DECEMBER 131 



marigold, and I carefully keep out of my garden the 

 corn marigold, for it is a dreadful weed, and if it were 

 to escape out of my garden into the cornfields the 

 farmers would have good reason to condemn my garden 

 as a public nuisance. But I have been much astonished 

 to see the common marigold holding its beauty so late ; 

 not only in my own garden, but in many neighbouring 

 gardens it has been in quite its summer brightness till 

 past the middle of December. I do not think this is 

 out of the common, but it had certainly escaped my 

 notice in former years. A shrub that can show in 

 December a mass of blossoms as golden as the marigold 

 is the yellow Chinese jasmine (/. nudiflorum), certainly 

 a great ornament where it can be well grown, and it 

 covers many cottages in my village, but I never very 

 much admired it. The leaves fall very early in the 

 autumn, and then there is nothing to conceal the stiff 

 angular growth of the plant (it was first called /. 

 angulare) ; yet the individual sprays are bright and 

 pretty, and if grown as a bush much of this ugly habit 

 is concealed. 



But though there is no abundance of flowers in 

 December, the garden need not look bare and cheerless, 

 though it must necessarily be deficient in bright colours. 

 First, there is always the rich green of the lawn, and 

 that alone is a pleasant sight, and in many gardens 



