APRIL 29 



him the tulip and the hyacinth are semi-sacred 

 things which require annual planting, annual 

 digging, drying and storing. Doubtless his results 

 are better than mine, but mine are quite good 

 enough to make a very pleasing show in the spring, 

 and they give me no labour at any season. My 

 hyacinths have been planted for at least five or six 

 years and left undisturbed. Their flowers, cer- 

 tainly, are not so big as they were in their first 

 season, but that is a trifling matter. They are 

 quite large enough to give a beautiful effect, and 

 they have increased enormously in number since 

 they were planted. Some of the spikes, I regret 

 to say, are even now bulky enough to require 

 staking when March winds blow hard, and after 

 five years' trial of hyacinths as permanent in- 

 habitants of my rose-beds I am quite satisfied with 

 the result. 



It is the same with the tulips. I confess that in 

 the first planting I went wrong with these bulbs, 

 but it was not in putting them among my roses 

 that I erred, but in buying, in some instances, 

 inferior varieties. Artus, for example, and Brutus 

 attracted me by their cheapness, and two beds 

 given over to them are a perpetual eyesore. But 

 a large terra-cotta kind, whose name I do not 

 know, is as handsome and almost as large as when 

 first planted, and another bed of La Reine is 

 equally charming, though these have dwindled 

 somewhat in size. 



Another rose - bed is given over to the multi- 

 coloured crown anemones which are so easily 

 grown from seed. Seed sown now and carefully 



