WHEN IT SHALL FLOWER AND SO
YIELD TO US ITS SECRET
There stands the bush all neatly tied, its venerable head at the moment covered with a powdering of fine snow, and round it the first sharp spears of Crocus leaves show, and the fat buds of Snowdrops, and the ready bud of the yellow Aconite. All the garden is waiting, the Pea-sticks are prepared, the paths have been cleaned, and I am waiting and watching the little things. The trees even now are whispering that it will soon be Spring, for all they look from a distance like a collection of dried and pressed roots sticking up in the air, how they are drawn in purple ink against the sky; but one day my eyes will see a faint haze over them as if a little mist hung about them and was caught in the branches, and then they will change so quietly that it is impossible to tell quite when they began to look like very delicate green feathers, and then they will change so suddenly that it is a shock to one’s eyes to find them in a full flush of sticky bud and leaf, and one says in accents of delighted surprise, “Why, the trees are out!”
Not every one takes pleasure in a garden during the Winter time, many regarding it as a chill and a desolate place in itself, and taking only an interest in the green-houses and the Violet frames; and few would find a pleasure in washing flower-pots by the dozen on a rainy day, and in putting fresh ashes on the paths, and in banking up Celery. But to the keen gardener every inch of work in his garden is full of interest, he realises the daily value of each thing he does, he knows of that great silent work that is going on so near him, and so enjoys even the burnishing of a spade, the rolling of lawns, and loves, as I think every one does, the surgical work of pruning the fruit trees.
Then, when the promise is fulfilled, and the world is full of green and colour, the wondrous alchemy of the Winter months shows its result in the glorious painting of the flowers of Spring and Summer.
XII
GARDEN PATHS
You can get no symbol finer than a path, no symbol is more used. Of necessity a path must begin somewhere and have a destination. Of necessity it must cross certain country, overcome obstacles, or go round them. By nature you come at new views from a path and so obtain fresh suggestions. A path entails labour, and by labour ease. It must have a purpose, and so must originate in an inspiration. And yet the man who makes a path ignores, as a rule, the high importance of his task.
It is a peculiar thing that paths made across fields, and made by the very people whose business it is to reach from point to point in the shortest possible time, are never straight. Their very irregularities reflect the nature of man more than the nature of the ground they cross.
So unmethodical is man by instinct that if he were to lay out a garden in the same frame of mind in which he crosses a field, that garden would abound in twisted, tortuous paths, beds of irregular shapes, spasmodic arrangements of trees, flowers, shrubs and vegetables, a veritable hotch-potch. To overcome that he imprisons the wanderings of his mind, divides his garden into regular shapes, and drives his paths pell-mell from point to point as straight as his eye and a line will allow him. This planning of a garden is an absorbing joy. To come new to a fresh place untouched by any other hand and to work your will on it gives one all the delights of conquest, and the pleasant fatigue of a war in which you are bound to win. You can make your own traditions, founding them for future ages—as, for instance, you may so plant your trees as to force one view on the attention. You can emulate Rome and carry your paths straight and level. In fact, that little new world is yours to conquer.