t of the gardener against natural conditions,
his fight against the enemies of his plants, and the fight of the plants
among themselves.

One season there was a prolonged drought and the leaves of the trees
fell prematurely. "That's due to the drought," said the experts. The
following year the season was very wet, and once more my trees shed
their leaves before the time. "What else can you expect after all the
rain we've had?" said the experts. And in both seasons the dairymen, who
seem to have a touch of the expert about them, raised the price of milk.
Perhaps one year I shall find the kind of season which exactly suits my
London garden.

To fight the drought I got me a great length of hose, and made the usual
arrangements with the Water Board. But once the question of a garden is
raised, the Water Board also seems to be infected with the military
spirit. I had a printed document from them, which was severe to the
point of truculence. They reserve themselves rights. They do not
guarantee. They are not responsible. They strictly forbid. With these
and similar phrases they teach the man who dares to use a hose what a
poor worm he is. They tell me that the hose must not be left unattended.
What am I to do with it then? Am I to sit up all night with it and hold
its nozzle? A wet season brings home to me the awful injustice of Water
Boards. Nobody who can get rain for his garden will use the hard, less
satisfactory, but highly valuable products of the Water Board. But in
the wet season, as in the dry, the consumer must pay. In strict justice,
the amount one pays for the water supply for the hose should in any
season be in inverse proportion to the rainfall during that season.

When the drought was here I watered my lawn profusely (and the Water
Board need not rage and swell, for I never left the hose unattended for
one moment). A little later I walked over the lawn to collect its
gratitude, as it were, and I saw hosts of strange and horrid things.
They were white, and yellow, and yellowish brown. They had come out of
the crevices, and they had crawled. When I thought that for weeks past,
this, my garden, had been providing them with sustenance, I was moved to
fury. But I did not lose my head. There is a right way and a wrong way
of doing everything. There is even a right way of killing slugs.

I have read in books that the gardener takes the slug and crushes it
under his heel on the gravel path; a jobbing gardener might