CLEANING-UP TIME 275 



DECEMBER 



CLEANING-UP TIME 



OH the trials of washing-day. Ah, the tribula- 

 tion of tidying up. The upshot of summer 

 with its merry holiday-making is a great deal 

 of disorderly litter which the pruning-shears and 

 the besom of autumn must remove. The false 

 luxuriance of the annuals gets nipped off. One 

 day the tropeolums are green and rambling, the 

 next they are smitten with a palsy and lie un- 

 starched on the border, the next, they have 

 mysteriously disappeared. There is no more stuff 

 apparently in the nasturtium leaf than there is 

 in a jelly fish, which melts on the sand, and when 

 its water has been given back to the atmosphere, 

 leaves not a wrack behind. 



The leaves of our mighty trees are made of 

 sterner stuff than the grass of the field, but they, 

 too, in their thousands of millions are made away 

 with in a silent, inexorable fashion. Getting 

 them off the trees is the least part of autumn's 

 task. It is but the first scurry of the broom, 



