Boy with toy boat at pond, 1910

  

 I love this little fella, holding his toy boat, standing in front of a gorgeous pond with a beautiful tree's image reflected on the water. 

 Ruth Mary Hallock illustrated "Little Rhymes for Little Readers" (1910), the source of both images featured in this post. She is another of those authors who has a knack for depicting childhood scenes.

  This illustration shows a girl who is kneeling in the grass to get a better look at the spring flowers. 

  This particular image accompanied a super-short poem by Wilhelmina Seegmiller called "The Rail-Fence Corners":

In the rail-fence corners,

 In the sunny, happy May,

Flowers get together

To pass the time o' day

  (Now that poem is perfect for short attention spans!) 

Girl planting in garden, 1923

  This girl is working hard to get the soil ready for planting - and in a dress and bonnet, no less!  She hasn't even seemed to notice the butterflies fluttering around her, encouraging her to plant something pollinator-friendly. (Or at least that's what I imagine they'd be whispering!)

   This illustration, from "Surprise Stories" by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey, was published in 1923. And it's no surprise that Florence E. Nosworthy (also known as Florence Pearl England) did a great job here - she always does! (Yes, I make bad jokes and puns way too often, I've been told...)

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Girl planting seeds, 1906

  

   We're still in the season when it seems everyone is talking about gardening, planting, and the flowers they're hoping to see. I'm not one of these people. Sure, flowers are great, but bugs, worms, dirt...um, no thanks!

  Still, I loved this illustration from a 1906 book for early readers. The little girl is concentrating so hard on digging the perfect hole to plant her seeds. Artist Bessie Collins Pease (later Gutmann) captured her intensity perfectly. 

  I'd love to hear - are you a dig-in-the-garden person or an admire-flowers-from-a-distance type?