Rural School Leaflet 



761 



GARDENS 



"^nfj a'tr tfjp pnppg fiflba of al^pp. 

 2IIIP bromag mtn&a nf iirramlantJ trttp." — Robert Loveman 



THE SPIRIT OF THE GARDEN 



L. H. Bailey 



I step from the house, and at once I am released. I am in a new realm. 

 This realm has just been created, and created for me. I give myself 

 over to the blue vault of the sky; or if it rain, to first-hand relationship 

 with the elements, — for can I not touch the drops that fall from som.e 

 mysterious height? I am conscious of a quick smell of the soil, something 

 like the smell of the sea. I hear the call of a bird or a faint rush of wind, 

 or catch a shadow that passes and is gone. There is a sudden sensation 

 of green things timibled over the ground. I feel that they are living, 

 growing, aspiring, sensitive. 



Then the details begin to grow up out of the area, every detail perfect 

 in its way, every one individual, yet all harmonious. The late rain 

 compacted the earth; but here are little grooves and cuts made by tiny 

 rills that ran down the furrows and around the stems of the plants, coales- 

 cing and growing as they ran, digging gorges between mountainous 

 clods, spreading into islanded lakelets, depositing deltas, and then plung- 

 ing headlong toward some far-off sea, — a panorama that needs only to 

 be magnified to make those systems of rivers and plains and mountains 

 the names of which I sought so much in my old geography days. 



Soft green things push up out of the earth, growing by some sweet 

 alchemy that I cannot understand but that I can feel. Green leaves 

 expand to the sun; buds burst into flowers; flowers change to fruits; the 

 pods burst, and berries wither and fall; the seeds drop and are lost, — yet 

 I know that nature the gardener will recover them in due season. 



Strange plants that I did not want are growing here and there, and now 

 I find that they are as good as the rest, for they spring from the same 



