110 A Little Maryland Garden 
once started one can always have flowers 
from the seedlings of year before last. 
I have noticed that when one takes to 
gardening it revolutionises one’s feeling 
about time. In the beginning the thought 
that this or that ought to have been started 
(as a little child once said to me) ‘‘day before 
last year’’ is most discouraging. The thought 
of waiting for a season or two makes a person 
impatient, and averse to trying the procrasti- 
nating flower. But the time comes when one 
drifts into a state of mind when the future is 
almost as real as the present, and as en- 
joyable; and with the eye of faith one con- 
templates a plant that will not bloom for a 
season or two, and loves it just as well. The 
future plays a great part in gardening, and a 
certain hurry and impatience characteristic 
of the novice subside into well regulated 
calm in the gardener of some years’ standing. 
Two late shrubs came into bloom during 
my absence, the mock orange and deutzia. 
The first is deliciously fragrant, a gift that 
was denied to the second. But it would be 
