IX 



CHIEFLY DOMESTIC 



November 8. This has been a week of rush, 

 wherein shovels, men, shrubs, shears, garden lines, 

 and mysterious calculations have whirled before my 

 eyes. In spite of our determination to thin out 

 and readjust the old stock of shrubs and hardy 

 plants, only one of the long borders is completed, 

 the other being, after two years of comparative 

 neglect, such a tangle of indistinguishable roots 

 that we are leaving it as an experiment, thinking 

 that it may give us some new hybrids of old 

 flowers, or at least yield some startling groupings 

 and combinations of colour that will outvie mere 

 neatness. 



Every day I grow more and more grateful for 

 the things that have been. If mother had not 

 cared for gardening, I might have spent restless 

 years in groping before I knew that I wanted a 

 garden, cramping my mind and body in a city 

 apartment, or else stifling equally in some newly 

 made suburb. Treeless made-country is, I think, 



