"Now is the winter of my discontent."
I have not had charge of my garden very long; and I am not sure that I should have undertaken such a charge had there been anyone else to do it. But there was no one else, and it so obviously needed doing.
Of course there was the gardener—I shall have to allude to him occasionally—but just now I will only mention the fact that his greatest admirer could not have accused him of taking care of the garden.
Then there was his Reverence; he was by way of being in charge of everything, me included, I suppose, and of course nominally it was so. He had the parish and the church, and the rectory and his family, and the men-servants and the maid-servants, a horse and a pony and the garden! He managed most things well, I will say, and the kitchen garden gave some account of itself, but in the flower garden desolation cried aloud.
I was moved one day to say I thought it disgraceful. "There are no flowers anywhere; nothing but some semi-red geraniums and some poverty-stricken calceolarias and scraggy lobelias. We have none of those nice high blue things, what do you call them? or those yellow round things with red fringes, like daisies, which are not daisies; we have no sweet-Williams even, though they are the sort of flowers that grow in every cottage garden!"
There was a twinkle in his Reverence's eye.
"You seem to know a good deal about flowers, Mary; I can't even follow your descriptions. I try my best with the carrots and onions. You must acknowledge you have vegetables."
"Oh, vegetables!" I cried with a tone of contempt.