Pot-pourri from a Surrey garden

Eeturning from Scotland, we spent a few days near Lancaster. The town is picturesquely situated. It is full of sketching possibilities for those who delight, as Turner did, in the glorification of commonplace objects by the veiling and unveiling of smoke, and in the con- stant colour-changes produced by the same. A very handsome bridge crosses the broad Lune, and carries the Preston and Kendal canal. This is one of the curious historical records of the waste of a people's money, and absolutely dead speculation. This canal was just finished, with its magnificent engineering, at great expense and with high hopes of its usefulness, imme- diately before the railways came and rendered it almost useless. Sleepy barges glide along it, profiting by its dignified engineering, and creeping under its countless bridges as they never could have done had it been cease- lessly ploughed by small steamers, as was intended. I do not exactly know why, but it brought back to my mind — from a consecutiveness of idea, I suppose — the elaborate fortifications of Quebec, the pride of George III.'s heart, upon which had been spent the nation's money and labour, and which were scarcely finished when the developments of modern warfare rendered them useless. Not very far from Lancaster, at Levens, is the famous example of topiary gardening which figures in the last edition of the ' English Flower Garden.' I was unfor- tunately prevented from going to see it by deluges of rain. 160 POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN SEPTEMBER Weeds we alternately love and hate — Amaryllis belladonna — First touch of frost — Colour-blindness — Special annuals — Autumn seed-sowing— Ee-planting Carnation layers — Planting drives and approaches to small houses — « Wild gardening ' — Double Violets— Salvias — Baby chickens — Pigeons. September 11th. — In talking of the Welsh Poppy in July I spoke of it as one of the plants which are such weeds that at times one says, ' Oh, I wish I had never introduced the horrible thing into the garden at all ! ' Another of these is the Campanula ranunculus, or Creep- ing Bell-flower — ' creeping,' not because of its growth, but because of its root. After rain in July, August, or Sept- ember, or even much later, I know nothing more lovely than the way it throws up its flower-stems, quite in unexpected places. These when picked and fixed in vases in the Japanese way are most graceful, and last a long time in water. Another terrible weed is the wild annual Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera, which sows itself in the most audacious and triumphant manner ; but it takes little root-hold, and is easy to pull up in the spring. What a wonderfully handsome, yet delicate, plant it is ! with its beautiful flowers, its long pointed leaves, its red square stems, its seed-vessels shaped like buds, which burst with a crack and scatter the seeds far and wide. Were the plant difficult to grow, no garden or greenhouse would be without it. It deserves a place, even if reduced to one plant, in every moderate-sized garden ; it looks SEPTEMBER 161