A GARDEN DIARY 83 
JANUARY 10, 1900 
i os kindly days in a desperately grim winter 
have had the effect of reawakening in one’s 
mind half-forgotten thrillings; thrillings after 
long grass, and green shadows ; after a thousand 
eye-caressing tints; after the pure, delicious life 
and companionship of flowers. There are times 
when all this seems rather to pain than to please. 
When the persistency of such perishable things 
appears but an added wrong, but an additional 
unkindness. Why should these last, and other, 
and higher ones, zo¢ last? we demand; one of 
those questions which, seeing that they can never 
be answered, it were as well, perhaps, that they 
should remain permanently unasked. 
Walking briskly along the lanes this morning, 
with a determination to think only of what lay 
immediately below my eyes, I have been struck 
afresh, as often before, by the capabilities of 
beauty possessed even by the poorest plots 
of ground; plots which, far from having been 
intentionally beautified, have been stripped, on 
