"The gardener should follow the true artist, however 

 modestly, in his love for things as they are, in delight 

 in natural form and beauty of flower and tree, if we 

 are to be free from barren geometry, and if our 



gardens are ever to be pictures/' 



WILLIAM ROBINSON. 



OCTOBER 



TTERE and there beside the gossamer-festooned hedges 

 * accentuating the trees' squandered gold, one chances 

 upon a golden dandelion disc, glowing with all its cheerful 

 brightness. This flower is one of the loveliest among the 

 Composite^ with flowers of golden hue ; it far surpasses the 

 goat's-beard, which shows such a beautiful globe of feathery 

 down, that must this Summer have been admired by many. 

 Richard Jefferies' note on the dandelion always comes to me 

 when I see these bright blossoms. " What is the colour of 

 the dandelion ? " he asks. "It is not yellow, nor orange, nor 

 gold ; put a sovereign on it and see the difference. They 

 say the gipsies call it the Queen's great hairy dog-flower 

 a number of words to one stalk ; and so, to get a colour 

 to it, you may call it the yellow-gold-orange plant. In 

 the winter, on the black mud under a dark, dripping tree, 

 I found a piece of orange peel, lately dropped a bright 

 red orange speck in the middle of the blackness. It looked 

 very beautiful, and instantly recalled to my mind the great 

 dandelion discs in the sunshine of Summer. Yet certainly 

 they are not red-orange. Perhaps if ten people answered 

 this question they would each give different answers. Again, 

 a bright day or a cloudy, the presence of a slight haze, or 

 the juxtaposition of other colours alters it very much ; for 

 the dandelion is not a glazed colour, like the buttercup, but 



sensitive. It is like a sponge, and adds to its own hue 



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