A Message from the Absent Editor 
Once I followed Spring from March to May. At Sorrento and 
Amalii the terraced hills were pink with almonds, and orange trees 
bloomed and bore fruit as is their lavish way. The walls flaunted 
tufts of wall-flowers and daffodils, and hyacinths jeweled the black 
earth. About Florence the peach trees were in bloom, and Roman 
fields were carpeted with purple violets. On the Spanish steps 
many-budded carnations were only less lovely than pink and mauve 
and yeUow freesias. The foothills of the Alps wore arabesques of 
flowering trees against cushiony green. All France smeUed of Hlacs, 
and England glowed with tulips and gay spring flowers. America 
from the train window, was a great pink orchard, and my own little 
Spring things were blooming to greet me. 
But in Italy it rained, and in France it hailed, and in England 
it did both. Spring was a deHght to the eye, but the body shivered. 
America looked well, but felt chilly. 
Since then I have not expected too much of Spring. I have looked 
and loved, — but I have worn warm clothes and carried an umbrella. 
I have realized that everywhere Spring is beautiful but ill-tempered. 
Earlier or later, the tantrums must be endured and forgiven. 
K. L. B. 
Last Word from the Acting Editor 
In the month of May our gardens are so full of promise. Winter 
with its bleak days and bare fields is far behind, and summer is here — 
fuU of hope and faith, sunshine and Hght May winds, and we can sit 
with windows open and enjoy the prospect of it all. Year after 
year, with the recurrent planting of a garden one begins dimly to 
realize that one cannot go arm and arm with Nature and not feel 
the bigness of the cause with which he has finked his fate. Planting 
itself is a mystical thing. We drop seed into the ground, cover it, 
stand aside and wait — and the forces of nature do the rest and we 
can't tell how. It's all a part of the unconsidered miracle in which 
we five, and what a small part of the age-long process is one garden 
or one gardener! The expression of effort toward finer things, a 
harmony of the small bit of the universe in which we individually five, 
is the true ideal of the real gardener, and perhaps to bring the love 
of gardening before those who so far have failed to care for such 
expression. To make of each garden "a place of sweet dreams and 
health and quiet breathing." 
The next issue of the Bulletin will find me back in my fittle 
corner playing with News and Views instead of the whole magazine. 
An editor, fike a hunter in the dark, never knows whether he hits 
