A GARDEN DIARY 165 
admire such sedate damsels. Give me a little 
more spontaneity ; a little more youthful impetu- 
osity and dash— 
“ Robes loosely flowing, hair as free ; 
Such sweet neglect more taketh me.” 
To drop metaphor, which has a_ tendency 
to drop itself, we are in despair over this 
dryness, and as a consequence have had to 
resort already to the aid of our watering-pots. 
Now in April the watering-pot ought in my 
opinion to be still reposing in its tool shed, with 
the early spider weaving his first web across its 
spout. So strongly is this impressed upon my 
mind that I feel as if there were something illicit, 
something I might almost go so far as to call 
unprincipled, in resorting to its assistance thus 
prematurely. After all though, a gardener’s first 
virtue, I reflect, is to save his plants, and unless 
we promptly take some step of the kind, ours for 
a surety will for the most part die. 
