A GARDEN DIARY 129 
the perplexed gardener wonders at times how he 
is to dispose of his too obliging property, and 
ends by being not a little embarrassed by his 
own wealth. 
There was one day last summer, when, re- 
turning home after a short absence, and going 
into the garden, I was not a little startled to 
discover what a congregation of the giants 
we had unwittingly been entertaining. A giant 
may of course be highly ornamental, and a 
giant that is eight feet high, and of a bright 
canary-yellow throughout the greater part of that 
length, is almost bound to be so. There were 
—I took the trouble to count them—one hundred 
and eleven such giants at that moment all in 
flower together in the garden. Now considering 
that the proportions of that garden are not those 
of Kew or Versailles, there is no denying that 
one hundred and eleven bright yellow giants, 
all occupying it at the same time, affected the 
mind with a certain sense of surplusage! They 
stood in rows along the grassy paths; they 
shouldered one another, and everything else out 
of any place they had been allowed to spring 
up in; they appeared unexpectedly in out-of- 
the-way corners of the copse, where the elderly 
oak-scrub found itself reduced to the position of 
a mere underling at the feet of these aspiring 
biennials. To come suddenly round a corner 
K 
