48 A GARDEN DIARY 



Worse than the conduct of the couch-grass, 

 because of a certain personal element in it, has 

 been the conduct of the rose - campion. Now 

 I have been exceedingly kind to that rose- 

 campion. Again and again I have intervened 

 to rescue it, when it was on the point of being 

 rooted out, and consigned to the dust -heap. 

 Only last spring I carried its roots by hundreds 

 with my own hands, and re-established them in 

 a special reservation ground, where they might 

 spread unmolested over a good half-acre or so 

 of copse. What has been the result ? They 

 have indeed clothed their allotted space, but, not 

 content with this, they have burst like a horde 

 of Ojibeway Indians, or some such aborigines, 

 out of their reservation, across the frontiers of 

 civilisation, sending out myriads of seedlings 

 ahead of them, like a flight of skirmishers, and 

 are now nearly as numerous collectively, and 

 far more luxuriant individually, in the nursery, 

 than they are in the copse itself! 



Incidents like these wound one, and are more 

 trying for that reason to the amateur gardener 

 than to the professional one, who probably re- 

 gards them as only to be expected. I am far 

 from saying that they constitute a sufficient 

 reason for surrender, but they certainly seem 

 to need the aid of a higher quality than mere 

 secular doggedness, to enable one to grapple 

 with them as one ought. It is moreover such 



