THE CHARM OF GARDENS 



Think of the work actually going on beneath our 

 eyes in the one matter of the starch factory in the plant, 

 where the chlorophyll (the green colouring matter) 

 separates the carbon from the carbonic acid, returns 

 the oxygen to the air, and mingles the carbon and the 

 oxygen and the hydrogen in the water and so makes this 

 starch. 



All this goes on when we open our windows of a 

 morning and look out over the garden and see just a grey 

 line of Carnations we planted over-night. The workers 

 at the roots who are so busily engaged in sending up 

 water, are also sending with it all those things the plant 

 needs that they can get from the earth. Thus the 

 water may contain iron, nitrogen, sulphur, and potash. 

 All that goes from the roots to the leaves is called 

 sap. This, when it comes to the leaves and all parts 

 of the plant exposed to the light, transpires, and so 

 keeps the plant cool. 



The stem, on which the supreme work, the flower, 

 will be born, is, in the case of our Carnations, divided 

 into nodes and internodes, the nodes being those solid 

 elbows one sees. It is towards the supreme work 

 that our eyes are turned. It is part, if not chief part, 

 of the pleasure of our vigil to look forward to the day 

 when the first faint colour shows in the bursting bud. 

 It is for this moment that we wait and wear out the 

 chill of Winter. It is towards the idea of a resurrection 

 that our thoughts, perhaps unconsciously, are fixed, 

 to the knowledge that our garden is to be born again, 

 fresh and new in colour, in warmth and sunshine. The 

 very secret workings going on before our eyes, all that 

 Heavenly workshop where none are 'prentices and all 

 are master-hands, where the bee, and the ant, and the 

 unseen insect in the air, go about their exact duties, 

 give one, as Autumn declines into Winter and Winter 



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