136 THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
colours, gloom and vacancy the insignia of his reign, 
and he sits in his impregnable towers with the air of 
one who has taken permanent possession. He is the 
man in possession for five long weary months so far as 
the outer garden is concerned. Our garden is enclosed 
indeed, but enclosed only from the eyes of visiting 
strangers and the rigorous winds of the Orient. It lies 
exposed to winter, from which no man nor any power 
has yet been able to deliver us. The hurricane that 
swept through garden and wilderness about a week 
since, wrenching boughs from their hold and filling the 
weeping air with drenched green leaves and twigs like 
forlorn flights of storm-tossed birds, has left behind it 
but little perceptible trace, for all its sound and fury. 
The walks are clean once more, and although the skies 
glitter more clearly through the thinning leafage ot the 
trees, there is but little wreckage now to show the 
track of the storm. During the next three months the 
rain will beat, and the winds will sift, and the frosts 
will cleanse and purify; but my garden, threshed by 
these turbulent forces of Nature, will grow sweet and 
wonderful towards the breaking of the spring—as it 
were, dawn in the year. But now I must prepare, for, 
though the fallow months seem long and dreary, the 
hour will soon be gone when we may take thought for 
the future and the resurrection of the garden. 
I have taken some steps towards a reorganisation of 
my garden. I find this to be necessary every autumn, 
for, however greatly the plan of the dead season may 
have pleased me, there is no year goes past but brings 
its bitter experience and its fuller knowledge. This 
