6 A LITTLE GARDEN THE YEAR ROUND 



How inseparable, indeed, are gardens and 

 poetry, poetry and gardens, though many there 

 be (they, perhaps, who are merely born with 

 the botanist's eye, the agriculturist's crop pro- 

 clivities, or the spademan's muscle) who pre- 

 tend to find in the garden only the suggestion 

 of a deal of troweling, a scattering of seeds, a 

 turn at weeding, a thorn or two, and the trouble 

 of beginning it all over again, meeting the oc- 

 cupation or the necessity withal, as the case 

 may be, season after season and year after 

 year, but as a matter of business, as part of the 

 business of life, a duty performed weU but 

 blindly, unillumined by the inner light that 

 sheds its radiance upon the joys of gardening. 



Indeed, I know a man who has a yard full of 

 plants space-filling his summertimes. If you 

 should ask him why he plants them, he could 

 not tell you, though I suspect he is coming un- 

 der the spell of habit and that a few more years 

 will find him understanding that he has a gar- 

 den, not merely a Rose here, a Lilac there and 

 a row of Geraniums, causing him a deal of 

 grumbling and trouble, because he looks upon 

 them solely as agents in outvieing his neigh- 

 bor's floral display; I say he cannot forever 



