A GARDEN DIARY 15 



SEPTEMBER 8, 1899 



indefatigable old Cuttle has just come 

 to tell me that the new water-lily pond 

 leaks, and that I must send for the bricklayer, 

 in order to upbraid him. I am sometimes asked 

 whether Cuttle is our gardener, and am always 

 rather at a loss what to answer. Hardly, I 

 suppose, seeing that he declines to take much 

 notice of any of our flowers, with the exception 

 of the roses, for which he has a passion. When 

 he came to us three years ago it was merely "on 

 job " from the builders. Our grounds, as grounds, 

 had not then begun to exist. Cuttle stuck the 

 first spade into them then and there, and from 

 that minute their existence began. Since then 

 he has grown to be more and more intimately 

 identified with them, and that to such an extent 

 that I find it difficult now to disentangle the one 

 from the other. Followed by his obedient 

 satellite and shadow, he ranges at large over all 

 that lies between their holly-guarded boundaries. 

 His spade, pick, axe, billhook are masters of all 



