later. Keep well on guard and be very, very watchful for Rosycoats and Greenjackets!