96 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN 



calls ' Christmas Salad.' It is a first-rate plant all 

 through the winter, an excellent salad, and now so good, 

 useful, and wholesome to eat cooked. It should be dressed 

 as recommended for Spinach in ' Dainty Dishes.' 



This is the time to make Rhubarb jam ; if carefully 

 made, and a little ginger added, it is very good indeed. 



To my mind, few flowers please the eye as the Tulip 

 does. 



T. gesneriana, with its handsome long stem and 

 brilliant flower, gives me especial delight. The Tulip is 

 a member of the Lily family, and has an interesting 

 history, which I read one day in a newspaper. It is a 

 native of Asia Minor, and was brought from Constantinople 

 in 1557. It was first flowered in England in 1559 by the 

 wife of an apothecary. She had procured the first bulb 

 from a grateful sailor who had brought it home in return 

 for attentions during sickness, by which his Hfe was saved. 

 It was all he had, like the widow's mite, but it was a 

 source of great profit to the wife of the apothecary, 

 who tenderly cultivated it, and sold the bulbs for a guinea 

 each after she had, by good care, procured a sufficient 

 stock of them. 



May 5th. — The garden looks dull just now ; but four 

 weeks of no rain always produce that effect on this soil. 

 When the showers do come, everything revives in the 

 most extraordinary way, partly from the earth being so 

 warm and dry. The only rather showy things in the 

 garden are some early red Rhododendrons, and they look 

 droopy; a Siberian Crab, which has been one mass of 

 snowy-white blossoms for a fortnight ; and a most desir- 

 able little shrub called Deutzia elegans, quite hardy, 

 totally unaffected by our coldest winters, flowering every 

 year, and wanting no attention except the cutting-back 

 every year after flowering. Berberises I do not find quite 

 so hardy as one expects them to be, but this very likely is 



