The Potting Shed.
A potting shed is a place of great interest to me and the one at the cottage is an old one, full of things put on one side by gardeners who have gone. Under the slates and along the top of walls one comes upon the heads of hoes, balls of twine encased in cobweb, ancient seed packets and catalogues, cleats and padlocks and other things the exact use of which becomes an intriguing mystery. Under the benches are boxes of broken pot and mounds of bonemeal and broken turf, and it is most obvious that a working gardener is a frugal man who puts a thing away for tomorrow and the day after. One man who worked in the shed preserved an enormous iron doorkey which he had no doubt unearthed in the garden, and perhaps the same man put aside the silhouette of a cat used to scare birds from a seedbed, but I have found no lock big enough for the key and the silhouette would make a cat laugh and probably the birds as well.
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