Ashes and cinders are excellent protection for the roots, and for plants--like roses--which do not die back to the earth level, and which sometimes require a screen as well as a quilt, bracken, fir branches, a few pea-sticks, and matting or straw are all handy helps.

The old gentleman who ran out--without his dressing-gown--to fling his own bed-quilt over some plants endangered by an unexpected frost, came very near to having a fine show of bloom and not being there to see it; but, short of this excessive zeal, when one's garden is a little one, and close to one's threshold, one may catch Jack Frost on the surface of many bits of rough-and-ready fencing on very cold nights.
_In drought, one good soaking with tepid water is worth six sprinklings._ Watering is very fatiguing, but it is unskilled labour, and one ought to be able to hire strong arms to do it at a small rate.
But I never met the hired person yet who could be persuaded that it was needful to do more than make the surface of the ground look as if it had been raining.
There is a "first principle" of which some gardeners are very fond, but in which I do not believe, that if you begin to water you must go on, and that too few waterings do harm.

What I don't believe is that they do harm, nor did I ever meet with a gardener who complained of an odd shower, even if the skies did not follow it up.

An odd sprinkling does next to no good, but an odd soaking may save the lives of your plants.

In very hot weather don't grudge a few waterings to your polyanthuses and primroses.