CHAPTER III 



FLOWERS OF SUMMER 



THE season of summer, meaning especially the 

 months of June, July and August, is to every 

 gardener the most enjoyable of the four seasons. 

 It is the season to which he has been looking 

 forward in all the different processes of cultivation ; 

 it is the season of enjoyment ; the season in which, 

 with a few occasional drawbacks from bad seasons, 

 or it may be from wrong cultivation, anxious 

 preparation ends in success ; the season of hopes 

 now ended in the reality of sight, when we need 

 no longer hope for that we see not, and with 

 patience wait for it, but may feast our eyes on 

 the beauties which we have waited for, and to 

 some extent have created, and in which we cheer 

 ourselves with the delightful feeling that our 

 labours have not been in vain, and so we will go 

 on the next year as cheerfully and as hopefully 

 as ever. For I hold it as a firm article of faith 

 in gardening that there has never been in any 

 year what can be called complete failure ; there 

 are, of course, failures and disappointments in some 

 parts of the garden, but there have been unlooked- 

 for successes in some other parts, and on the 

 whole the compensation has been great enough to 



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