THE CHARM OF GARDENS 



Marigolds reminds him of a long border in the garden 

 where he spent his boyhood (they used to grow behind 

 the bee skeps, had a little place to themselves next to 

 the Horseradish and the early Lettuces). There's a 

 hedge of Lavender full of association, he may remember 

 how he was allowed (or was it set him for a task ?) to 

 cut great sheaves of it and take them to the Apple-room, 

 and hang them up to dry over old newspapers. To 

 look at Lavender brings back the curious musty smell of 

 that store-room, where Apples wintered on long shelves ; 

 where the lawn-mower stood, and the brooms, and the 

 scythe (to cut the orchard grass), and untidy bundles 

 of bass hung with string and coils of wire. What a 

 wonderful place that store-room was, with the broken 

 door and the rusty lock that creaked as the big key 

 turned to let him in : to reach the latch he had to stand 

 on tip-toe, and to turn the key seemed quite a grown-up 

 task. There was all a garden needs stored in that room. 

 It had been a dining-room once, a hundred years ago, 

 a room where the members of a bowling club con- 

 vivially met and fought old games ; bias, twist, jack, 

 all the terms ring in his ears, even the click of the bowls, 

 sharp on the summer air, comes back ; and the plastered 

 ornamental ceiling had sagged and dropped away here 

 and there, showing the laths. There was a big dusty 

 window, across which the twisted arms of a Wisteria 

 stretched, and a broken window seat in it that opened 

 like a box to hold the bowls. Just the hedge of Lavender 

 brings back the picture of the boy whose cherished 

 dreams hung about those four walls ; who, having 

 strung his bunches, neatly tied, on wooden pegs along 

 the walls, and spread his papers underneath to catch 

 the falling seeds, sat, book in hand, and travelled into 

 foreign lands with Mungo Park. There, on his left, 

 and facing him as well, shelves lined the walls, and Pears, 



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