Gardening.
There can be no more delightful pastime than gardening. I may claim this to be my pet "hobby." Other pastimes are evanescent and leave behind them no lasting results or afford no more than a passing pleasure; but in gardening we have seedtime and harvest, all the pleasures of sowing and planting, watching the gradual growth, training, and nurturing the young plant, and in due time gathering in the flowers or fruit, and in these days when so much is done in "hybridising" we have the added charm of experimenting in raising new varieties. We began to import orchids in 1866, bringing them from the West Indies and Central America in large wooden boxes, thinking it necessary to keep them growing, but we lost more than half on the voyage. They are now roughly packed in baskets or bales and a very large percentage arrive safely.
When in India in 1907, at Darjeeling, I hired two men and two donkeys to go down into the valleys of Bhutan to collect orchids. They returned in about ten days with four large baskets full, chiefly denrobiums. Among them there was a good deal of rubbish, but also many good plants, which I sent home, and which have since flowered and done well. There are no plants more difficult to kill than orchids; but, on the other hand, there are no plants more difficult to grow and to flower. Their habits must be known and studied, and, above all, they must be provided with the exact temperature and degree of moisture they have been accustomed to. But the reward of successful cultivation is great and worth striving for. No flowers can be more lovely in form and in colour, and they have the great merit of lasting for days and even weeks in all the wealth of luxuriant beauty. They are the aristocracy of flowers.
Photo by Medrington.
William B. Forwood