Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Another way is to stew these pieces in a little butter. Make the sauce apart by boiling the peel in a little milk and butter, rub it through a fine sieve, mix in a little yelk of egg and pour over the pieces. A third way is to take a large old cucumber, peel it, cut off the two ends, and boil it very lightly. When done, JUNE 127 make an incision down the middle, not quite to the two ends. Scoop out the seeds, and fill in the hollow with a light stuffing of suet, herbs, breadcrumbs, and egg. Serve it whole, like a roily-poly pudding, with a yellow Dutch sauce round it. I find, all through the year, that a compote is a much more popular way of cooking fruit than in a tart. The great secret of making compotes is to stew some fruits, and only to pour boiling syrup over others. For instance, Eed Currants are not good unless stewed for some time in an earthenware dish in the oven. Easpberries are quite spoilt by this treatment. 128 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN JULY The Welsh Poppy— Astrantias —Old Green Peas -Red Currants —The Madonna Lily, L'£p6e de la Vierge—The value of the reserve garden — An English summer's day — Light Foils and dry summers — Other people's gardens — Notebooks — Sunny lawns — Dutch gardens — Fountains and water - tanks —Lobelia cardinalis — Watering out of doors— Two hardy shrubs. July 6th. — One of the prettiest weeds that we have in our modern gardens, and which alternates between being our greatest joy and our greatest torment, is the Welsh Poppy. It succeeds so well in this dry soil that it sows itself everywhere ; but when it stands up, with its pro- fusion of yellow flowers well above its bed of bright green leaves, in some fortunate situation where it can not only be spared, but encouraged and admired, it is a real pleasure. It is not a Poppy at all, but a Meconopsis. It is quite easy to distinguish between the two, once having grasped the fact that the seed-vessels of the entire Poppy tribe are flat on the top, whereas the seed-vessels of the Meconopsis are pointed. There are several varieties of Meconopsis, all very desirable, and to be found, as usual, well described in the 'English Flower Garden.' Their cultivation is a little more difficult than that of the ordinary annual and biennial, so one hardly ever sees them anywhere, but they are well worth the little extra trouble. Among the many small plants of easy cultiva- tion and persistent flowering, Astrantias are very useful, especially in light soils, where things flower and are over JULY 129 so quickly. There are several shades ; I have a pink and a green. They have a most refined beauty of their own, and last well in water. They are best grown from seed, and are well worth* every care. Any soil will suit them, and they will grow in half-shade or full sun.