There are few things I find so sorrowful as to sit and smoke and reflect on the splendid deeds that one might have been doing if one had only had the chance. The PRIME MINISTER feels like this, I suppose, when he remembers how unkind people have prevented him from making a land fit for heroes to live in, and I feel it about my garden. There can be no doubt that my garden is not fit for heroes to saunter in; the only thing it is fit for is to throw used matches about in; and there is indeed a certain advantage in this. Some people's gardens are so tidy that you have to stick all your used matches very carefully into the mould, with the result that next year there is a shrubbery of Norwegian pine. The untidiness of my garden is due to the fault of the previous tenants. Nevertheless one can clearly discern through the litter of packing-cases which completely surrounds the house that there was originally a garden there. I thought something ought to be done about this, so I bought a little book on gardening, and, turning to September, began to read. "September," said the man, "marks the passing of summer and the advent of autumn, the time of ripening ruddy-faced fruits and the reign of a rich and gloriously-coloured flora." About the first part of this statement I have no observation to make. It is probably propaganda, subsidised by the Meteorological Office in order to persuade us that we still have a summer; it has nothing to do with my present theme. But with regard to the ripening ruddy-faced fruits I should like to point out that in my garden there are none of these things, because the previous tenants took them all away when they left. Not a ruddy-faced fruit remains. As for the rich and gloriously-coloured flora, I lifted the edges of all the packing-cases in turn and looked for it, but it was not there either. It should have consisted, I gather, of "gorgeously-coloured dahlias, gay sunflowers, Michaelmas daisies, gladioli and other autumn blossoms, adding brightness and gaiety to our flower-garden." "Gaiety" seems to be rather a strong point with this author, for a little further on he says, "The garden should be gay throughout the month with the following plants," and then follows a list of about a hundred names which sound like complicated diseases of the internal organs. I cannot mention them all, but it seems that my garden should be gay throughout with _Lysimachia clethroides, Kniphofia nobilis_ and _Pyrethrum uliginosum_. It is not. How anything can be gay with _Pyrethrum uliginosum_ I cannot imagine. An attitude of reverent sympathy is what I should have expected the garden to have. But that is what the man says.