22 A GARDEN DIARY 



SEPTEMBER n, 1899 



HERE on the bench beside me is a basket- 

 ful of plants, not garden ones by any 

 means, but weeds, mere ugly weeds, detested, 

 and detestable, which, having pulled up, I was 

 about to throw away. And, sitting down for a 

 moment before doing so, I chanced to turn over 

 two or three of them in idle mood, and in so 

 doing have been captured unawares, as I have 

 often been before, by the wonder, the mystery, 

 of those ordinary processes of nature, which we 

 all of us know so remarkably well, and which 

 we certainly as a rule take such uncommonly 

 little heed of. 



Matthew Arnold has somewhere counselled us 

 to let our minds dwell upon that great and 

 inexhaustible word " Life," till we learn to enter 

 into its meaning. It was a critic's and a poet's 

 counsel, but it might still more appropriately 

 have been a naturalist's or a botanist's. Life 

 is indeed one of the unescapable mysteries, a 

 mystery that expands and grows as we consider 



