I was taught this by one who knows,--He has a good name for the briar suckers and sprouts which I hope you carefully cut off from your grafted roses,--He calls it "the old Adam!" Yours, &c.
LETTER III.
"A good rule Is a good tool." DEAR LITTLE FRIEND, January is not a month in which you are likely to be doing much in your Little Garden.

Possibly a wet blanket of snow lies thick and white over all its hopes and anxieties.

No doubt you made all tidy, and some things warm, for the winter, in the delicious opportunities of St.Luke's and St.Martin's little summers, and, like the amusing American I told you of, "turned away writing _resurgam_ on the gate-post." I write _resurgam_ on labels, and put them wherever bulbs lie buried, or such herbaceous treasures as die down, and are, in consequence, too often treated as mere mortal remains of the departed, by the undiscriminating hand of the jobbing gardener.
Winter is a good time to make plans, and to put them down in your Garden-book.

Have you a Garden-book?
A note-book, I mean, devoted to garden memoranda.

It is a very useful kind of commonplace book, and soon becomes as fascinating as autumn and spring catalogues.
One has to learn to manage even a Little Garden chiefly by experience, which is sure teaching, if slow.