The Garden is at the halfway stage, germination accomplished, fruition fast approaching. The borders have attained to their maximum of fulness, the shrubs have thickened out, the creepers have extended. The period of eagerness, of hope, of expectancy, is past. We have reached the stage of accomplishment, if not of maturity, and we pause, and note our progress. But we do not draw up a profit and loss account, and, reducing things to the vulgar basis of pounds, shillings, and pence, ask ourselves if it has paid. The garden is one of ourselves. Should we have a profit and loss account in the sunshine, in the air we breathe? We do not reduce the perfume of our flowers to a commercial basis, like bottles of manufactured scents. The plants have come into our lives as children might do, and we love them because they are a part of us.

In the spring time there is always something strange about a garden, even when one has known it for many years. It comes back to us from its winter sleep as a friend might do who in the past enjoyed our intimacy, but with whom we have lost touch a little in the lapse of years. Are his tastes, are ours, the same as of yore? Will there be the same sympathy between us? Has he become a little embittered with the sharpness of life, or is he as kind and affectionate as he used to be? We come into association again with a faint element of fear, of shyness. We are willing to make advances, but dare not go too far, in case of a rebuff. As time passes we come together again, without effort, without consciousness. There is an invisible link between us, which has never been broken, and which now draws us close. Soon we feel the warm and moving impulse of perfect love and understanding. Our lives are blended once again.

We spend long, happy hours in the garden during July. Even if work calls us in the daytime, there are the early morning and the evening hours. The volume of love-song which the birds pour forth has diminished a little in the force of its passionate rapture, but it is still strong enough to wake us at the very break of dawn. And we go forth gladly, loth to lose a single one of the golden moments of summer.

The Rose Garden. - It was a wise voice which bade us make this garden. As we gaze on the tall columns, fleecy with soft folds of white, ripe with warm crimson, sparkling with pink and carmine, we can hardly realise that all this beauty has come to us in five short months. And the beds of dwarfs are now in full glory. They give us armfuls of flowers every day.

Sweet Peas. - These still climb on, but buds have turned to blossoms, and still more buds come. July is a crucial month with Sweet Peas. You must cut, and cut again, if you would have them grow on into the autumn. A few days of podding in July drought will give them a check from which they will never recover. We cut shoots as well as flowers, thinning them freely when they threatened to become crowded. Our want was clear shoots, with long, stiff flower stems.

More Pinks. - Our Mrs. Sinkins and Ernest Lad-hams had won all our hearts, so free of bloom, so sweet, so altogether charming for cutting were they. It was therefore a painful shock to find that a night attack from rabbits had brought destruction to many of them. We looked to the fence wire, found the weak spot, and mended it. The passion of rabbits for Pinks will draw the shy, suspicious creatures to the garden even in daylight. In order to replenish the stock we pulled young shoots out of their sockets, trimmed off the lower leaves, and pressed them into a prepared bed of fine, sandy, moist soil.

The Dahlias were now growing rampantly, and in fear of too thick and crowded a growth we thinned the side shoots freely, leaving no more than six branches to each plant.

The Flower Beds. - In a long, dry spell the plants began to show signs of suffering, slight at first, but certain to grow more marked as time passed. We checked it by hoeing well between the plants, and then spreading over the soil a coating (what gardeners term a "mulch") of short manure.

[It is the first faint sign of distress that should be acted on; do not wait for the wholesale yellowing of leaves and fading of flowers. The gardener can check an evil that is only in its infancy, but he cannot put a dead leaf on a plant again. It is just this little watchfulness in dry spells that means the difference between weeks of beauty and an early collapse.]

Violas. - These, too, were showing signs of wear.

With a kind cruelty we cut them over sharply - buds, flowers, and leaves - then spread manure amongst them. They were flowerless for perhaps a fortnight, then more buds came, and from that time until the autumn we had bloom.

Pentstemons. - Among a host of things that Wilkins had raised from seed in a frame in winter were some Pentstemons. They were observed but casually at first, for raising seedlings was a passion with him. They lay about the place in boxes of all shapes and sizes, some of which were huddled in heaps, others dropped here and there, as though he had started across the garden with them to plant them somewhere, been overtaken with an idea to plant something else instead, and summarily dropped them. The box of Pentstemons spent a period of probation in one of the huddles, then another alongside a walk, and finally got its contents planted in a bed. We soon realised that we had a treasure. The plants grew rapidly, and threw up stems laden with beautiful bells. The colours were glorious. Among those that we admired the most were flowers the external tube of which was brilliant rose, carmine, or magenta, and the throat purest, stainless white. We marked the best of them for increase by cuttings later on.

The Herbaceous Borders. - There was much work to be done, and many beautiful things to see. Some of the plants developed an offensive hooligan nature, crowding and bullying their smaller neighbours. They were dealt with in the only way hooligan nature can appreciate, by force majeure. They were thinned and tied - held in necessary bondage. When tied with judgment they formed objects of no mean beauty.