"As to colour in gardens * * I think the best and safest 

 plan is to mix up your flowers, and rather eschew 



great masses of colour/' 



WILLIAM MORRIS. 



AUGUST 



"O ICH colours are characteristic of this fast-closing month. 

 -*^ Is there anything lovelier to be found in all the months 

 of the year than a field of scarlet poppies? "See," says 

 Leigh Hunt, 



" how Heaven loves colour ; 

 How great Nature clearly joys in reds and greens." 



Ruskin penned nothing more charming than when writing 

 about colour in his note on poppies, to be found in those 

 delightful papers of his on our wild flowers, "Proserpina," 

 which most garden lovers know. 



Applicable to an August dawn are Browning's lines to be 

 found in " Pippa Passes " : 



" Day ! 



Faster and more fast, 

 O'er night's brim day boils at last : 

 Boils, pure gold, o'er the cloud cup's brim, 

 Where spurting and suppressed it lay, 

 For not a froth-flake touched the rim 

 Of yonder gap in the solid grey 

 Of the eastern cloud an hour away ; 

 But forth one wavelet, then another curled, 

 Till the whole sunrise, not to be suppressed, 

 Rose, reddened, and its seething breast 

 Flickered in bounds, grew old, then overflowed the world." 



