Then comes the spring in our garden, a time of faith, vigilance and hard work.  Faith that the seed will grow, vigilance that it is planted deep enough and has the right conditions in which to grow.  Vigilance against frost, weeds and insects.  Planting, sowing, hoeing, transplanting, coaxing, hoping, expecting, working—­we never do half that we planned to do in the springtime—­there are not enough days, and the days we have are too short.

Then comes summer, real summer in our garden.  Then flowers begin to bloom, and our friends tell us they are lovely.  But we see the flaws and errors.  We feel almost guilty to have our garden praised, so many glaring faults and shortcomings has it.  The color scheme is wrong, there are false notes here and there.  There are tall plants where short plants should be.  There are spaces and breaks and again spots over-crowded.  We water and hoe, train vines, prop plants, and kill the bugs, but we know the weak spots in our garden and vow that next summer we shall remedy every mistake.

[Illustration:  Mrs. Gertrude Ellis Skinner among her gladoli.]

Then “summer in our garden” has an autumn.  The garden is never so beautiful as when the first frost strikes it.  Pillow-cases, sheets, shawls, aprons, coats and newspapers may for a brief time hold at bay the frost king, but he soon laughs at our efforts, crawls under the edges of the unsightly garments with which we protect our flowers, nips their petals, wilts their stems and blackens their leaves.  We find them some morning hopelessly frozen.  But the earth has ceased to give forth its aroma, the birds are winging southward, the waters of the brook run clear and cold, and the voice of the last cricket sounds lonesome in the land.  We say to nature, “Work your will with our garden; the summer is over, and we are ready to plan for another season.”

And what have we learned from the “summer in our garden?” That no one can be happy in his garden unless he works for the joy of the working.  He who loves his work loves nature.  To him his garden is a great cathedral, boundless as his wonder, a place of worship.  Above him the dome ever changing in color and design, beautiful in sunshine or storm and thrice beautiful when studded with the eternal lamps of night.  The walls are the trees, the vines and the shrubs, waving in the distant horizon and flinging their branches on the sky line, or close at hand where we hear the voice of the wind among the leaves.

A wondrous floor is the garden’s cathedral of emerald green in the summer, sprinkled with flowers, of ermine whiteness in the winter, sparkling with the diamonds of frost.  Its choir is the winds, the singing birds and the hum of insects.  Its builder and maker is God.  Man goeth to his garden in the springtime, and, behold, all is mystery.  There is the mystery of life about him, in the flowing sap in the trees, the springing of the green grass, the awakening of the insect world, the hatching of the worm from the egg, the changing of the worm into the butterfly.