** Perhaps it is the sympathy of a garden with every passing 

 mood that endears it to the heart of those who foster 

 a passion for flowers and their environment*** 



HELEN MILMAN. 



DECEMBER 



Rose of the Winter sun, thy song is sweet, 



Flower of melody, when singing's done 

 Thou tell'st in song the year's days are complete, 

 Rose of the winter sun. 



In leaf-dead garth when skies above are dun, 



And over all the earth with silent feet 

 The white mists creep, thy breast to colour won, 



Glistens and gleams ; the days are few and fleet 

 Left this old year, yet thou the glad new one 

 Soon to be born with sweetest song will greet, 

 Rose of the winter sun ! 



(THE ROBIN.) 



always is it " drear December." At times days 

 come to us when for a brief space of time the world 

 with light and clearness seems to be the waking world of 

 Spring. Very beautiful the sunlight makes the dead reeds 

 and rushes beside the river, and the tangle of dead stalks 

 threading the almost bare hedgerows. And yet it is a world 

 of ruin, although the magic of the sunlight paints the lingering 

 withered leaves and the lifeless hedgerows' berry-strung creepers 

 with many glowing tints of brown. Now that the massed 

 colours of the tall and stately trees, which but lately by their 

 magnitude arrested our admiration, have all but departed, we 

 are bidden to notice individually the exquisite changes of the 

 hedge-side, the rich red of the pear's leaflets, the blackberry's 

 mottled leaves of vivid and varied hues, the yellows and 

 brown of the crab-apple, and all those many bright leaves 



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