"Colour! harmony! If you talk to old Griggs like that he will think you are mad. And, Mary, you bought all these bulbs? Remember there is the spring and summer to be reckoned with. How much has gone?"
"Two pounds. It ought to have been twenty. Seeds are cheaper, you know. I must do a lot with seeds, I find. But bulbs go on, that is the comfort of them. They will be there for always!"
"Well, I won't interfere. Don't bully my old Griggs." And his Reverence walked off.
I proceeded, yes, I will confess it, carefully to open up one of the bulbs he had planted. Yes, there it was, it had its point upward. Oh! I hoped he really knew. And so all the others were placed snugly in their narrow beds, and patted down with a kind of blessing. "Wake up soon and be glorious, brilliant, effective."
There were hours of deep dejection after all my planting was done. It was December, and so much ought to have been done in November, October, and even September. In fact, I ought to have begun nine months ago. And those nine months could not be caught up for another year, depressing thought! Wallflowers, polyanthus, forget-me-nots, sweet-Williams, all the dear, simple things of which I wanted masses, instead of the one or two stalky bushes that grew down a long herbaceous border, all these should have begun their career, it appeared, last February or March if I wanted them to flower next spring. I must wait. I had not set out on my gardening experience to learn patience, it is always being rubbed into one; but I warn you, O brother or sister Ignoramus! that of all stocks you will need patience the most.
My garden was now a white world. Snow buried everything: hopes and depressions were equally hidden. A fine time for castle-building, for hurrying through the seasons and imagining how many treasures ought to be, might be, should be hidden beneath that cold, pure coverlid and warmly, snugly nestling in Mother Earth's brown bosom. What energy must be at work, what pushing, struggling, expanding of little points of life downwards, upwards, until they burst into resurrection with little green hands folded as in thanksgiving.
In the meantime I turned to books, on gardening, of course. My new "fad," as the Others called it, having announced itself in plenty of time for Christmas, my pile of gifts presented a most learned appearance. This was my first taste of that fascinating literature. His Reverence had handed over to me a brown-clad work on gardening—somewhat ancient I must say—at the beginning of my enterprise. I had scanned it critically and compared it to an ordinary cookery-book in which recipes are given, and unless you are already familiar with the art you are continually faced with difficulties. The cookery-books tell one to "make a white sauce of flour, butter and milk," but how? Wherein lies the mystery of that delicately-flavoured, creamy substance or that lumpy kind of paste? Just so my regular handbook to gardening. For example:—