"To one who has a garden soul, the grouping of flowers in 

 a garden becomes not only a labour of intense love but a 



distinct art*" 



HELEN MILMAN. 



MAY 



A GLORIOUS birth is the early sunshine of the Spring, 

 -** flooding the world to-day and calling from their winter 

 sleep and dreams the later buds and flowers. A tender 

 time as of hope fulfilled, a period of which Christina Rossetti 

 notes when she sings 



" There is no time like Spring, 

 When life's alive in everything, 

 Before new nestlings sing . . . 

 Before the daisy grows a common flower." 



Who at the sunrise does not feel the precious gladness 

 of the new life that is in the air, whispering a gracious 

 message 



" Oh, who at sunrise could be ought but glad 



I hear the loud, 



Yet mellow thrush's note ; a blackbird sings 

 With sudden burst of song ; a lark upsprings," 



sings Mackenzie Bell. And this early season, " before the 

 daisy grows a common flower," has called forth many an 

 epitaph from every poet enshrined for us in some haunting 

 line of theirs ; many a powerful passage penned by writer and 

 thinker often arrests our attention, and which matches these 

 days of increasing loveliness. Sydney Smith writes very 

 beautifully of this time : " Walk in the fields," he says, " and 

 if you carry with you a mind unpolluted with harm, watch 

 how it is impressed ! You are delighted with the beauty of 



