Thursday, May 19, 1939

< Mom was 23 years old when she wrote this. >

We were supposed to have had a frost last night but luckily it didn’t materialize. Perhaps we’re up too high here. Anyway, last night Marion < her sister > and I changed into our old clothes as soon as we got home and started watering our new trees. It looked like rain but we didn’t dare depend on it, and after all we didn’t get it, so I guess we were wise.

Last week we went out to the Wahoo Lodge to buy some Chinese elms for the west end of the garden. We’ve tried lilac and flowering currant there but they didn’t live, and I suggested to Mother that maybe Chinese elms would grow better. At least they’ll keep the soil from washing, and they grow so fast that we should be pretty well screened from view the road in three years < “the road” would be Cleveland Ave. >.

We not only came home with the elms, but I bought three mulberries and Marion and I each got five silver leaf maples, and Marion got some Dakota poplars, too, which the man assured us wouldn’t grow up into cottonwoods.

We rode at seven Sunday morning < they had horses, being outside of the city limits, plus their father had a livery stable at one time > and came home to plant the trees, and worked practically all day long, and I at least was plenty stiff and sore Monday and Tuesday.

After we had finished watering, I helped Dot < oldest sister > a little while watering of her hundred < yes, that’s what she wrote! > tiny Black Hills pines and then weeded some iris over by the yellow rose bushes. < As part of the family income, their father raised and sold produce at the farmer’s market in town — they must have also sold plants to gardeners. >

Marion and I together raked out a lot of dry weeds south of the garden that were left over from last year, and we burned what we could of them, after it got too dark to weed.

A year ago in August I set out some new iris, of which five lived. Three of them are early dwarf iris, and all three of them have bloomed this year. Coerulea, a very light blue, bloomed first, then Black Midget, a deep purple, and Gorgeous, a plain white. (So far it has had only one bloom.) Neither Talisman nor Wm. Mohr has any buds, but they are both later, of course, and not as well sheltered as the iris next to the house. Most of them look as if they will be blooming in about two more days.

Mother’s dwarf iris, Elizabeth Huntington, a blue bi-color, has three buds and should be out tomorrow if it’s warm. Her Talisman, Buto, Rialgar and Mrs. Valerie West all survived the winter and should bloom this spring for the first time.

If only the grasshoppers aren’t so bad this year we are going to buy a lot more new ones. Last year we couldn’t bear to go out in the garden, they were so horribly thick.

My lilac, Soue de Ludwig Spaeth, was nearly destroyed last summer but has come up again from the roots. I was so glad to see it — it might have bloomed this year if it hadn’t been for the ‘hoppers.

The forsythia is all through blooming, the flowering almond is a mass of pink, and Mother’s new bush, the white Kerria, has a few delicate single blossoms on it. Pop’s peach trees have had beautiful reddish-peach blossoms and he swears they are going to see fruit this year because the little round cores haven’t dropped off as they usually do.

And the lilacs are lovely. The big bush on the front lawn < on Cleveland Ave. > should have been trimmed last year and consequently isn’t at its best, but there are more blooms on the lilacs in the north hedge than we’ve had before.

Violet < her good friend > and I put our flower garden in after the first of May or sooner— I forget the exact date now — and tonight my marigolds are coming up. Her bachelor buttons started peeping through a couple of days ago. Reading from west to east, we planted the following: Lobelia, Nemophila, Mignonette, Marigold, Snapdragons, Canterbury Bells, Balsom; and Violet has Poppies, Phlox, Nasturtium and Mignonette.

Along the south border of my flower garden I planted a row of sweet peas.

There’s so much to be done in the garden and yard that I don’t know where to begin, but I’ll have to wait till another warm day comes along — today is cold and sort of windy.