12th.—Suppose I want exercise.—Wife blows me up, and says I get puffy; so, to keep all smooth with her and the garden walks, drag the great roller about for two hours, morning and night.
19th.—Insects in green-house devouring all my new plants; searched book for a remedy, and last night popped in a pan of burning brimstone. This morning all the grubs shrivelled to shreds, and every plant dead and stripped as naked as a plucked chicken. Tom begs to have the green-house to keep his pigeons in.
23rd.—Fill up odd time in watching fruit trees with a rattle, for the birds perch on the sham cats and build nests in the mawkins. What with opening and shutting the cucumber-frames, according to the sun, wind, and clouds, plenty to do.—Charged the garden-engine with lime water—set Dick and Tom to play upon the caterpillars. They have so whitewashed the three Miss Blackets, that I have two velvet bonnets, a silk pelisse, and a cashmere shawl to pay for.
July 3.—Tool-house robbed last night; all cleared out but the garden roller. Isaac's list for a new outfit—spades, forks, dibbers, trowels, traces, hoes, rakes, weeders, scrapers, knives, pruners, axes, saws, shears, scythes, hammers, pincers, lines, levels, sieves, watering-pots, syringes,—he would have gone on, but I stopped him.
9th.—Set nooses for wild rabbits, which are devouring everything green, even the bays. This morning found we had strangled Dick's lop-eared doe. Tom, who is learning to joke, observed that she had wandered for a change of food, and had found a halter-ation.
18th.—The Cherub Giblet potatoes not coming up to time, tried the ground and found them rotting—all gone off without a single shoot.—Mem. To forget them in my next to The Gardener's Journal.
24th.—Half my time taken up in driving the butterflies off the gooseberry trees. Left my weeding-gloves stuck on a stick last night—put them on this morning, and smashed five slugs in one, and seven earwigs in the other.—Mem. Old gloves the best slug-trap.
August 5.—My cucumber frames yield plenty of fruit—have gathered not less than twenty, worth twopence each—cost me only five pounds six shillings and sevenpence.
9th.—Strolled into shrubbery this evening with a lanthorn, for the pleasure of viewing things in a new light—up started two figures from among the bushes, tumbled me, lanthorn, and all, into a bed of roses, and escaped. Mem. 'Stablish a spring gun to-morrow.
15th.—Wall-fruit ripening—must have a few friends while there is something for them—fresh-gathered peaches always a treat.