22 WOOD AND GAEDEN 



drawing and construction, and that its ruddy winter 

 colouring is a joy to see, enhanced as it is by the 

 glistening brightness of the leaf-surface ; and further, 

 when one remembers that in spring the whole picture 

 changes— that the polished leaves are green again, and 

 the bushes are full of tufted masses of brightest yellow 

 bloom, and fuller of bee-music than any other plant 

 then in flower ; and that even then it has another 

 season of beauty yet to come, when in the days of 

 middle summer it is heavily loaded with the thick- 

 clustered masses of berries, covered with a brighter 

 and bluer bloom than almost any other fruit can 

 show, — when one thinks of all this brought together 

 in one plant, it seems but right that we should spare 

 no pains to use it well. It is the only hardy shrub 

 I can think of that is in one or other of its varied 

 forms of beauty throughout the year. It is never 

 leafless or untidy ; it never looks mangy like an Ilex in 

 April, or moulting like a Holly in May, or patchy and 

 unfinished like Yew and Box and many other ever- 

 greens when their young leafy shoots are sprouting. 



We have been thinning the shrubs in one of the 

 rather large clumps next to the lawn, taking the older 

 wood in each clump right out from the bottom and 

 letting more light and air into the middle. Weigelas 

 grow fast and very thick. Quite two-thirds have been 

 cut out of each bush of Weigela, Philadelphus, and 

 Ribes, and a good bit out of Ceanothus, "Gloire de 

 Versailles," my favourite of its kind, and all the oldest 



