A GARDEN DIARY 15 
SEPTEMBER 8, 1899 
Cys indefatigable old Cuttle has just come 
to tell me that the new water-lily pond 
leaks, and that I must send for the bricklayer, 
in order to upbraid him. I am sometimes asked 
whether Cuttle is our gardener, and am always 
rather at a loss what to answer. Hardly, I 
suppose, seeing that he declines to take much 
notice of any of our flowers, with the exception 
of the roses, for which he has a passion. When 
he came to us three years ago it was merely “on 
job” from the builders. Our grounds, as grounds, 
had not then begun to exist. Cuttle stuck the 
first spade into them then and there, and from 
that minute their existence began. Since then 
he has grown to be more and more intimately 
identified with them, and that to such an extent 
that I find it difficult now to disentangle the one 
from the other. Followed by his obedient 
satellite and shadow, he ranges at large over all 
that lies between their holly-guarded boundaries. 
His spade, pick, axe, billhook are masters of all 
