The afternoon comes towards the end of the month. In the country 

 January Nature seems to make a great bound forward towards light and 

 Flower hope. All the months are busy to the gardener, but January is 

 Shows particularly so. There are the seeds to order and the hot-beds 

 to make up, so much re-potting to be done. The C annas, which 

 have been dried off under bushes after the first frost, and stored 

 in a cellar, have to be brought up and potted up, only allowing 

 one shoot in each pot. This makes them grow and flower out 

 of doors much better than putting two or three shoots into a pot. 

 If this potting up is postponed they come to perfection too late. 

 All gardening means looking forward, imagining what is not, 

 and at the end of January the first real sign of autumn planting 

 shows itself. The straight spears of the Snowdrops and the cool 

 glaucus green leaves of the Daffodil pierce the brown earth. 

 The colour of the Narcissus leaves is not only beautiful in itself, 

 but strongly suggestive of water, and certainly constitutes a 

 most delicious ground-work for the bright yellow of the 

 blossoms. 



In England, where the progress of early Spring is so slow, 

 I think it is an instructive joy to go and meet her in the halls of 

 the Royal Horticultural Society on dark afternoons in January 

 and February. There one realises all that can be done under 

 glass, and how things ought to look when well-grown. It is 

 never pleasant to acknowledge one's own failures, but it is well 

 to feel them, and it is a very helpful plan to compare the chronicle 

 of one's own errors side by side with the brilliant successes seen 

 at these shows. 



So early as the 26th of January this year (iqo4), at one of 

 these Drill Hall shows, there was a beautiful plant, in a pot, of 

 Clematis clrrhosa covered with flowers. This excited my admira- 



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