However, when the bookmaker "took the knock", as he invariably did at least
twice a year, it was his pleasing custom to move without giving notice.
He would hitch two cart-horses to the stables, and haul them right away
at night. He would not only dig up the roses, trees, and chrysanthemums
he had planted, but would also cart away the soil he had brought in;
in fact, he used to shift the garden bodily. He had one garden
that he shifted to nearly every suburb in Sydney; and he always argued
that the change of air was invaluable for chrysanthemums.

Being determined, then, to go in for gardening on common-sense principles,
and having decided on the shrubs you mean to grow, the next consideration
is your chance of growing them.

If your neighbour keeps game fowls, it may be taken for granted
that before long they will pay you a visit, and you will see the rooster
scratching your pot plants out by the roots as if they were so much straw,
just to make a nice place to lie down and fluff the dust over himself.
Goats will also stray in from the street, and bite the young shoots off,
selecting the most valuable plants with a discrimination
that would do credit to a professional gardener.

It is therefore useless to think of growing delicate or squeamish plants.
Most amateur gardeners maintain a lifelong struggle against
the devices of Nature; but when the forces of man and the forces of Nature
come into conflict Nature wins every time. Nature has decreed
that certain plants shall be hardy, and therefore suitable to suburban
amateur gardeners; the suburban amateur gardener persists in trying to grow
quite other plants, and in despising those marked out by Nature
for his use. It is to correct this tendency that this article is written.