a tear
For fading flowers or waning year,
Remember that another spring,
Fresh flowers and brighter hopes will bring.

Two elevated strawberry beds, facetiously termed 'twin strawberry
hills,' rear themselves between the vase and the back lawn, the
further corners of which are respectively protected from wheelbarrow
intrusion by an Irish Quern and a Capsular Stone, venerated in Irish
tradition--the former a remarkably perfect, the latter an exceedingly
compact specimen, having on one side a double, and on the other a
single hollow. . . . The remaining points of interest in my garden
may be noticed in a very few words. It gradually decreases in
breadth, and is fenced off on one side from the garden of a very kind
neighbour (which contains two of the finest walnut trees in the
parish) by an oak paling partially covered with broad, or Irish, and
embellished by the picturesque narrow-leaved ivy.

"On the other side a trim hedge, kept breast high, which runs beside
'the long walk,' separates it from the extensive meadow of Park
House, and at the termination the following inscription from one of
Herrick's poems has been placed--

Thine own dear grounds,
Not envying others larger bounds,
For well thou knowest 'tis not the extent
Of land makes life, but sweet content.

"The garden produces plenty of strawberries, an abundance of
raspberries, and generally a good crop of apples and pears, but few
vegetables; the cultivation, except of asparagus (of which there are
two excellent beds), having been abandoned, as the bird monopoly of
peas, caused every shilling's worth that came to table to cost five,
and the ingenuity of the slugs and snails having completely baffled
all amateur gardening schemes of defence against their slimy
invasions. [Picture: Rustic bench] Among many experiments I may
mention one. Some vegetables were protected by a circumvallum of
salt; but, notwithstanding, the slugs and snails contrived to pass
this supposed deadly line of demarcation by fixing themselves on dry
leaves which they could easily lift, and thus they wriggled safely
over it. My greatest enjoyment in the garden has been derived from a
rustic bench at the north side of the shrubbery, through the back and
arms of which a honeysuckle has luxuriantly interlaced itself; there,
part