My Rock Garden 



from the Cornish cliffs is one, and has thriven amazingly 

 for some fifteen years, though often encrusted with icicles 

 in winter. The mountains rise high at the back of this 

 pool of disappointment, for here again I planned won- 

 derful things, and spent money and muscle on some very 

 large blocks and built up a right noble cliff. In spite of 

 its cost it is one of the least interesting bits of the garden 

 too much stone and too little room for plants, in fact. 

 I was foolish enough to plant Lactuca (Mulgedium) alpina 

 on it, and have spent years trying to get rid of it, and but 

 for the concrete I believe it would have filled the whole 

 garden and pushed up through the floors of the house and 

 into the road to stop the traffic, for Atalanta and Charley's 

 Aunt are tortoises compared with such a runner. 



Euphorbia Wulfenii makes a handsome bush and a fine 

 dark mass when out of flower, but now with the great 

 yellow green heads rising up out of the almost indigo blue 

 foliage it is a very fine object. The stems turn over at the 

 tips in autumn if they mean to flower next year, and then 

 the heart leaves of these shoots take on red stripes, and the 

 display gradually unfolds all through the winter until it 

 ends in the immense heads of bloom. This is a Euphorbia 

 corner, and E. pilosa major, which I cannot distinguish 

 from E. polychroma growing next it, almost vies with the 

 Daffodils in yellowness, but certainly beats them in having 

 a second season, for in some autumns it turns a dazzling 

 scarlet. E. corollata is only springing up at this season, 

 and will not get its curious, corolla-like, white bracts before 

 June. E. Cyparissias and even Lathyris the Caper-spurge 

 are here, and several poorer relations less worthy of notice, 

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