Many people would like flowering plants in the house, but do not feel they can afford the expense of buying potted plants. Besides the cost of such plants, it often happens that a plant transferred from a damp, warm greenhouse to a dry and rather cold room seems to fail, and in a week or two presents such a poor appearance that the purchaser wishes it had never been bought. It may interest you to know what I did with twenty cents in the way of flowers in the window. In the fall of 1887 I bought for twenty cents a big root of Astilbe Japonica, and filling a soap-box with loam, I buried the root up to the crown in the soil, and left box and all in a cool cor-ner of the cellar. Late in January, 1888, I found it had begun to grow, so I found an old flower-pot and managed to crowd the root into it with some of the soil from the soap-box. The pot was too small, but it was all I had, and after giving the root a good showering, I placed it in the parlor window on the 28th of January. Within a week the brown curly shoots had begun to open, and from that time on the plant grew magnificently, sending up a dense mass of its feathery green foliage. In time the delicate white flowers appeared, and made a beautiful display for nearly three weeks.

In May the plant was placed in the garden, where it grew finely all summer. Of course there were no flowers, as the crop had bloomed they say in the house. As we moved the next fall, the plant was. merely dug up and reset in the new garden. The next year it bloomed abundantly out of doors. In the fall of '89 I dug up the root, now grown quite large, and with a sharp hatchet chopped it into four pieces, leaving two pieces in the ground for next summer's bloom out of doors. The other pieces I stored in a box of loam in the cellar. While you read this the roots are again starting in new pots in my windows, and promise an abundant bloom. Here is a way, if you are patient, to have the beginning of a stock of window plants that are strong, vigorous, free from insects, and that will grow in the moderate heat of a living-room. If you wish to try it now, have a root dug up and potted. It will do no harm to chop it out of the frozen ground, provided care is taken not to tear or cut it too much. Place the frozen lump of root and soil in the cellar to thaw, and then pot it and place in a sunny window. One plant. costing you twenty cents, will give two plants in one season.

Leave one in the ground; store the other in the cellar till after Christmas. The next year you will have four plants, the next year eight, the next year sixteen, and so on. You can keep succession in the cellar and fill your windows with a succession of flowers. Every plant will bear its crop and then go on growing in the garden, and by alternating the plants, giving them one year in the ground in turn, you will have flowers both in the house and in the garden from March to June. This is what I did and have done often. You can do it if you try ! Why don't you try ? - Parlor Gardener.