82 A GARDEN DIARY 



weather to revert to an older, and a wilder con- 

 dition. Snow admittedly recreates everything ; 

 our most familiar paths and shrubberies, nay our 

 \ very stable runnels, growing quite arctic and 

 hyperborean-looking under its disguise. Apart 

 from snow, the same impression is produced 

 by any really strong atmospheric variation. 

 Crackling grass, and glittering ice-bound trees, 

 awaken one set of suggestions. Roaring winds, 

 a drenched earth, and inky clouds tumbling 

 wildly over the sky, arouse quite others. Even 

 objects inside the garden, plants that have been 

 perhaps put there by one's own hands ; clumps 

 say, of bamboos and reedy grasses Arundo 

 donax or the like assume suddenly new, and 

 slightly savage aspects when one sees them 

 sweeping to and fro, or buckling like so many 

 fishing rods under the lash of a sudden tempest. 

 The commonplace is not really unescapable, 

 though it often seems as though it were. 

 There are wider, freer notes, which only need 

 awakening to stir, and thrill us with their 

 presence. The imagination leaps to meet them, 

 and feels them to be its right. For we are all 

 heirs to a large inheritance, though we are apt, 

 as a rule, to be forgetful of the fact. 



