A GARDEN DIARY 163 
APRIL 2, 1900 
Ae last we are in April. The winter corner is 
turned, and a new era entered upon. But 
April this year is an incongruous sort of an April, 
though the incongruity is possibly only in one’s 
own fancy. We are apt to fashion our notions 
of the becoming, and to expect Nature to con- 
form to them. A desperately dry April it certainly 
is. The days are hard, and cold, parched, and 
nipping ; at night the wind howls, but with no 
accompaniment of desirable drops. The garden 
cries to the sky for rain, but no rain falls upon it, 
yet the only days I have spent in London were 
days of unceasing downpour. Such favouring of 
the Metropolis at the expense of the country is 
manifestly unjust. 
April is such a lovely word, that it ought also 
to be always a lovely thing. If one imagines it 
—or rather her—as she might appear to us in 
dreams, or an allegory, we should deck her out 
of course in the tenderest green. Floating gossa- 
mers would hover around her; small pink buds 
