CHAPTER V 



Spring Crocuses 



FOR me, starting this chapter, there are great searchings 

 of heart, compared with which those of the divisions of 

 Reuben were as nothing. If but one of them possessed a 

 flat object with diverse and recognisable sides to it they 

 might toss up and decide whether to go and help smash 

 up Sisera or stay and listen to the music of their baa- 

 lambs, and they seem to have decided pretty unanimously 

 for the ovine concert. But for me, the very inmost cockle 

 of whose heart glows more for a Crocus than for the most 

 expensive Orchid, every cockle in me (though I haven't a 

 notion what portion of my internal anatomy is meant by 

 that borrowed appellation of marine molluscs) is full of 

 searchings and divisions how to do justice to my first 

 garden love and avoid wearying and driving away readers 

 to whom my raptures may appear the vapourings of a 

 love-sick monomaniac. 



We treat Crocuses au grand se'rteux in this garden, 

 giving over two double-light frames to their service in the 

 very sunniest part of the kitchen garden, and we always 

 have two sets of pots sunk in ashes containing the seeds or 

 seedlings of two past seasons, finding that method the best 

 way to prevent the worm who will turn from waltzing the 

 seeds of one variety into the middle of a patch of another, 

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