48 A GARDEN DIARY 
Worse than the conduct of the couch-grass, 
because of a certain personal element in it, has 
been the conduct of the rose-campion. Now 
I have been exceedingly kind to that rose- 
campion. Again and again I have intervened 
to rescue it, when it was on the point of being 
rooted out, and consigned to the dust-heap. 
Only last spring I carried its roots by hundreds 
with my own hands, and re-established them in 
a special reservation ground, where they might 
spread unmolested over a good half-acre or so 
of copse. What has been the result? They 
have indeed clothed their allotted space, but, not 
content with this, they have burst like a horde 
of Ojibeway Indians, or some such aborigines, 
out of their reservation, across the frontiers of 
civilisation, sending out myriads of seedlings 
ahead of them, like a flight of skirmishers, and 
are now nearly as numerous collectively, and 
far more luxuriant individually, in the nursery, 
than they are in the copse itself! 
Incidents like these wound one, and are more 
trying for that reason to the amateur gardener 
than to the professional one, who probably re- 
gards them as only to be expected. I am far 
from saying that they constitute a sufficient 
reason for surrender, but they certainly seem 
to need the aid of a higher quality than mere 
secular doggedness, to enable one to grapple 
with them as one ought. It is moreover such 
