My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

FRIENDS AND OCCUPATIONS 307sea to the left. In the foreground were clumps ofgorse and broom, with some old picturesque trees,while the orchard was sheltered on both sides bypatches of woodland. The house was nearly finishedin about a year, and we got into it at Christmas,1902, when we decided to call it Old Orchard.Being so near to our former house, I was able tobring all our choicer plants to the new ground, andthere was, fortunately, a sale of the whole stock of asmall nursery near Poole in the winter, at which Ibought about a thousand shrubs and trees at very lowprices, which enabled us at once to plant someshrubberies and flower borders, and thus to securesomething like a well-stocked garden by the time wegot into the house. Since that time it has been anever-increasing pleasure, and I have been able tosatisfy my craving for enjoying new forms of plantlifeevery year, partly by raising numbers of seeds ofhardy and greenhouse plants, always trying someof the latter in sheltered places out-of-doors, andpartly by exchanges or by gifts from friends, so thatevery year I have the great pleasure of watchingthe opening of some of nature's gems which werealtogether new to me, or of others which increaseyear by year in beauty. In one end of my greenhouseI have a large warmed tank in which I grow blue,pink, and yellow water-lilies, which flower the greaterpart of the year, aswell as a few other beautiful orcurious aquatic plants, while the back wall of thehouse is covered with choice climbers.In this hasty sketch of my occupations and literarywork during the last nine years, I have purposelyomitted the more important portion of the latter,because the circumstances that led me on to