We have placed square Compton pots with Italian wreaths, filled with palms and flowering plants, one on each side of the altar step.
At night, when there is no light in the Oratory, except that of the Sanctuary lamps, the shadows of the palms look like angels’ wings, crossing and re-crossing....
But, just as to a Garden there is no end—no end to its wants or to our desires for it; to its phases, its transmutation surprises; to our joys and disappointments in it—so there is no end to a Garden and Country House gossip. We might go on for ever—like Tennyson’s Brook! And meanwhile the year is passing on, in its stately pomp.
SUMMER ONCE MORE ... AND AFTER
Full Summer is once more upon the Garden. The Delphiniums are rampant. We are in the centre of a heat wave, and our dry hill-side pants in the sun. At the fall of eve our souls rejoice in the sound of the refreshing showers when the watering begins; for one thirsts sympathetically with the cherished borders....
The moor is deepening to purple. The trees wear the deep green that precedes the turn. Life is rushing by with us so quickly that it seems but the “blink of an eye,” as the Germans say, since we were peering for the first bulb shoot.... In a little while the Ramblers and Wichurianas will be one blaze of glory; and in a little while again the Autumn winds will be shouting up the valley and the Bracken turning gold over the rolling hills; and again in a little while again it will be the Winter and the snow and we shall be watching for the Spring.
And it will be all even as before and yet all quite different. And so year by year.... And one day our garden will bloom for other eyes than ours.
Nunc tibi—mox aliis, the Book-Lover’s motto has it. How true also of the beloved Garden!... Another “eye-blink.”