THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
l S° 
extremely useful rules of the game subservient to your 
good pleasure, in place of playing it according to the law 
and the prophets, you will secure a far fairer display in 
your glass-houses, extending also over a longer period, 
than the pedantic grower. Only do you make a proper 
study of disbudding—and, believe me, the whole practice 
is of so limpid a simplicity as to jump to the eyes, once 
the general principle is grasped—and you shall marshal 
your flowery hosts here and there about the season’s field 
to your heart’s content. Your gardener may not feel 
altogether pleased with you, but he will come to look 
over it in time, even perhaps to smile indulgently upon 
your more conspicuous failures. Yet there is no need to 
indulge largely in failures, if you are careful to study the 
individual characters and the habits of your chrysan¬ 
themums, and to bring them up accordingly. Among 
other things, too, one should especially remember that 
the mill will never grind with the waters that are past; 
by which I would signify that should a dry summer ever 
chance to find napping the Man who bears the Water- 
cans, the lapse were practically irrecoverable. 
This year I think my glass-houses are particularly 
radiant. Against the pale apple-green background of 
the walls the soft flower-heads rise tier upon tier, like a 
bevy of enchanted princesses wrapped in stately robes of 
dark green escalloped velvet. Nothing very strikingly 
new or strange is here, for last December found me in 
no adventurous mood, but lam well pleased all the same. 
They stand as I like to see them—some grown upon the 
decorative system, but the larger majority after the 
specimen plan more or less; some more and some less. 
