A GARDEN NOTE-BOOK 



everywhere on the landscape — those mists of car- 

 mine on the swamp dogwoods, that "mealy red- 

 ness" of the elm blossom, the willow's golden 

 clouds, all backed by distances of smoky blue and 

 canopied by a clear blue sky. It is not when we 

 are wrapped around by warmth that such pictures 

 exist. They come into being through that force 

 which only the spring knows. They compensate 

 one for the cold winds and chilly airs of our April, 

 which, as Horace Walpole said of May in England, 

 comes in "with its usual severity." Well wrapped 

 against the weather, April has its peculiar plea- 

 sures; here snowdrops and the earliest species cro- 

 cuses have been gathered long since, and now we 

 search the borders and not in vain. 



It is the 8th of May; the first green leaf of the 

 year is everywhere. Do all gardeners rejoice as 

 I do over the look of the garden as it is now ? 

 Not a flower in it, but grass edges have been 

 trimmed, sod added where those edges have been 

 overwhelmed last year by the spilling over of 

 lavender, nepeta, ageratum, and other things 

 which do their creeping out so softly but so surely. 

 The grass is mowed; the beds of the garden culti- 

 vated, by hand where lilies are supposed to be. 

 Tufts and mounds of all shades of green appear 



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