2 A YEAR IN A LANCASHIRE GARDEN. 



but I can at least speak of my plans and projects, 

 tell what I am doing, and how each month I 

 succeed or fail, and thus share with others the 

 uncertainty, the risks and chances, which are 

 in reality the great charm of gardening. And 

 then, again, gardening joins itself, in a thousand 

 ways, with a thousand associations, to books and 

 literature, and here, too, I shall have much to say. 



Lancashire is not the best possible place for a 

 garden, and to be within five miles of a large 

 town is certainly no advantage. We get smoke 

 on one side, and salt breezes on another, and, 

 worst of all, there comes down upon us every now 

 and then a blast, laden with heavy chemical odours, 

 which is more deadly than either smoke or salt 

 Still we are tolerably open, and in the country. 

 As I sit writing at my library window, I see, beyond 

 the lawn, field after field, until at last the eye rests 

 on the spire of a church three miles away. 



A long red-gabled house, with stone facings, 

 and various creepers trained round it, a small 

 wood (in which there is a rookery) screening us 

 from a country road, and from the west, lawns 

 with some large trees and several groups of ever- 

 greens, and the walled garden, the outer garden, 



