"
"They have all been absorbed in the subject for three months and now
'Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of
birds is come.'"
Roger maintained that his Aunt Louise's house ought to be begun at the
time that he planted his sweetpeas.
"If I can get into the ground enough to plant, surely the cellar diggers
ought to be able to do the same," he insisted.
March was not over when he succeeded in preparing a trench a foot deep
all around the spot which was to be his vegetable garden except for a
space about three feet wide which he left for an entrance. In the bottom
he placed three inches of manure and over that two inches of good soil.
In this he planted the seeds half an inch apart in two rows and covered
them with soil to the depth of three inches, stamping it down hard. As
the vines grew to the top of the trench he kept them warm with the rest
of the earth that he had taken out, until the opening was entirely
filled.
The builder was not of Roger's mind about the cellar digging, but he
really did begin operations in April. Every day the Mortons and Smiths,
singly or in squads, visited the site of Sweetbrier Lodge, as Mrs. Smith
and Dorothy had decided to call the house. Dorothy had started a
notebook in which to keep account of the progress of the new estate, but
after the first entry--"Broke ground to-day"--matters seemed to advance
so slowly that she had to fill in with memoranda concerning the growth
of the garden.
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