A GARDEN DIARY 



JANUARY 10, 1900 



HT^WO kindly days in a desperately grim winter 

 -*- have had the effect of reawakening in one's 

 mind half- forgotten thrillings ; thrillings after 

 long grass, and green shadows ; after a thousand 

 eye-caressing tints ; after the pure, delicious life 

 and companionship of flowers. There are times 

 when all this seems rather to pain than to please. 

 When the persistency of such perishable things 

 appears but an added wrong, but an additional 

 unkindness. Why should these last, and other, 

 and higher ones, not last ? we demand ; one of 

 those questions which, seeing that they can never 

 be answered, it were as well, perhaps, that they 

 should remain permanently unasked. 



Walking briskly along the lanes this morning, 

 with a determination to think only of what lay 

 immediately below my eyes, I have been struck 

 afresh, as often before, by the capabilities of 

 beauty possessed even by the poorest plots 

 of ground ; plots which, far from having been 

 intentionally beautified, have been stripped, on 



