torn by the flower I pick and take into the house and then again by 
the one I leave lonely in the garden, and oh, I wish I could stroll 
ecstatically, never seeing a weed, or if I must see it, leave it for some 
one else to puU; and shall I some day cease to be apologetic and ex- 
planatory? 
Is all this a private idiosyncrasy or, to return to my bromides, is 
Mother Eve speaking through her daughter? Do gardens belong to 
days when any old thought was new because there were so few people 
to think or am I pre-historically feeble-minded? 
I should like to hear from the garden Marys (another early thought) 
who cull a perfect rose, dew-spangled, or sit drinking in the scent of 
their flowers, what they think about in their idle garden hours. Or 
are we all Marthas who garden, who weed or cut off dead flowers, or 
sprinkle insecticides or accomplish any other task the gardener deems 
unworthy, the while diligently thinking deadly thoughts of youth, 
innocence and optimism? 
K. L. B. 
Ways and Means in the Garden 
Gertrude Jekyll, V. M. H. 
During a long life of gardening, all kinds of minor problems have 
presented themselves for solution, and indeed it is one of the many 
satisfactions of practical gardening to devise means of meeting the 
many little difficulties that arise and to invent ways of getting over 
them. One of the most frequent is the need of some kind of support. 
We have to remember that, though plants in a wild state have the 
strength of the stems so rightly adjusted that they stand well by 
themselves, yet in our gardens, where they are in richer ground, the 
growth is stouter and heavier, and for a good number of plants some 
kind of staking is necessary. The great thing is to do it in good 
time. Nothing is more deplorable than to see, as one often does in 
other people's gardens, such plants as Michaelmas Daisies, full grown 
and perhaps already beaten down by heavy rain, and then, at the last 
moment, when just about to flower, bunched up to one stake and 
looking like an old Gamp umbrella. These grand autumn plants 
we stake in June when they are barely half grown. In the winter, 
when a few trees and a certain amount of brushwood is cut, we take 
out suitable branching stuff on purpose. It may be of Oak, Chestnut, 
or Hazel; or sometimes we use last year's hazel pea sticks with the 
thinner top cut off. These are stuck away among the growing Asters, 
in such a way, according to the special need of each kind, which will 
best support the stems, while allowing for the display of the natural 
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