In My Vicarage Garden And Elsewhere

ich, with a few occasional drawbacks from bad seasons, or it may be from wrong cultivation, anxious preparation ends in success ; the season of hopes now ended in the reality of sight, when we need no longer hope for that we see not, and with patience wait for it, but may feast our eyes on the beauties which we have waited for, and to some extent have created, and in which we cheer ourselves with the delightful feeling that our labours have not been in vain, and so we will go on the next year as cheerfully and as hopefully as ever. For I hold it as a firm article of faith in gardening that there has never been in any year what can be called complete failure ; there are, of course, failures and disappointments in some parts of the garden, but there have been unlooked- for successes in some other parts, and on the whole the compensation has been great enough tostop all grumbling. But in this particular year (1900) there has been little or no cause for grumbling, because the failures have been so few, while the successes have been so many. I suppose the oldest among us cannot recollect a year in which there has been such a marvellous abundance of flowers, such healthy growth, and such richness of colour in the flowers, and such a delightful season in which to enjoy it all. It has been so all the year. I noted it in what I said of the flowers of spring, and the flowers of summer have carried on the story. The fruit trees were beautiful pictures, with scarcely an excep...