ABSTRACT
It is the month of February. I will put on ghillie shoes and an old mackintosh, and take a look round. I see Bootle at work in the kitchen garden. It is time he saw to sowing the cabbages. Marion as usual is dabbling by the pond. She has lost her hair-slide and her brown hair is all over the place. She has also lost her garters and her woollen socks are wrinkling round her ankles. She is very grubby. However nothing troubles her, for she is floating fleets of cineraria flowers and last year’s privet leaves. The pond is getting very weedy. Bootle will have to do something about it. Marion informs me that the cinerarias have got green flies. I go to the greenhouse and find this melancholy news is true, so have the calceolarias. Marion has tired of her boats and comes to ask for some jobbing gardening. Marion’s gardening generally has to be overhauled when she has gone: nevertheless I show her how to spread cotton threads across the crocuses to keep away the sparrows, and to strew cabbage leaves around to decoy marauding slugs.
