From our eyrie on the hillside we saw long streams of char-a-bancs, motor-wagonettes, flies, and other public conveyances pass through the village street below. The folk in them looked very flushed and dusty. We knew then that the holiday season had begun. When people pay famine prices for seaside lodgings in August, why do they proceed to spend three parts of their time driving along the glaring roads to outlying villages? Why don't they take lodgings in the villages themselves, and so save money and dusty drives? Probably there is no answer to these questions. It is a peculiarity people have, apparently, and is unexplainable. Village gardens often look very nice in August, and if the countryside is browning a little, it remains pleasant. Does some suspicious townsman murmur "contaminated water"? Well, many of the villages lying round the great seaside resorts now have water from the same systems as the towns themselves, and their names can easily be ascertained on inquiry. It was because we joyed so deeply in our own garden that we felt so sorry for those packed, dusty people in the char-a-bancs, hurrying with so much discomfort from the "apartments" on which they had spent the better part of a year's savings.

August Flowers in Cottage and Other Gardens. - Ten-Week Stocks are good summer flowers, provided they are double. Singles are no use to anyone. The author has heard disappointed amateurs declare that Stocks always refuse to come double in their gardens, although nearly every plant is double in the cottage plots. One might imagine from this that the Stock is a plant of democratic views, but the real matter is the strain of seed. Some strains will always give a large proportion (say 80 per cent), of doubles, whether in the tinker's garden or the squire's. Others cannot be relied upon. We planted our bed of Stocks thickly, and directly a flower showed single we ejected the offending plant. Those left made a beautiful bed, and an envious friend, who saw the bed a short time after the ejection, broke out into a fume. "Half mine single, and every one of yours double!" The cottager is often great with Asters too, and flowers them better than his bigger neighbours. This may be partly a question of soil, which some people make too rich. The author knows of (and imitates) an ingenious cottager who adds wood ashes and mortar rubbish to his Aster soil, and generally walks off with the first prize at the flower show. To get fine flowers one wants a healthy plant, but not a huge one gorged with rich manure. It is odd that folk who will not look at a single Stock cast admiring eyes on a single Aster; yet not so very odd either, for the single is a very bonnie thing. The Kew people call it Callistephus Sinensis, but Aster Sinensis will do. A splendid late summer flower is the tall red Lobelia fulgens, so totally different a plant from the little blue edging Lobelia. There are several varieties, and some of them are almost better than the old fulgens; they give different colours, any way. The earlier varieties of Gladioli are opening their beautiful blooms. The flower gardener is often caught between two minds over them; they look so well in the bed, and yet so well in the house! [There is no reason why some should not be cut, for if they are taken off just as the bottom flowers begin to open they will expand by turns all the way up, so that you have a lovely vase for two or three weeks. What is more, other spikes will follow, so that you will get your bed after all.]

How good the florists are to us! They have earned our gratitude in many ways, but never more than in giving us new varieties of the Japanese Anemone. Some of the newcomers will oust the old ones from modern gardens, but it will want a physical as well as mental effort, for the plants root very strongly, and spread afar.

Carnations. - The cottager does not, as a rule, score over the amateur with Carnations, because he will not renew them as often as he should. We layered ours into mounds of earth, by slicing along the stems of the side shoots and pegging them down. Old Carnations may give a lot of flowers, but they are not very inspiring, and when the plants get leggy they look rather ugly. By summer layering one can increase the stock of those varieties which please the most, and thrive the best. The latter point is important. All varieties do not grow equally well in any particular garden. Some grow like spring chickens, others are weedy.

Annual Phloxes. - People say that it is the improvement in dwarf annual Phloxes more than anything else which has caused Verbenas to drop into the background. That may be so, but it was probably based on the misapprehension that the Verbenas had to be kept growing all the winter, and propagated by cuttings in spring. Is not that wrong? Why not raise them from seed like Snapdragons in February? It is cheap, easy, and effectual. Our seedling Verbenas were in bloom with the Phloxes, and although we liked the latter we liked the Verbenas better.

The Double Zinnia. - The finest lot of double Zinnias the author ever saw were in a cottage garden in Kent. They really were magnificent as a break of colour, if, perhaps, a little harsh. The double Zinnia is a flower to admire rather than to love. You can grow it - as we grew ours - like an Aster or a Ten-Week Stock.

Some Annuals. - The cottager does not shine with annuals as a rule, and the reason is that he does not give them enough room. His Sweet Peas are often good, also his Mignonette, but there it ends. We have already talked of the difficulty of thin seeding. Over sowing is not fatal if the after thinning is thorough. We had a great success with Larkspurs, and want to know why people are forgetting this good old plant. Rose Mallows were also excellent. Perhaps, however, the annual we found the most valuable was the Godetia in its many varieties. Really, these are almost equal to any florists' flower. The seedsmen have given us some very beautiful forms, which not only possess brilliant colours but are very lasting. A good annual! A great annual! Hadn't we better have a Godetia Society, and make more of it? We were so pleased with the annuals that we willingly allowed Wilkins to extract consent for seed to be purchased and sown for spring. Nemophilas and Silenes were specially bargained for.

Perfume. - The Sweet Peas are still going strongly, for we clip them over at frequent intervals, and so stop podding. Mignonette is in bloom, too, and so are the Sweet Sultans. But the little night-scented Stock beside the porch is sweetest at eventide.

In the Borders. - Seedling Hollyhocks are not so bad, in these disease-ridden days. You may specialise the plants if you are that way inclined, but an expenditure on special varieties may or may not turn out well. Seedlings are often more than respectable, whether the majority come single or double. One can buy plants cheaply in the spring. A clump looks very well, too, towards the back of the border, with the tall flower columns bending over dwarfer things. The Bergamot pleases us greatly with its aromatic odour. The Everlasting Pea makes a very nice object, we find, on a large stump, over which it rambles and flowers in profusion. The white won the heart of Eunice without fully compensating her for the fact that it was not an

"everlasting" flower. People are still misled by this erring term. Presumably the person who named the plant wanted to distinguish it, as a perennial, from the annual Sweet Pea, but he chose a very silly way of doing it. We have a fine variety of the red called splendens. In a cool spot several Evening Primroses gave us pleasure, notably the fine dwarf yellow form of fruticosa called Youngii, and it does not hide its face until evening either.

The Kitchen Garden. - Dry weather tried our Peas, in spite of the mulching, but one or two varieties stood up nobly, and steadily filled up their pods at a period when a chat with the village greengrocer revealed the fact that "there wasn't a Pea to be had for a thousand mile round." We sympathised with him in having had to travel so far in the hot, trying weather, and showed him a green and productive row of Autocrat.

Scarlet Runners gave us splendid pickings, and we cleared off the dwarfs, which were getting old and stringy. We earthed up our most forward Celery in order to blanch the stems, taking care to do it with moist soil. Eunice looked puzzled when Wilkins informed her that earthing with dry soil made Celery bolt, not aware of the fact that this is gardenese for running to seed. We earthed up our Leeks, too, but the Lettuces we blanched by tying. [Lettuces are even more addicted to "bolting" than Celery. Just when you think that you have grown a most marvellous crop, and are basing your calculations on having a constant supply for the rest of the year, you see a green tip appear at the top of the plant. Another plant goes the same, another, and another. In a few days three parts of your beautiful Lettuces have put on a top storey, and the crop is spoiled. This vexatious happening is the most common in dry spells, but it is not limited to dry, hot soils. It is more common among the Cos (upright) than the Cabbage varieties. Growers should not aim at a long supply from one batch, but make small successional sowings, so as to have young plants always coming on. The same with Radishes, of which the oval shaped variety called French Breakfast is so delicious when young, but so hopeless when old and tough.] We sowed Endive, Bath Lettuce, and Onions for spring, and likewise a few rows of Spinach. [The last is another bad "bolter." Choose the variety Victoria, which does not run to seed anything like the round and the prickly.] The Tomatoes had set a good crop of fruit, which was swelling fast, and some of the most forward fruits were even colouring. We clipped in a few of the larger leaves, where they shaded the fruit, and removed those at the bottom of the stem altogether.

The Fruit Garden. - The cordons had grown to our entire satisfaction, and we summer pruned them by cutting all the side shoots back to six leaves.