The Garden at Home (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III PLOTTING AND PLANNING Viewed from the warm fireside, the future of the garden is rosy, the seeds sprout without exception, grow green and come to blossom. Is there any recreation comparable to that of plotting and planning a garden?that is to say, one's own garden ? I doubt if any at once so well occupies the present and fills the future with pleasant dreams, and he who dreams is happy, proof against the mischances of the moment, for his thoughts are fixed on a bright future. If to-day's expectations are disappointed?well, there are to-morrows, and the glamour of romance still enshrines them. When should the gardening year begin ? There are many opinions, but my own is that the dull season is the time, and the warm fireside the place, to make a start. There, with his books and catalogues and papers, the beginner is less likely to be disheartened; for, thus viewed, the future of his garden is rosy, the seeds sprout without exception, grow green, and come to blossom; the lawns are close, velvety, and soft; the roses smother the leaves in bloom, and all is well. Disillusion at the outset is gall to the tyro's soul, for his ideals are pitched high, and the fall is sure to be far. When with experience has comesome glimmering of the fascination that soil cultivation compels, the non-materialisation of ideals is of less import; the gardener will feel impelled to follow with good, thick boots the way his shoes have trodden. But turn the beginner on the ground on a typical November day, when the sky hangs like a pall and a keen wind whistles through the trees, thrust a spade into his hands and bid him dig the cold, clammy soil, and even a modern Mark Tapley will scarcely survive the ordeal. Yet seat him ]in his own inglenook with his slippered toes well warmed ...