1^'s MaLe IX MoJW ^^en 



ing season. It is only by means of constant shifting 

 and rearrangement that we can come nearer, or even 

 keep pace with, an ever-growing ideal of perfection. 



As time goes on the perennials will gravitate to 

 their own inevitable niche amid appropriate sur- 

 roundings, so don't ask a professional landscape 

 gardener to solve your problems beforehand, for you 

 would thereby rob yourself of half the fun. A gar- 

 den planned for you by someone else would as little 

 fit your needs as a friend's advice would solve our 

 own private life-riddles. 



To produce by our own physical efforts all the 

 beauty to feed the soul, all the vegetables and fruit 

 to feed the body, would seem the natural ideal of life. 

 And to reach this ideal is happily possible even if 

 we do it merely as a byplay of our real life work. 

 The more exacting the profession, the more nerve 

 straining the daily occupation of the mind, the 

 greater is the respite and relaxation of the garden 

 — it above all else mends the ravelled threads of 

 nerves and keeps the mental balance true. Life is 

 so full of duties — the things we ought to do but 

 don't like to — and so full of imperfect professions, 

 which require us to do many unnatural things every 

 day, that gardening is the revolt, the reflex, the re- 



49 



