Stray Leaves from a Border Garden 
tiny guelder-roses, and Sikkimensis too, with its pale 
drooping yellow bells like a cowslip’s bells. Art masquer- 
ading as Nature has had there a delightful success. I 
remember yet in my dreams a perfect rivulet of squills 
blue as the sky which succeeded a shining ocean of golden 
crocus. I remembered when I awoke these joys were 
only to be attained by a very open hand in the matter of 
plant-food. These terraces were irrigated with liquid 
manure ! ! ! 
April 19. — Primrose Day. How curious it is the prim- 
roses should now be bound up with Lord Beaconsfield, 
when I question whether to the great statesman a primrose 
was really ever anything more than just a primrose by the 
river’s brim ! The quiet of our woods is undisturbed by 
primrose-gatherers, no doubt because all around is thickly 
sown with Radicals, a weed that springs apace. I am 
thankful, however, I am encompassed by Radicals, 
because in England the craze for primroses has ended by 
almost exterminating the poor primrose in places around 
London. At one riverside place I know of not a plant can 
be kept in the shrubbery, but only in the walled garden, 
a prisoner, but secure. I wonder, by the way, why 
gardeners are so often Radicals, and even Red Republicans, 
as was an old Provencal nurseryman of my childish 
acquaintance, though it always seemed to me somewhat 
improvident on his part to wish to see all the aristocrats 
hanging from the lamp-post, since such are generally most 
appreciative of expensive flowers. 
April 21. — A beautiful warm sunny morning, which I 
spent wandering in the garden counting my treasures. 
There were several white globe anemones out, rather small 
perhaps, but we must make allowance for young plants. 
The Polyanthus, that dear old favourite, “Jack behind the 
garden gate,” as he is called in Suffolk, would have been 
a brave sight, but, alas, those weary birds will not allow a 
single bloom to remain in all the border. Gardener com- 
plains ©f the Wild Birds Protection Act as being the 
despair of gardeners and ruin of gardens. “ It was all very 
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