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summer had added so much vital strength to all plants that this 
year would be a good year for flowers and fruit. That forecast was 
almost but not quite right, and it would have been quite right 
but for the frost of 20th May. From all parts there came the 
same record. In my own garden the flowering shrubs were laden 
with blossoms with a profusion that I never saw before ; and from 
Kew the report was that in every portion of the gardens the 
flowering was quite phenomenal. Among the early flowering 
shrubs the Magnolias were perfect pictures of healthy bloom ; 
fruit trees of all sorts were sheets of blossom, and roses were full 
of promise ; and so through all the flowering trees and shrubs, till 
we arrived at the Tulip Trees and Catalpas which were thickly 
covered with flowers. Unfortunately in a large amount of this 
fair promise we were doomed to disappointment. The May frost 
destroyed all blossom that was in a certain stage ; pears, plums, 
peaches and apricots had passed that stage and were com- 
paratively unhurt ; but apples, walnuts, strawberries, raspberries 
and currants were in many cases so injured in their blossoms that 
they bore little or no fruit, except in the few cases in which they 
were so forward as to be beyond injury, or so backward as to 
have their flowers unformed and so were saved. Gooseberries 
had heavy crops, and so had pears and filberts, but there were no 
walnuts. Peaches and apricots also had heavy crops, but owing 
to the wet and lack of sun the fruits not only ripened badly, 
where they ripened at all, but to a great extent they rotted on 
the trees. Bulbs were not as good asI had expected them to be ; 
and I suppose, especially with the Lilies, that they have not 
recovered the drought of 1893. 
The year was marked in a very unpleasant degree by two pests, 
weeds and earwigs. Among the weeds thistles were especially 
abundant, and this abundance of thistles was remarked not only 
all over England, but in many parts of Europe, and to an alarming 
extent in America. In my own garden I was not pleased to see a 
great number of thistles of species which I had never noticed before, 
