Life in Avonlea continued on the smooth and even tenor of its way.  The “planting” was put in; the Improvers celebrated an Arbor Day.  Each Improver set out, or caused to be set out, five ornamental trees.  As the society now numbered forty members, this meant a total of two hundred young trees.  Early oats greened over the red fields; apple orchards flung great blossoming arms about the farmhouses and the Snow Queen adorned itself as a bride for her husband.  Anne liked to sleep with her window open and let the cherry fragrance blow over her face all night.  She thought it very poetical.  Marilla thought she was risking her life.

“Thanksgiving should be celebrated in the spring,” said Anne one evening to Marilla, as they sat on the front door steps and listened to the silver-sweet chorus of the frogs.  “I think it would be ever so much better than having it in November when everything is dead or asleep.  Then you have to remember to be thankful; but in May one simply can’t help being thankful . . . that they are alive, if for nothing else.  I feel exactly as Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden before the trouble began.  Is that grass in the hollow green or golden?  It seems to me, Marilla, that a pearl of a day like this, when the blossoms are out and the winds don’t know where to blow from next for sheer crazy delight must be pretty near as good as heaven.”

Marilla looked scandalized and glanced apprehensively around to make sure the twins were not within earshot.  They came around the corner of the house just then.

“Ain’t it an awful nice-smelling evening?” asked Davy, sniffing delightedly as he swung a hoe in his grimy hands.  He had been working in his garden.  That spring Marilla, by way of turning Davy’s passion for reveling in mud and clay into useful channels, had given him and Dora a small plot of ground for a garden.  Both had eagerly gone to work in a characteristic fashion.  Dora planted, weeded, and watered carefully, systematically, and dispassionately.  As a result, her plot was already green with prim, orderly little rows of vegetables and annuals.  Davy, however, worked with more zeal than discretion; he dug and hoed and raked and watered and transplanted so energetically that his seeds had no chance for their lives.

“How is your garden coming on, Davy-boy?” asked Anne.

“Kind of slow,” said Davy with a sigh.  “I don’t know why the things don’t grow better.  Milty Boulter says I must have planted them in the dark of the moon and that’s the whole trouble.  He says you must never sow seeds or kill pork or cut your hair or do any ’portant thing in the wrong time of the moon.  Is that true, Anne?  I want to know.”

“Maybe if you didn’t pull your plants up by the roots every other day to see how they’re getting on ‘at the other end,’ they’d do better,” said Marilla sarcastically.