W 



Here (in England) something almost human looks out at 

 you from the landscape I had been told I should 

 see a garden, but I did not know before to what extent 

 the earth could become a living repository of the vir* 

 tues of so many generations of gardeners/* 



JOHN BURROUGHS (Mellow England]. 



SEPTEMBER 



HAT are the memories of each of us when 



" In looking on the happy Autumn fields, 

 And thinking of the days that are no more" ? 



Sweet to the senses were the days of gentle rain that came 

 in earliest Spring, awakening the world once more to life from 

 the long sleep of Winter. Welcome, too, were the first soft 

 winds that came and kissed each brown twig into laughing 

 leafiness, bringing back bird and blossom, bidding hedge and 

 tree put on its bright robe of the new green of unfolding 

 leaf, and the stream to put away its misty look for a breast 

 of shining silver ! And then how doubly sweet when, later 

 still, green garden and field were embroidered with flowers, 

 swallows returned, and joy by joy crowded upon us till June 

 came with its flower of flowers the rose. It is while " look- 

 ing on the happy Autumn fields," where are seen the bands 

 of reapers, that one is taken back to the days but lately past 

 and "that are no more." Summer-time has reached its 

 evening hours, and in its twilight temple the one flower of 

 early Autumn, the Lilium auratum^ swings like a silver- 

 jewelled censer sending forth a most fragrant incense. In 

 garden the golden rod now dons its feathery blossoms, and 

 bees lazily crawl over the honey-filled scabious ; gay gladioli 

 send upward their flowering spikes, like cloven tongues of 



