My Garden in Spring 



for associating with other Scillas. It seeds freely, and 

 its children inherit the parental colouring and early rising 

 habit. The white 5. sibirica grows near, and is also lavish 

 in seminal increase, and a few early-flowering whites have 

 appeared that I am watching anxiously, and hoping they 

 have inherited the best traditions of both families. 



Hyacinthus azureus is one of the most exquisite of the 

 small and earlies, but like eating soup with a fork, one 

 never gets enough of it. It is cheap enough, only three 

 shillings a hundred, yet I never saw a garden that 

 could show so many. I vow that next planting season 

 I will let six sixpences go bang and try to grow 

 a century of spikes of its pure turquoise bells. It is 

 very lovely grown beside Crocus aureus; their colours 

 are not too violent in contrast, as at their early appear- 

 ance there is plenty of brown earth for background. Two 

 quaint, squat little Ornithogalums flower in the very 

 beginning of the year, opening a flower at a time during 

 any intervals of decent weather ; one is O. Haussknectii, 

 which I advise the inventors of English names to call the 

 Horse's Necktie Bird's-milk, and the other O. libanoticunt, 

 and Pompey and Caesar are very much alike, especially 

 Pompey. I won't say they are strikingly beautiful, but 

 in January one is pleased to see their greyish-white, green- 

 streaked flowers flattened down among their rosettes of 

 leaves. One dreadful winter I was obliged to spend in 

 London helping to nurse my brother through typhoid 

 fever and all its complications, and on a dreary December 

 day kind Dr. Lowe came to inquire, and brought with him 

 from his garden of treasures a bulb or two of a charming 

 little Muscari in full bloom. He told me he went round 

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