Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Some dry summers Green Peas do very badly With us ; they dry up so quickly. We all know the hesitating remark to the cook : ' The Peas were not so good last night.' 'No, m'm, they are getting old.' When they do get old, the following is an original French receipt for stewed Peas, which is very good indeed: — Put the Peas into a saucepan with a good-sized Cabbage Lettuce cut up, a white Onion, a sprig of Parsley, four ounces of butter kneaded with flour ; put the butter in small lumps on the Peas, also a very little salt and a piece of white sugar. Cover the saucepan, and let it simmer slowly for about three-quarters of an hour. Currants ripen very early with us. It is a good plan, in order to keep them for eating when other fruit is not so plentiful, to tie the whole bush up in coarse muslin just as the Currants are getting ripe. This protects them from birds and from insects, and they hang well on into September, and are perfectly good. Black Currants will not stand the same treatment. The following is a good receipt for Bed Currant jelly, one of the preserves best worth making at home : — Gather the Currants on a dry day. Strip them off their stalks, and squeeze the juice through a cloth. Leave the juice to stand in the cellar for twenty-four hours ; then pour it into another cloth, carefully leaving the thick sediment behind. For each pound of juice allow one pound of powdered white sugar (not bought ready pounded, but done at home). Put the juice on the fire in the preserving-pan, and keep stirring it from the first with a silver spoon, adding the sugar, which should K 1 30 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN be standing close by, in spoonfuls. When the sugar is all added and dissolved, it will be necessary to take off the rising scum with a flat sieve-spoon, very well scalded and cleaned previously; and by placing a little jelly on a saucer it will be seen by the consistency when it has jellied. As soon as there is a sign of this take the pan off the fire, let it stand five or ten minutes, and fill the jelly glasses, which should previously have been well sulphured, and be standing ready face down- wards. Next day they should be covered with rounds of paper soaked in brandy. Half a teaspoonful of brandy should be sprinkled over each glass, and then they should be tied or gummed up in the usual way. July Qth. — I consider no trouble too great, whether the garden be large or small, to grow the beautiful stately Madonna Lily (Lilium candidum). It requires very different treatment from other Lilies, and flourishes in rich, heavy soils in full sun, where many Lilies would fail. Gardening books often tell you it is fatal to move these Lilies, but I think this has arisen from gardeners moving or disturbing them when they have ' done ' their borders in October or November, and when the Lilies have made an autumn growth; moving them then is fatal. When I used to leave them alone, they made an excellent top growth in spring, but dried up and died down without flowering. What I now do when they begin to die down some time this month, whether they have flowered or not, is to dig them up carefully with a fork, remove all offsets, re-make and manure the ground well, mixing with it some brick rubbish or chalk, and then replace the large bulbs, planting them rather deep, and not too close together.