*34 
THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
the gaillardias linger, bright and self-assertive; the 
montbretias deck the front ranks of the beds; the 
gandavensis hybrids of the gladiolus struggle still from 
their spathes and shoulder boldly to the light; and 
along the orchard fences rises the mist of Michaelmas 
daisies, dancing in the growing winds of autumn—fire¬ 
flies in a tangled skein. Yet these flower and fade with 
a consciousness, a premonition of death. Only the 
hard flower of the ivy, pale and spare and prim, seems 
proper to this tide of decay and fall. 
Yet to one rightly constituted, as I have said, the 
garden even now has much delight to offer. Berries 
are red on the trees, holly and hip and haw, the sweet- 
briar and the eglantine. Such a wealth of berries, as 
of acorns on the oaks, would seem to promise a severe 
winter, or at least a white Christmas. “If St. Michael,” 
runs the old saw, “ brings many acorns, Christmas will 
cover the fields with snow.” St. Michael’s Day has 
come and gone, a splendid festival of warmth and 
colour, but St. Michael’s threat remains. These last 
few weeks have witnessed the harvest of my apples and 
pears. The long narrow shelves of the fruit-loft are 
full of beaming, ruddy apples and pears of many colours, 
from the bronze Calabash to the lemon-green Marie 
Louise. The trees, alas! are despoiled of all their 
beauty; the fruit that shone dully in the sun is gone, 
and now the leaves also are falling; but abroad in the 
fruit-chamber is a delicious fragrance, fit for the senses 
of the gods, a bouquet of incommunicable odours. I 
have also caused my walnut-trees to be beaten, and they 
have yielded meekly but shyly to the rod. The sward 
