158 THE HEART OF A GARDEN 
there is no denying; but, even so, and at this most 
desert moment of tne year’s round, where there is light, 
however brief, there is life; and I can never feel that 
my garden is dead to me, nor wholly sunk in deathly 
slumbers, while the sun shines there. 
I am rejoiced that there is no real holiday in the 
gardener’s year, for such a term must, perforce, spell 
estrangement. When the frost’s hard seal is set so that 
one cannot dig, there is a multitude of other ploys to 
turn to. There are chrysanthemum cuttings to tend, 
the gentle fires that just keep the frost-wolf from the 
glass-house door to care for, labels to affix and renew, 
leaf moulds to manipulate, alterations to map out with 
just exactitude against the advent of open weather, and 
a host of other things—“duties enough and little cares.” 
Yet, duty apart, and from a sheerly pleasurable point of 
view, there is much for enjoyment (if only there be sun¬ 
shine) in the very fastnesses of the frost. You had, may¬ 
be, forgotten since last winter what a rare artist he was, 
that secret craftsman, who works with such marvellous 
speed, such metrical precision. Even as the low sun 
undoes his work, there is no unlovely anarchy in the 
dissolution; falling together again like the jewelled 
pieces in a kaleidoscope, his masterpieces change their 
aspect, but not their beauty. It is merely a question of 
readjustment. His pearls become diamonds glittering 
from every twig and spray, drops of living fire; the 
shadow shapes detach themselves on lawn and pathway 
pinked and patterned out in rime. 
And what better could you wish for in the matter ot 
colour than that famous symphony of his in white and 
