A YEAR IN A GARDEN ON N.-W. COAST OF ROSS-SHIRE. 89 
do not know it imagine spikes nine and ten inches long, encrusted 
with its fruit all round, like maize on its cob, only not nearly so stiff 
and clumsy as Indian corn, and the fruits are set close together on 
the spike, and are very like big, transparent white currants. It 
spreads here, and is thoroughly at home, and everyone who sees 
it falls in love with it. 
October. 
We have had such a spell of terrible weather during the middle 
of this month that only flowering shrubs such as the Hydrangeas 
and Myrtles could have stood it. The black-stemmed Hydrangeas 
with the very blue flowers have been, if possible, better than ever ; 
and as to the paniculate Hydrangeas, they are among the very choicest 
blooming shrubs ever discovered ; no equinoctial hurricanes or 
floods (even if accompanied by sleet and hail) seem capable of injuring 
them. I find (as with the Buddleias) there are two ways of growing 
them — i.e. either in a border with rich soil and close pruning in 
annually, under which system they remain low but produce huge heads 
of bloom, or, on the other hand, to grow them more or less naturally 
in the shelter of woods, allowing them to spread and shoot up tall, 
with next to no pruning, and though the individual blooms may be 
somewhat smaller, they make a most delightful show all through 
October and most of November. They have just one drawback, for 
which we have not yet found a remedy — viz. their inability to last 
long fresh in water when cut and brought into the house. 
The next plants I find best for blooming in October are those 
well-known, lovely lilies, Lilium auratum and L. speciosum. They 
generally do so well in peaty Rhododendron and Azalea beds, and some 
of the former reached the height of between seven and eight feet 
this year. A big vase of these lilies in a room in October cannot be 
beaten for perfection of beauty by any other flowers grown during the 
whole rest of the year — for, besides their glorious colours of white 
and gold, pink and deep crimson, their perfume is so delicious. 
Abelia grandiflora is a nice pink October-flowering shrub, and does 
quite well here, but I saw it flowering much more profusely against 
a hot terrace-wall in Argyllshire. Diplacus glutinosus is now pro- 
ducing its coppery orange blooms, which so exactly resemble the 
ordinary herbaceous monkey-plant. It is, in fact, just a Calif ornian 
tree Mimulus, but I cannot boast of its being really hardy, as, like a 
lovely South African Epacris, which I sometimes bloom in a small 
way, it requires a little protection, which usually consists of a hand- 
glass with half its panes missing ! 
Next to my Hydrangeas, my most striking big shrubs blooming 
this month are undoubtedly the Myrtles. I have two kinds- — viz. 
the old-fashioned very fragrant European one, usually grown indoors 
in pots in the colder districts, but which blooms so late here, even on 
a south wall, that in a cold year like this it can hardly be said to flower 
at all ; and a vigorous, very hardy kind from Chile, which I got off 
