"Now is the winter of my discontent."

I

I have not had charge of my garden very long; and I am not sure that I should have undertaken such a charge had there been anyone else to do it. But there was no one else, and it so obviously needed doing.

Of course there was the gardener—I shall have to allude to him occasionally—but just now I will only mention the fact that his greatest admirer could not have accused him of taking care of the garden.

Then there was his Reverence; he was by way of being in charge of everything, me included, I suppose, and of course nominally[Pg 4] it was so. He had the parish and the church, and the rectory and his family, and the men-servants and the maid-servants, a horse and a pony and the garden! He managed most things well, I will say, and the kitchen garden gave some account of itself, but in the flower garden desolation cried aloud.

I was moved one day to say I thought it disgraceful. "There are no flowers anywhere; nothing but some semi-red geraniums and some poverty-stricken calceolarias and scraggy lobelias. We have none of those nice high blue things, what do you call them? or those yellow round things with red fringes, like daisies, which are not daisies; we have no sweet-Williams even, though they are the sort of flowers that grow in every cottage garden!"

There was a twinkle in his Reverence\'s eye.

"You seem to know a good deal about flowers, Mary; I can\'t even follow your descriptions. I try my best with the carrots and onions. You must acknowledge you have vegetables."

"Oh, vegetables!" I cried with a tone of contempt.

[Pg 5]

"Yes, vegetables! You don\'t seem to despise them at dinner."

"No, but vegetables! Anyone can buy vegetables."

"Anyone can buy flowers, I suppose, if they have the money to spend."

"They can\'t buy the look of flowers in the garden," I argued; "that is what one wants; not a few cut things on the table."

"Well, I spend," began his Reverence, and then paused, and looked through a little drawer of his table that contained account-books.

An idea struck me. I waited eagerly for his next words.

"Let me see," continued his Reverence, running his eye down long rows of figures. "Ah! here is one of last year\'s bills for seeds, etc. Just on ten pounds, you see, and half of that certainly was for the flower garden. There were new rose trees."

"They are mostly dead. Griggs said it was the frost," I interpolated.

"And some azaleas, I remember."

"They don\'t flower."

[Pg 6]

"And bulbs."

"Oh! Griggs buried them with a vengeance."

"Well, anyway, five pounds at least was—"

"Was wasted, sir; that is what happened to that five pounds. Now, look here."

His Reverence looked.

"Give me that five pounds."

"That particular one?"

"Of course not. Five pounds, and I will see if I can\'t get some flowers into the garden. Five pounds! Why, my goodness, what a lot of things one ought to get with five pounds. Seeds are so cheap, sixpence a packet I have heard; and then one takes one\'s own seeds after the first year. Come, sir, five pounds down and every penny shall go on the garden."

"Dear me! but according to you five pounds is a great deal too much. I can\'t say that it has produced very fine results under Griggs\'s management; but at sixpence a packet!"

"No, sir, it is not too much really," I said gravely. "I shall have to buy a heap[Pg 7] of things besides seeds, I expect. But you shall see what I will do with it. I want that garden to be full of flowers."

His Reverence looked out of the study window. It was a bleak, windy day towards the end of November. A few brown, unhappy-looking leaves still hung on the trees; but most of them, released at last, danced riotously across the small grass plot in front of the old red brick house, until they found a damp resting-place beneath the shrubbery. The border in front looked unutterably dreary with one or two clumps of frost-bitten dahlias and some scrubby little chrysanthemums.

"Full of flowers!" The eye of faith was needed indeed.

"I don\'t mean before Christmas," I added, following his Reverence\'s eye. "But there are things that come out in the spring, you know, and perhaps they ought to be put in now. Is it a bargain?"

"Yes, Mary, it shall be a bargain. Here is the fiver. Don\'t waste it, but make the best of that garden. You had better consult old Griggs about bulbs and such-like. There[Pg 8] ought to be some. I don\'t think the few snowdrops I saw can represent all I bought."

"They never came up. I know they didn\'t. I believe he planted them topsy-turvy. I suppose there is a right side up to bulbs, and if so, Griggs would certainly choose the wrong. It\'s his nature. Can\'t we get rid of him, sir? Isn\'t there any post besides that of gardener which he might fill?"

His Reverence will not always take my words of wisdom seriously.

"What, more posts! Why, he is clerk and grave-digger and bell-ringer! Would you like me to retire in his favour?"

"I am speaking seriously, Father. If anything is to be made of this garden it can\'t be done whilst that old idiot remains here."

"I fear he must remain here. I have inherited him. His position is as firm as mine."

"Not as gardener!"

"No; but he can\'t live on his other earnings. No, Mary, put your best foot foremost and make something of old Griggs and the garden and the five pounds. And now take this bulb catalogue. I have not[Pg 9] had time to look it through, and perhaps it may not be too late to get some things in for the spring. But don\'t spend all the five pounds on bulbs," he shouted after me as I left the study.

And so I plunged into gardening, a very Ignoramus of the Ignorami, and what is herein set down will be written for the edification, instruction, warning and encouragement of others belonging to that somewhat large species.
I

I opened the bright-coloured catalogue. Oh! what fascination lurks in the pages of a bulb catalogue. The thick, highly-glazed leaves turn with a rich revelation on both sides. It scarcely needs the brilliant illustrations to lift the imagination into visions of gorgeous beauty. Parterres of amazing tulips, sheets of golden daffodils, groups of graceful, nodding narcissus, the heavy, sweet scent of hyacinths comes from that glorious bloom "excellent for pot culture";[Pg 10] and here in more quiet letters grow the early crocus—yellow, white, blue and mixed—and snowdrops. Ah! snowdrops, coming so early, bringing the promise of all the rich glory that is to follow. And scillas, aconites, chionodoxa or "Glory of the Snow"!

What were all those lovely, to me half unheard-of names that could be had for two shillings and sixpence, three shillings or four shillings and sixpence a hundred? They bloomed in February and March, they were hardy and throve in any soil. Oh! how they throve in the pages of that catalogue.

And anemones! My mind rushed to the joys of the Riviera, revealed in occasional wooden boxes, mostly smashed, sent by friends from that land of sunshine, and whose contents, when revived, spoke of a wealth of colour forever to be associated with the name of anemone. To grow them myself, rapture! "Plant in October or November." It was still November; they must be ordered at once, "double," "mixed," "single," "fulgens"; they were "dazzling," "effective," "brilliant," and began to flower in March.

[Pg 11]

I was plunged into a happy dream of month succeeding month, bringing each with it its own glory of radiant bloom, very much after the manner of Walter Crane\'s picture-books. Life was going to be well worth living.

So now to make my first list and secure all this treasure for the coming beautiful flower-laden year.

I made a list; and then, mindful of the limited nature of even five pounds and all that would be required of it, I made up a long row of figures. This gave me an ugly jar.

Flowers should be given freely and graciously, not bought and sold, to everyone by everyone for the promotion of beauty and happiness upon earth. Any good Government should see to this. But present arrangements being so defective, I had to remodel my list considerably. I cheered up with the thought, however, that bulbs were not annuals, but on their own account, so I had heard, grew and multiplied quietly in the earth.

[Pg 12]

What could have become of those planted by Griggs last year? Did worms eat bulbs?
I

I wandered round the garden, seeing possibilities and refusing to be depressed by the sadness of sodden grass, straggling rose branches bare of beauty, heavy earth that closed in dejected plants, weeds or what not; I saw them all with new eyes and scanned them closely. Did they mean flowers? Down in their hearts could those poor draggled, tangled specimens dream of radiant blooms turned to the sun? I had not studied my garden before; there were prisoners in it. Care and attention, the right food and freedom, should bring new beauties to light. I had grumbled and growled for over two years at the hopelessness of it, and at the dearth of flowers for house decoration. Now all was to be changed; the garden was to be beautiful! I thought of that catalogue.

Griggs was digging in the kitchen garden;[Pg 13] not hard, not deep, still, no one could say he was unemployed. He was himself very muddy, and gave one the idea of working with all parts of his person except his brains. My former interviews with him had been short if not sweet; but there was no open quarrel.

He paused as I stood near him, wiping his spade with his hands, kicking at the clods of earth round him as though they were troublesome.

"Is that for potatoes?" I asked, wishing to show not only interest but knowledge.

He tilted his cap to one side and viewed the bare expanse of upturned earth.

"Oi \'ad taters in \'ere last; thought oi\'d dig it a bit. Diggin\' allays comes in \'andy."

"Oh, yes;" and then I made a fresh start. "I wanted to know about those bulbs you planted last autumn. Did they come up?"

This was evidently an awkward question.

"Bulbs! Oh, there wur a few wot the Rector give me some toime back lars year. They didn\'t come to much. Never knows with bulbs, you don\'t!"

[Pg 14]

"Oh! but bulbs ought to come up."

"Some on \'em do, some times. Don\'t \'old myself with them furrin koinds."

"What, not with Dutch bulbs? Why, they grow the best kind in Holland."

"Maybe they do; over there. P\'haps this soil didn\'t soute \'em. Wot I found diggin\' the beds I put in them two round beds on the lawn. They wasn\'t no great quantity. Most on \'em perished loike, it \'pears to me."

"Perhaps you did not put them in right," I ventured. "How deep should you plant them?"

Oh! how ignorant I was. I did not feel even sure that I knew the right side up of a bulb.

Griggs gave a hoarse chuckle.

"They don\'t need to go fur in; \'bout so fur," and he made a movement that might indicate an inch or a yard; "but there\'s lots o\' contrairy things that may \'appen to bulbs same as to most things. En\'mies is wot there is in gardins, all along o\' the curse."

[Pg 15]

Griggs was clerk; he never forgot that post of vantage. He looked at me as he said the word "curse." I wondered if his mind had made the connection between Eve and her daughter. But to return to the bulbs. Were worms the enemies in this particular case?

I knew they buried cities and raised rocks, and were our best diggers and fertilisers, because I had once read Darwin on the subject; but were they the enemies of bulbs?

"I am going to take the garden in hand a bit," I said after a pause. "I think it needs it."

"Well, I could do wi\' a bit o\' elp," and he wiped more mud from his spade to his hands, and from his hands to his trousers, and then back again, until I wondered what his wife did with him when she got him home. "But I reckon a boy \'ud be more \'andy loike. There\'s a lot o\' talk," he added, half to himself.

I remembered with a feeling of pain how our old cook and factotum had received the[Pg 16] news that I was taking cooking lessons in much the same spirit; but my newly-found energy was not going to be suppressed by Griggs.

"I am going to order some more bulbs," I began.

"Ah! you might do that. The gardin needs things puttin\' into it, that\'s what it needs."

I looked at him sternly. "And things taken out of it too. I never knew such a place for weeds."

"No more didn\'t I. It\'s fearful bad soil for weeds; but maybe if there warn\'t so much room for \'em they\'d get sort of crowded out."

"You have been here a good many years," I said, not without an afterthought.

"Yes; that\'s wot I \'ave been. I come first in ole Mr Wood\'s time; \'e was a \'and at roses, \'e was; somethin\' loike we \'ad the place then, me an\' \'im. Then Mr \'Erbert took it, that\'s when ole Woods, \'is father as \'twere, doied. But \'e didn\'t stay long; went fur a missunairy \'e did to them furrin[Pg 17] parts and never come back, \'e didn\'t neither. Then come Mr Cooper, ten years, no, \'levin, he was \'ere and never did a bit to the gardin; took no interes\', no cuttin\'s, no seeds, no manure, no nothink. That\'s \'ow the weeds overmastered us."

"But at least you might have dug up the weeds."

"Allays callin\' me away for some\'ot, they was. The Bath chair for \'is sister as lived with \'im, allays some\'ot. Talk o\' gardinin\'! The weeds just come."

Then his tone brightened a bit; the Bath chair had been an unpleasing retrospect.

"But if the Rector looks to spend a bit, we might get some good stuff in." A pause, and a searching look at the setting sun. "I must be going. Got a bit to see to up at my place. Can\'t never git round with these short days."

Griggs collected his implements and with fine independence walked off, giving me a backward nod and a "Good evenin\', miss. We could do wi\' a few bulbs and such loike."

I was to divide Griggs\'s time with his[Pg 18] Reverence, but Griggs seemed quite able to dispose of it himself.
I

I opened a strong wooden box with much interest and examined the result of my first venture in bulbs. Brown paper bags full of little seeds in which were carefully packed the firm dry brown roots, big and little, round and oblong. How wonderful that these "dead bones" should be capable of springing up into the glories of sight and smell foretold by my catalogue. This withered brown ball a hyacinth! unfolding, unfolding, until green tips, broadening leaves, and at last a massive crown of flowers appear. And the magician\'s wand to work this transformation? Just the good old brown earth, the common rain, and the wonderful work-a-day sun.

I was soon busy in the garden depositing my various bulbs in heaps where I intended them to be buried.

[Pg 19]

I called Griggs and requested suitable tools for the work.

"I am going to plant daffodils under these trees," I said; "and I want you to take that bag of crocuses and put them in all over the grass in front. Put them anywhere and everywhere, like the daisies grow."

"What! front of the Rector\'s winder?"

"Yes; all over."

"\'Ow many \'ave you got \'ere?"

"Three hundred; but they don\'t take long planting."

"\'Ope not! I\'ve got a good bit else to to do; can\'t fiddle faddle over them."

"Put them in the right side up. I want them to grow," I called after his retreating figure. Then I eyed my pile of bulbs.

Of course I did know the right side up of a bulb; of course everybody did; and if anyone was likely to make a mistake it was surely Griggs, so it was clearly no use asking him. Nice brown thing, why had you not given just one little green sprout as the crocuses and snowdrops had done, so that there could be no mistake? And[Pg 20] what would happen if they were planted topsy-turvy? Could they send up shoots from anywhere they chose? or would the perversity of such a position be too much for their budding vitality? I did not wish to try the experiment; my daffodils must make their appearance next March. I ranged them out in broad circles under one or two trees, in patches at the corner of projecting borders, and walked away to see the effect from different points; the effect, not of brown specks, but of sheets of gold that were to be.

His Reverence found me with my head on one side taking in the future from the drawing-room windows.

"You seem very busy, Mary."

"I am. You see, it is a great thing to place them where they can stay. I like permanent things. It will be lovely, won\'t it, to see that golden patch under the mulberry tree and another at the corner there; and then under the chestnut just a sheet of white?"

"Oh, lovely! And what kind of sheet or[Pg 21] wet blanket is old Griggs preparing for my eyes in front?"

"Oh, the old owl! I must run and see he is doing as I told him. You might be useful, sir, for a bit, mightn\'t you? and begin popping in those daffodils under that tree exactly as I have arranged them. I will be back directly."

His Reverence loved walking round with a tall spud prodding up weeds, but it was a new idea to set him to work in other ways. I left him for some time and came back with a heated face.

"Just imagine! Oh, really, sir, we can\'t go on with that—that—unutterable idiot! He won\'t do as he is told. What do you think he was doing? I told him to plant all that front piece of grass with crocuses, you know—told him as plainly as I could speak—and there he was burying my crocuses, by handfuls I think, in the border."

"Oh, well, he doesn\'t understand your ideas, you see, Mary; he has not seen them carried out yet."

"Oh, but he did understand, only he said[Pg 22] it would take longer to plant them in the grass and they would come up better in the border. \'I want that for tulips,\' I said, and stood over him while he unburied all he had done. Then he said, \'Can\'t stand cuttin\' up the grass like this; better put \'em straight \'long that shady border there, give a bit o\' colour to it.\' \'I want them here, in the grass,\' I said. \'And how \'bout my mowing? I shall cut \'em to pieces.\' That was a bright idea, he thought. \'You don\'t begin mowing until after the crocuses are well over; that won\'t hurt.\' And now I have spread them all over the lawn myself and left him to put them in. He can\'t make any further mistake I hope."

His Reverence was laughing. Old Griggs amused him much more than he did me.

"How many have you done?" I asked, and I looked at the still unburied bulbs. "Why, sir—"

"I have done two, Mary, really; but look at this pile of plantains! Oh, these horrid things! you must clear the garden of them."

"I can\'t," I said sternly. "There is too much else to do. What we want is colour,[Pg 23] flowers everywhere. The plantains are green so they don\'t disturb the harmony. But you may take them up if you like."

"Colour! harmony! If you talk to old Griggs like that he will think you are mad. And, Mary, you bought all these bulbs? Remember there is the spring and summer to be reckoned with. How much has gone?"

"Two pounds. It ought to have been twenty. Seeds are cheaper, you know. I must do a lot with seeds, I find. But bulbs go on, that is the comfort of them. They will be there for always!"

"Well, I won\'t interfere. Don\'t bully my old Griggs." And his Reverence walked off.

I proceeded, yes, I will confess it, carefully to open up one of the bulbs he had planted. Yes, there it was, it had its point upward. Oh! I hoped he really knew. And so all the others were placed snugly in their narrow beds, and patted down with a kind of blessing. "Wake up soon and be glorious, brilliant, effective."

[Pg 24]
T

There were hours of deep dejection after all my planting was done. It was December, and so much ought to have been done in November, October, and even September. In fact, I ought to have begun nine months ago. And those nine months could not be caught up for another year, depressing thought! Wallflowers, polyanthus, forget-me-nots, sweet-Williams, all the dear, simple things of which I wanted masses, instead of the one or two stalky bushes that grew down a long herbaceous border, all these should have begun their career, it appeared, last February or March if I wanted them to flower next spring. I must wait. I had not set out on my gardening experience to learn patience, it is always being rubbed into one; but I warn you, O brother or sister Ignoramus! that of all stocks you will need patience the most.

My garden was now a white world. Snow buried everything: hopes and depressions were equally hidden. A fine time for castle-building, for hurrying through the seasons and imagining how many treasures ought to be,[Pg 25] might be, should be hidden beneath that cold, pure coverlid and warmly, snugly nestling in Mother Earth\'s brown bosom. What energy must be at work, what pushing, struggling, expanding of little points of life downwards, upwards, until they burst into resurrection with little green hands folded as in thanksgiving.

In the meantime I turned to books, on gardening, of course. My new "fad," as the Others called it, having announced itself in plenty of time for Christmas, my pile of gifts presented a most learned appearance. This was my first taste of that fascinating literature. His Reverence had handed over to me a brown-clad work on gardening—somewhat ancient I must say—at the beginning of my enterprise. I had scanned it critically and compared it to an ordinary cookery-book in which recipes are given, and unless you are already familiar with the art you are continually faced with difficulties. The cookery-books tell one to "make a white sauce of flour, butter and milk," but how? Wherein lies the mystery of that delicately-flavoured, creamy substance or that lumpy[Pg 26] kind of paste? Just so my regular handbook to gardening. For example:—

"They vary very much in habit, but should be of easy cultivation. The compost required is rich, deep and moist. Any sourness in the soil will be fatal to flowering. When planting supply liberally with manure, and occasionally mulch in dry weather."

But what did it all mean? How test the soil and the sourness which would be fatal to flourishing? The proof of the pudding would be in the eating, but how prevent any tragic consequences?

But these other books, this literature on gardening! They are generally better than the garden itself. Practical they are not, but why ask it of them? They are the seductive catalogue turned into finest art. One wanders with some sweet, madonna-like lady of smooth fair hair, mild eyes and broad-brimmed hat, or with a courtly parson of the old school, in a garden where the sun always shines. Green stretches of lawn (no plantains), trees grouped from their infancy to adorn and shade and be the [Pg 27]necessary background to masses of flowering shrubs. Through rockeries, ferneries, nut-groves, copses we wander as in a fairy dream. Borders laid out to catch the sun, sheltered by old red brick walls where fruit ripens in luscious clusters. Rose gardens, sunk gardens, water gardens lead on to copses where all wild things of beauty are met together to entrance the eye. Broad walks between herbaceous borders, containing every flower loved from the time of Eve; sheltered patches where seedlings thrive, a nursery of carefully-reared young. And in this heaven of gardening land gardeners galore flit to and fro, ever doing their master\'s behest, and manure and water, and time and money may be considerations but are not anxieties. I ought to have begun years ago; seven, nine, fifteen, and even twenty-five years are talked of but as yesterday. I felt out of it in every sense. My garden lay out there in the cold, grey mist; it had been neglected, it held no rippling stream, no nut-grove, it ran upward into no copse or land of pine and bracken and heather. It had a hedge one side and a sloping field[Pg 28] the other. The straight kitchen garden was bounded by no red brick wall, and the birds from the convenient hedges ate all the fruit, unless gooseberries and currants were so plentiful that we also were allowed a share. Griggs talked of an \'urbrageous\' border. But what a border! Evening primroses, the common yellow marigold, a few clusters of golden-rod, and other weed-like flowers that persist in growing of themselves, with Griggs, five pounds a year and an Ignoramus to work it!

Oh! why had I so cheerfully undertaken such an apparently hopeless task?

But my honour was now at stake. I had said I would have flowers on five pounds a year, and I could not draw back. Let me clear away the mists that had arisen. After all, that tree down there was a pink chestnut, and beneath it lay my sheet of snowdrops and blue scillas. Before it burst into beauty they would have done their share of rejoicing the eye. At that corner, where the field sloped so prettily downwards, daffodils were hidden, and under the clump just over the fence more and more daffodils. A row of[Pg 29] stately limes, dismally bare now, carried the eye down to the next field. There, where it was always shady, I pictured future ferns and early wild-flowers, and maybe groups of foxgloves.

I turned again to my gardening books. I too would have a garden "to love," to "work in"; if not a "Gloucestershire garden," or a "German garden," or a "Surrey" one, still a garden. Months with me, also, should be a successive revelation of flowers; though I knew not a Latin name I would become learned in the sweet, simple, old-fashioned flowers that cottagers loved, and though I could not fit poetry on to every plant, I would have a posy for the study table right through the year.

That was my dream!
T

The first, the very first produce of the opening year in my garden was a winter aconite.

The little dead-looking roots had been planted in a sunny shrubbery border and had quickly thrust up[Pg 30] their golden crowns, circled with the tender green collar. Have you ever noticed how a winter aconite springs from its bed? Its ways are most original. The sturdy little stem comes up like a hoop; at one end is the root, at the other the blossom, with its green collar drooped carefully over the yellow centre. Gradually it raises itself, shakes off the loosened mould—you may help it here if you like—lays back its collar and opens its golden eye.

I picked every one I could find. It seemed sinful, but occasionally pride overcomes the most modest of us.

"There," I cried, "my garden is beginning already. Just look at them! Are they not lovely?"

"What, buttercups?" asked one of the Others.

"No, oh, ignorant one! they are not buttercups. They are winter aconite; note the difference."

"Let\'s look!" and the brown little fist of one of the youngest of the Others was thrust forth.

[Pg 31]

"All that fuss about those! You wait a minute!"

He ran off, returning shortly with quite a big bunch of my yellow treasures in his hand.

"Where did you get them? Jim, you bad boy! you must not pick my flowers," I exclaimed.

"Your flowers! and you hadn\'t an idea that they grew there. These are from my garden, and no one has given me a fiver to raise them with. Come, Mary, I shall cry halves. You had better square me!"

"Oh, Jim, where did you find them?" was all I could gasp.

I did square Jim, but it was in "kind," and then he showed me much winter aconite hidden away in an unfrequented shrubbery, where his quick little eyes had spied it. I thought of moving it to where it would show. Everything with me was for show in those early days; but these surprises hold their own delight, and I learnt to encourage them.

I suffered many things at the hands of the Others for spending five pounds on winter aconite when already the garden held[Pg 32] "such heaps "—that was their way of putting it.

I began to hope that more surprises of such sort might be in store for me. It is wonderful how one may avoid seeing what is really just under one\'s nose. The Others might laugh, but I doubt if they even knew winter aconite as the yellow buttercup-looking thing before that morning.

Another yellow flower tried to relieve the monotony of that dead season of the year. Struggling up the front of the house, through the virginian creeper and old Gloire de Dijon rose, were the bare branches of a yellow jasmine. From the end of December on through January and February it did its poor best to strike a note of colour in the gloom. But why was it not more successful? Judging from its performance, I had formed the meanest opinion of its capabilities, until one bright day in January my eye had been caught by a mass of yellow—I say advisedly a mass—thrown over the rickety porch of old Master Lovell\'s abode. Yellow jasmine! yes, there was no mistake about it,[Pg 33] but the bare greenish stems were covered with the brilliant little star-flowers, shining and rejoicing as in the full tide of summer. I thought of my bare straggling specimen and stopped to ask for the recipe for such blossoming. Old Lovell and old Griggs had both lived in Fairleigh all their lives, and there was an old-timed and well-ripened feud between the pair.

"A purty sight I calls that," said old Lovell, surveying his porch, "an\' yourn ain\'t loike it, ain\'t it? Ah! and that\'s not much of a surprise to me. Ever see that old Griggs up at th\' Rectory working away wi\' his shears? Lor\' bless you, he\'s a \'edging and ditching variety of gardener, that\'s wot I calls \'im. Clip it all, that\'s \'is motive, autumn and spring, one with another, an\' all alike, and then you \'spects winter blooming things to pay your trouble! But they don\'t see it, they don\'t."

"Oh! it\'s the clipping, is it? Well, then, how do you manage yours? It is quite beautiful." I always dealt out my praise largely in return for information.

[Pg 34]

"Leaves it to Natur\', I do. You wants a show? \'Ave it then and leave interfering with Natur\'. She knows \'er biz\'ness."

I did not feel quite convinced of this axiom; gardening seemed to be a continual assistance or interference with Nature in her most natural moods. So I said dubiously,

"Yellow jasmine should never be cut at all, then?"

"Look you \'ere, miss, at them buds all up the stem. If I cuts the stem wot becomes of them buds, eh?"

Unanswerable old Lovell! But as I looked at the thick matted trailings that covered his porch, it dawned on me that perhaps a judicious pruning out of old wood at the right season would help and not hinder the yellow show.

"Does it bloom on the new wood?" I asked with a thought most laudable in an Ignoramus.

"Blooms! why, it blooms all over. Look at it!" And having sounded the depth of old Lovell\'s knowledge, I left him with more words of praise.

So that was it! And my yellow jasmine[Pg 35] might be blooming like that if left alone, or better, if rightly handled; and doubtless the poverty-stricken appearance of the white jasmine, the small and occasional flowers of the clematis, were due to the same cause. Here was a new and important department of my wor............