[From Sellar & Yeatman's Garden Rubbish]

This Thing (they learned to their horror) was called the Cornucopia, and appeared to be a form of twisted symbolical bedsock, or umbilical jelly-bag, the true purpose of which, as they realized at the first glance, would never (alas) be revealed to mankind.

However, being by temperament a jollicose and bellicund kind of people, they faced up to the Thing and began defiantly filling it with Plenty of fruit and cereals and so on and tried not to lose their tempers when the fruit, etc., kept falling out symbolically at the top; while the Greeks, whom they called in as usual to explain the tragedy, decided that the Thing was (on the one hand) an Eleusinian Mystery, since nobody was able to discover what was at the bottom of it.

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[And other highlights of GR...]

***

Take it from us, it is utterly forbidden to be half-hearted about Gardening. You have got to LOVE your garden, whether you like it or not.

If you doubt this for a moment, how do you account for the fact that all the Gardening Encyclopaedias, Diaries, Manuals, Articles, Magazines, and even (alas) the Seedsmen's Catalogues are unanimously addressed to GARDEN LOVERS?

There is simply no literature, no help, and evidently no hope for people who merely like having a garden, or don't mind if they do, or, fatalistically, just have a garden.

***

"The remedy," says Captain Pontoon, "is to plug the gaps by planting high-voltage Gladiolus bulbs; and if the result is a complete black-out due to your having accidentally plugged-in an onion, thus fusing the whole garden, I can only suggest that you stare fixedly at the blinding show of Sweet William, Old Harry and Eschscholtzia Hore-Belitzia on page 10 of your seedsman's catalogue and then suddenly transfer the gaze to the nearest expanse of vacant soil. As a last resort you might try taking part of the garden and looking at it through my special rose-tinted spectacles."

***

[Do you have Lord Ancestor in YOUR family tree?]

The noblest way of acquiring a rich velvety greensward is to inherit one from a rich velvety ancestor. So if you think by any chance that you have been excluded by some legal trickery from the true ownership of, say, St. John's College, Oxford, or Hampton Court Palace, or all the best parts of the Wiltshire Downs, pop round and see your solicitors about it, remembering to bring some documents proving your legitimate descent from Cardinal Wolsey, The Abbot of Salisbury Plain, or, better still, the original Lord Ancestor.