My New Zealand Garden 21 



of her two last words it meant good-bye to garden 

 work. 



My friends tell me I work like a man well, I 

 played like a boy, so there is nothing surprising 

 in that ; but had I all the strength of a man, I 

 should have done all the work myself, for wages 

 are higher than in England, and skilled labour 

 very scarce. 



A greenhouse is almost as common an appen- 

 dage to a house here as a bathroom, but they are 

 not unmixed blessings, as they are apt to become 

 an eyesore if they are not well looked after and 

 blight kept down. Of course, the entire charge 

 of them is quite beyond the pale of the handy- 

 man, be he never so handy, so it was with great 

 trepidation that I left mine for a time. On my 

 return, I found that the inmates had been leading 

 the life of aquatics. Their saucers were full of 

 water, and judging by the earth splashed about, 

 and the holes in the soil all round the plants, the 

 water must have descended upon them in torrents 

 in fact, frothed down. Their guardian said that I 

 told him to keep them neither wet nor dry, and 

 that he did not know what to do, so he kept them 

 wet. His intellect did not surpass that of the 

 maudlin man who saddled his horse with the 

 front of the saddle towards the tail, and when 

 expostulated with, only said, ' How do you know 

 which way I am going ?' I had a few Orchids 



