Alfred Austin

In Veronica's Garden Alfred Austin

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1895 Excerpt: ... June 2()tf. If you are not something of a philosopher,--and by philosophy I understand a serene temper, and the maintaining of an equable mind under the sharpest disappointments,--I do not advise you to cultivate, or at any rate to grow enamoured of, a garden. On the 24th of May, I said we needed only a moist ending to that month, and a dripping introduction to June, for summer in the Garden that we Love to be garlanded with fairer and profuser flowers than ever before. From that day to this, and it is now the 29th of June, we have not had one drop of rain, but, in lieu of it, a scorching sun, drying winds, and more than once a dangerously cold night. There have been local thunderstorms, but us they have not visited, and it is now nearly seven weeks since we had a shower of even the humblest pretensions. Do you know what that means, in an English garden? It means incessant labour, daily and copious watering, and withal sadly inadequate results. Annuals that were planted in the open ground, and in the most careful manner, came up, and then died away; and others, grown for precaution's sake in pots or boxes, and then put out, have but stunted growth and a wizened aspect. Had it not been for the new well we sank last winter, there would hardly have been a garden to love. At the bottom of our meadow runs a stream in which, when the water is let down from the mill above, the Poet sometimes casts a fly, but, as a rule, with indifferent results; for, being much given to gazing on what he calls the Face of the Beloved, and noting every change of light and shade in the landscape within his range, he is but an unproductive fisherman. But he sometimes brings home a respectably-sized trout, and the knowing, who, however, themselves do not handle a rod, assert that the ...