to admire him.

The amateur gardener would be pleasant if you could cut out his conceit,
but it is ineradicable. He comes into my garden and points out my
principal mistakes and tells me of the much better things which he has
in his garden.

I myself am not a gardener at all. I admit it. I should imagine that
there is no man in Great Britain and her Dependencies who knows as
little about gardening as I do. But that is not the sole reason why I
write about my London garden. We can distinguish between the dog lover
and the dog fancier. In the same way we may distinguish between the
garden lover and the gardener. It is an important distinction.

The garden in London makes you love it, and it also breaks your heart.
It has therefore all the charm of woman. I am not going to believe that
any garden in the heart of the country, where everything is green and
easy, can give the same pleasure as my half-acre reclaimed among the
chimney-pots. It has its limitations, of course, but so have I. So have
all human beings. One does not ask a beautiful woman to be clever. One
does not expect a clever woman to be beautiful. One does not even hope
that an aggressively good woman will be either. Similarly one does not
ask the London garden for fruit and vegetables. All that one may really
require is shade and flowers. Even that is something, when you remember
how very few flowers will grow in shade.

Some blackguard who was allowed to use this garden before it fell to my
lot planted rhubarb in a part of it. Most of the rhubarb has now gone,
and the rest is going (as the politicians used to say), contrary, I
believe, to the terms of my lease. But my landlord is more sympathetic
than her solicitors. (The word "landlady" is not to be used. It gives
totally wrong associations.) I have also a currant bush, and this shall
remain. Its green does not displease me. It produces few currants and I
never get or try to get any of them; but birds that are kept as busy
with the slugs and caterpillars as the birds in my garden are, deserve
an occasional change of diet. I have a few old apple trees and pear
trees, but I think I regard them chiefly for their blossom, though these
last two years they have taken heart from the enrichment of the soil and
have been covered with fruit. You will find parsley and mint in a
secluded border, but these represent rather the ornament of nutrition
than nutrition itself.

As a rule parsley in London is terribly ove