Why is it the things we don't want, the things we regret having 

 planted at all, grow with almost spiteful vigor? 



There were far too many big, coarse, spready marigolds and 

 many whole beds were given over to plants of far too brief a flower- 

 ing time to occupy so much space. Then, in many gardens, there 

 were few if any of the late flowering treasures, things that will not 

 bloom at all until Autumn, but all this is being corrected, judging 

 from the upheaval I came upon in almost every garden. One par- 

 ticular observation I wish to tell you about is the great, splendid 

 holes that I saw being dug for evergreen trees and shrubs — not the 

 stingy, too small holes so often provided that crowd the fine balls 

 of roots and squeeze them to a slow but sure death. 



The most amusing sight of all my pilgrimage was where the 

 mistress of a certain garden was driving — ^yes, really driving — 

 three big French Canadian workmen around and around the filled- 

 in hole of a newly planted, beautiful specimen evergreen. Their 

 big, heavy soled, flat shoes and heavy tread were certainly making 

 that tree "solid as a rock", even without the steadying wires that 

 were to hold it in position against Winter's heavy winds and cruel 

 gales. 



Heaps of bulbs were everywhere, meek and humble outwardly, 

 but laden with surprises and waiting so patiently their turn to be 

 planted — shining, brown and red skinned things, looking so en- 

 tirely like a pile of onions, that one had to turn them over in the 

 hand to think and convince one's self that great, stunning Darwin 

 tulips, or the clear chaste blue hyacinth would emerge from the 

 homely-looking things in the Spring. 



I remember sending my tailor, a true but innocent flower lover, 

 a box of tulip bulbs. Late the next Spring his young daughter 

 wrote me, saying : "Dear Madame : The onions they have shooted 

 with the big shoot on the top, they is very grand — Marie." I was 

 relieved that under the circumstances at least to know they had 

 not been eaten. 



But to return to my garden visiting. I came upon a small, but 

 [ extremely charming garden, in which there were several oval rose 



49 



