Among other useful magazines of the month, I wish to greet in terms of
welcome that particular one which the Directors of the Fruit Growers’
Association of Ontario have put forth, not unlike what Noah did when he
loosed the dove from the ark, to secure for the lovers of fruits and
flowers so desirable a medium for exchanging horticultural thoughts and
experiences. May the CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST prove a welcome visitor
each month to those who seek the festive regions of Pomona and Flora. I
take its humble beginning as a pledge of future greatness, and am
convinced that the numbers of the F. G. A. will make it a credit to our
Province by frequent contributions of useful matter.
Farmers’ wives and daughters, among whom, I am happy to say, is growing
up a most worthy and refined taste for flowers and fruits, will find it
to their advantage to ask questions through this convenient medium, as
to the finest, best, and most suitable flowers with which to deck their
lawns and ornament the garden-plot attached to their rural homes. What
can add more to the charms of these quiet homes than nicely kept borders
of blooming flowers, unless indeed it be the ruddy glow of health on the
cheeks of the maidens who tend and care for these lovely pets of Summer.
They are the true Canadian daughters who thus labor to make home
attractive, and secure the love of father, the approval of mother, the
affection of brother, and finally gain for themselves, as a just reward,
the deep and lasting love of the appreciative man, who has been watching
and waiting to take as his wife to his own home, the girl who knows so
well how to strew life’s thorny path with beautiful flowers. He knows,
without further instruction, that she will make that home an Eden.
Many a time, weary with the day’s hard digging, have the pains of my own
toils vanished when looking over and admiring the well-kept borders of
petunia, phlox, pansy, heliotrope, and asters, placed in front of my
humble cottage by the loving hands of those who know so well the
attractive force of flowers; there have I sat, in the quiet glow of
golden sunset, enjoying to the full their brilliant tints and grateful
fragrance; the hard lines of life’s toil for the time quite forgotten,
in delightful communion with these smiling daughters of Flora. Let us
then cultivate flowers, and have all the talk we can touching these
pledges of love from the full hand of nature.
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