One’s gardens get smaller and smaller.
My third is only 11 ins. by 9 ins. The vulgar
call it a Japanese garden—indeed, I don’t
see what else they could call it. East is East
and West is West and never the twain shall meet, but
this does not prevent my Japanese garden from sitting
on an old English refectory table in the dining-room.
A Japanese garden needs very careful management.
I have three native gardeners working at it day and
night. At least they maintain the attitudes of
men hard at work, but they don’t seem to do much;
perhaps they are afraid of throwing one another out
of employment. The head gardener spends his time
pointing to the largest cactus, and saying (I suppose
in Japanese), “Look at my cactus!” The
other two appear to be washing his Sunday shirt for
him, instead of pruning or potting out, which is what
I pay them for. However, the whole scene is one
of great activity, for in the ornamental water in
the middle of the garden two fishermen are hard at
it, hoping to land something for my breakfast.
So far they have not had a bite.
My Japanese garden has this advantage over the others,
that it is independent of the seasons. The daffodils
will bow their heads and droop away. The tulips—well,
let us be sure that they are tulips first; but, if
the man is correct, they too will wither. But
the green hedgehog which friends tell me is a cactus
will just go on and on. It must have some source
of self-nourishment, for it can derive little from
the sand whereon it rests. Perhaps, like most
of us, it thrives on appreciation, and the gardener,
who points to it so proudly day and night, is rightly
employed after all. He knows that if once he dropped
his hand, or looked the other way, the cactus would
give it up disheartened.
It is fortunate for you that I am writing this week,
and not later, for I have now ordered three more gardens,
circular ones, to sit outside the library. There
is talk also of a couple of evergreen woods for the
front of the house. With six gardens, two woods,
and an ornamental lake I shall be unbearable.
In all the gardens of England people will be shooting
themselves in disgust, and the herbaceous borders
will flourish as never before. But that is for
the future. To-day I write only of my three gardens.
I would write of them at greater length but that my
daffodil garden is sending out an irresistible call.
I go to sit on the staircase.
An Ordnance Map
Spring calls to us to be up and about. It shouts
to us to stand bareheaded upon hills and look down
upon little woods and tiny red cottages, and away
up to where the pines stand straight into the sky.
Let the road, thin and white, wander on alone; we shall
meet it again, and it shall lead us if it will to
some comfortable inn; but now we are for the footpath
and the stile—we are to stand in the fields
and listen to the skylark.
Must you stay and work in London? But you will
have ten minutes to spare. Look, I have an ordnance
map—let us take our walk upon that.
