My Garden in Spring 



" Many men, many minds," so of necessity the answers to 

 this question must be as varied as the aspects from which 

 the subject is viewed, and I think some of them possess 

 sufficient interest to warrant investigation. 



First we may take the astronomical point of view, and 

 I like the impression of powder and pigtails and snuffboxes 

 derived from this pompously-worded quotation from an 

 eighteenth-century writer : 1 " Spring in cosmography 

 denotes one of the seasons of the year commencing in the 

 northern parts of the world on the day the sun enters the 

 first degree of Aries, about the tenth day of March, and 

 ending when it leaves Gemini. More strictly, when the sun's 

 meridian altitude from the zenith, being on the increase, 

 is at a medium between the greatest and least." Which 

 holds back Spring until the Snowdrops have departed, 

 and the equinox gives us March, in its most violently 

 leonine mood. To go much further back, we learn from 

 Hesiod's Works and Days, which dates from an age 

 but little later than Homer's poems, that the Greeks 

 reckoned the commencement of Spring by the evening 

 rising of Arcturus, sixty days after the winter solstice. 

 Happy Greeks, with a southern sky to light the fire of 

 scarlet Anemones on the hillsides and announce the lesser 

 Eleusinia ! It was once my good fortune to spend early 

 March in Athens, and enjoy the feast of the Greek Anemone 

 (A. hortensis, var. graeca), the most glorious of all scarlet 

 flowers. I often long to do so again, but next 

 time I hope some epidemic may have destroyed the 

 goats of the district, that all the buds may escape 



1 Encyc. Brit. 1796. 

 2 



