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Title: The Garden, You, and I

Author: Mabel Osgood Wright

Release Date: January 14, 2006 [EBook #17514]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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  THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I


  [Illustration: A SEASIDE GARDEN.]


  THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I

  BY

  BARBARA

  AUTHOR OF

  "THE GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE," "PEOPLE OF
  THE WHIRLPOOL," "AT THE SIGN OF THE
  FOX," ETC.


  New York
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
  LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
  1906

  _All rights reserved_

  COPYRIGHT, 1906.

  BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

  Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1906.

  Norwood Press
  J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
  Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.




  ~Dedicated~

      TO

    J.L.G.

    I.M.T.

     AND

    A.B.P.

  THE LITERARY GARDENERS
  OF REDDING




  GREETING


  This book is for those who in treading the garden path have no thought
  of material gain; rather must they give,--from the pocket as they
  may,--from the brain much,--and from the heart all,--if they would drink
  in full measure this pure joy of living.

    "Allons! the road is before us!
    It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet
        have tried it well--be not detained."
                                --WALT WHITMAN.




  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                        PAGE

  I. THE WAYS OF THE WIND                          1

  II. THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I           7

  III. CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS                    29

  IV. THEIR GARDEN VACATION                       48

  V. ANNUALS--WORTHY AND UNWORTHY                 70

  VI. THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE                      92

  VII. A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN                      117

  VIII. A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE                     155

  IX. FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES           183

  X. FRANKNESS--GARDENING AND OTHERWISE          202

     LIST OF FLOWER COMBINATIONS FOR THE TABLE
     FROM BARBARA'S _Garden Boke_                230

  XI. A SEASIDE GARDEN                           233

  XII. THE TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS           246

  XIII. LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS                   262

  XIV. FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES               281

  XV. THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS                   305

  XVI. THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE                  320

  XVII. THE INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER           336

  XVIII. THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS              352

  XIX. PANDORA'S CHEST                           365

  XX. EPILOGUE                                   374


APPENDIX

  FOR THE HARDY SEED BED                         375

  SOME WORTHY ANNUALS                            387




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


  A SEASIDE GARDEN (see p. 243)      _Frontispiece_

  "THE MAGNOLIAS BELOW AT THE ROAD-BEND"           8

  ENGLISH LARKSPUR SEVEN FEET HIGH                32

  FRAXINELLA--GERMAN IRIS AND CANDY-TUFT          44

  LONGFELLOW'S GARDEN                             81

  THE SUMMER GARDEN--VERBENAS                     86

  ASTERS                                          90

  THE PICTORIAL VALUE OF EVERGREENS              102

  "MY ROSES ARE SCATTERED HERE, THERE,
     AND EVERYWHERE"                             119

  MADAME PLANTIER AT VAN CORTLAND MANOR          128

  A CONVENIENT ROSE-BED                          138

  "THE LAST OF THE OLD ORCHARD"                  156

  THE SCREEN OF WHITE BIRCHES                    166

  "AN ENDLESS SHELTER FOR EVERY SORT
     OF WILD THING"                              184

  SPECIOSUM LILIES IN THE SHADE                  270

  THE POET'S NARCISSUS                           278

  A BED OF JAPAN PINKS                           296

  SINGLE AND DOUBLE PINKS                        314

  "THE SILVER MAPLE BY THE LANE GATE"            326

  "A CURTAIN TO THE SIDE PORCH"                  328

  AN IRIS HEDGE                                  358

  DAPHNE CNEORUM                                 360

  A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE                             362

  "THE LOW SNOW-COVERED MEADOW"                  372

  "PUNCH ... HAS A CACHE UNDER THE
     SYRINGA BUSHES"                             374




THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I



I

THE WAYS OF THE WIND


  "Out of the veins of the world comes the blood of me;
  The heart that beats in my side is the heart of the sea;
  The hills have known me of old, and they do not forget;
  Long ago was I friends with the wind; I am friends with it yet."

                                                --GERALD GOULD.


Whenever a piece of the land is to be set apart for a garden, two mighty
rulers must be consulted as to the boundaries. When this earth child is
born and flower garnished for the christening, the same two must be also
bidden as sponsors. These rulers are the Sun and the Wind. The sun, if
the matter in hand is once fairly spread before him and put in his
charge, is a faithful guardian, meeting frankness frankly and sending
his penetrating and vitalizing messengers through well-nigh inviolable
shade. But of the wind, who shall answer for it or trust it? Do we
really ever learn all of its vagaries and impossible possibilities?

If frankness best suits the sun, diplomacy must be our shield of
defence windward, for the wind is not one but a composite of many moods,
and to lure one on, and skilfully but not insultingly bar out another,
is our portion. To shut out the wind of summer, the bearer of vitality,
the uplifter of stifling vapours, the disperser of moulds, would indeed
be an error; therefore, the great art of the planters of a garden is to
learn the ways of the wind and to make friends with it. If the soil is
sodden and sour, it may be drained and sweetened; if it is poor, it may
be nourished; but when all this is done, if the garden lies where the
winds of winter and spring in passing swiftly to and fro whet their
steel-edged tempers upon it, what avails?

What does it matter if violet or pansy frames are set in a sunny nook,
if it be one of the wind's winter playgrounds, where he drifts the snow
deep for his pastime, so that after each storm of snow or sleet a
serious bit of engineering must be undergone before the sashes can be
lifted and the plants saved from dampness; or if the daffodils and
tulips lie well bedded all the winter through, if, when the sun has
called them forth, the winds of March blight their sap-tender foliage?
Yet the lands that send the north winds also send us the means to deter
them--the cold-loving evergreens, low growing, high growing, medium,
woven dense in warp and woof, to be windbreaks, also the shrubs of
tough, twisted fibre and stubborn thorns lying close to the earth for
windbuffers.

Therefore, before the planting of rose or hardy herbs, bulbs or tenderer
flowers, go out, compass in hand, face the four quarters of heaven, and,
considering well, set your windbreaks of sweeping hemlocks, pines,
spruces, not in fortress-like walls barring all the horizon, but in
alternate groups that flank, without appearing to do so heavily, the
north and northwest. Even a barberry hedge on two sides of a garden,
wedge point to north, like the wild-goose squadrons of springtime, will
make that spot an oasis in the winter valley of death.

A wise gardener it is who thinks of the winter in springtime and plants
for it as surely as he thinks of spring in the winter season and longs
for it! If, in the many ways by which the affairs of daily life are
re-enforced, the saying is true that "forethought is coin in the pocket,
quiet in the brain, and content in the heart," doubly does it apply to
the pleasures of living, of which the outdoor life of working side by
side with nature, called gardening, is one of the chief. When a garden
is inherited, the traditions of the soil or reverence for those who
planned and toiled in it may make one blind to certain defects in its
conception, and beginning with _a priori_ set by another one does as one
can.

But in those choosing site, and breaking soil for themselves,
inconsistency is inexcusable. Follow the lay of the land and let it
lead. Nature does not attempt placid lowland pictures on a steep
hillside, nor dramatic landscape effects in a horizonless meadow,
therefore why should you? For one great garden principle you will learn
from nature's close companionship--consistency!

You who have a bit of abrupt hillside of impoverished soil, yet where
the sky-line is divided in a picture of many panels by the trees, you
should not try to perch thereon a prim Dutch garden of formal lines;
neither should you, to whom a portion of fertile level plain has fallen,
seek to make it picturesque by a tortuous maze of walks, curving about
nothing in particular and leading nowhere, for of such is not nature.
Either situation will develop the skill, though in different directions,
and do not forget that in spite of better soil it takes greater
individuality to make a truly good and harmonious garden on the flat
than on the rolling ground.

I always tremble for the lowlander who, down in the depth of his nature,
has a prenatal hankering for rocks, because he is apt to build an
undigested rockery! These sort of rockeries are wholly separate from the
rock gardens, often majestic, that nowadays supplement a bit of natural
rocky woodland, bringing it within the garden pale. The awful rockery of
the flat garden is like unto a nest of prehistoric eggs that have been
turned to stone, from the interstices of which a few wan vines and ferns
protrude somewhat, suggesting the garnishing for an omelet.

Also, if you follow Nature and study her devices, you will alone learn
the ways of the winds and how to prepare for them. Where does Spring set
her first flag of truce--out in the windswept open?

No! the arbutus and hepatica lie bedded not alone in the fallen leaves
of the forest but amid their own enduring foliage. The skunk cabbage
raises his hooded head first in sheltered hollows. The marsh marigold
lies in the protection of bog tussocks and stream banks. The first
bloodroot is always found at the foot of some natural windbreak, while
the shad-bush, that ventures farther afield and higher in air than any,
is usually set in a protecting hedge, like his golden forerunner the
spice-bush.

If Nature looks to the ways of the wind when she plants, why should not
we? A bed of the hardiest roses set on a hill crest is a folly. Much
more likely would they be to thrive wholly on the north side of it. A
garden set in a cut between hills that form a natural blowpipe can at
best do no more than hold its own, without advancing.

But there are some things that belong to the never-never land and may
not be done here. You may plant roses and carnations in the shade or in
dry sea sand, but they will not thrive; you cannot keep upland lilies
cheerful with their feet in wet clay; you cannot have a garden all the
year in our northern latitudes, for nature does not; and you cannot
afford to ignore the ways of the wind, for according as it is kind or
cruel does it mean garden life or death!

  "Men, they say, know many things;
    But lo, they have taken wings,--
      The arts and sciences,
        And a thousand appliances;
          The wind that blows
            Is all that anybody knows."

                              --THOREAU.




II

THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I


_April 30._ Gray dawn, into which father and Evan vanished with their
fishing rods; then sunrise, curtained by a slant of rain, during which
the birds sang on with undamped ardour, a catbird making his debut for
the season as soloist.

It must not be thought that I was up and out at dawn. At twenty I did so
frequently, at thirty sometimes, now at thirty-five I _can_ do it
_perfectly well_, if necessary, otherwise, save at the change of
seasons, to keep in touch with earth and sky, I raise myself
comfortably, elbow on pillow, and through the window scan garden, wild
walk, and the old orchard at leisure, and then let my arm slip and the
impression deepen through the magic of one more chance for dreams.

_9 o'clock._ The warm throb of spring in the earth, rising in a potent
mist, sap pervaded and tangible, having a clinging, unctuous softness
like the touch of unfolding beech leaves, lured me out to finish the
transplanting of the pansies among the hardy roses, while the first
brown thrasher, high in the bare top of an ash, eyes fixed on the sky,
proclaimed with many turns and changes the exact spot where he did not
intend to locate his nest. This is an early spring, of a truth.

Presently pale sunbeams thread the mist, gathering colour as they filter
through the pollen-meshed catkins of the black birches; an oriole
bugling in the Yulan magnolias below at the road-bend, fire amid snow; a
high-hole laughing his courtship in the old orchard.

Then Lavinia Cortright coming up to exchange Dahlia bulbs and discuss
annuals and aster bugs. She and Martin browse about the country,
visiting from door to door like veritable natives, while their garden,
at first so prim and genteel, like one of Lavinia's own frocks, has
broken bounds and taken on brocade, embroidery, and all sorts of lace
frills, overflowed the south meadow, and only pauses at the stile in the
wall of our old crab-apple orchard, rivalling in beauty and refined
attraction any garden at the Bluffs. Martin's purse is fuller than of
yore, owing to the rise in Whirlpool real estate, and nothing is too
good for Lavinia's garden. Even more, he has of late let the dust rest
peacefully on human genealogy and is collecting quaint garden books and
herbals, flower catalogues and lists, with the solemn intent of writing
a book on Historic Flowers. At least so he declares; but when Lavinia is
in the garden, there too is Martin. To-day, however, he joined my men
before noon at the lower brook. Fancy a house-reared man a convert to
fishing when past threescore! Evan insists that it is because, being
above all things consistent, he wishes to appear at home in the company
of father's cherished collection of Walton's and other fishing books.
Father says, "Nonsense! no man can help liking to fish!"

[Illustration: "THE MAGNOLIAS BELOW AT THE ROAD-BEND."]

Toward evening came home a creel lined with bog moss; within, a rainbow
glimmer of brook trout, a posy of shad-bush, marsh marigolds, anemones,
and rosy spring beauties from the river woods,--with three cheerfully
tired men, who gathered by the den hearth fire with coffee cup and pipe,
inside an admiring but sleepy circle of beagle hounds, who had run free
the livelong day and who could doubtless impart the latest rabbit news
with thrilling detail. All this and much more made up to-day, one of red
letters.

Yesterday, Monday, was quite different, and if not absolutely black, was
decidedly slate coloured. It is only when some one of the household is
positively ill that the record must be set down in black characters, for
what else really counts? Why is it that the city folk persist in judging
all rural days alike, that is until they have once really _lived_ in the
country, not merely boarded and tried to kill time and their own
digestions at one and the same moment.

Such exceptional days as yesterday should only be chronicled now and
then to give an added halo to happy to-morrows,--disagreeables are
remembered quite long enough by perverse human nature.

Yesterday began with the pipe from the water-back bursting, thereby
doing away with hot water for shaving and the range fire at the same
time. The coffee resented hurry, and the contact with an oil stove
developed the peanutty side of its disposition, something that is latent
in the best and most equable of brands.

The spring timetable having changed at midnight Sunday, unobserved by
Evan, he missed the early train, which it was especially important that
he should take. Three other men found themselves in the same
predicament, two being Bluffers and one a Plotter. (These are the names
given hereabout to our two colonies of non-natives. The Bluffers are the
people of the Bluffs, who always drive to the station; the Plotters,
living on a pretty tract of land near the village that was "plotted"
into house-lots a few years ago, have the usual newcomer's hallucination
about making money from raising chickens, and always walk.)

After a hasty consultation, one of the Bluffers telephoned for his
automobile and invited the others to make the trip to town with him. In
order to reach the north turnpike that runs fairly straight to the city,
the chauffeur, a novice in local byways, proposed to take a short cut
through our wood road, instead of wheeling into the pike below
Wakeleigh.

This wood road holds the frost very late, in spite of an innocent
appearance to the contrary; this fact Evan stated tersely. Would a
chauffeur of the Bluffs listen to advice from a man living halfway down
the hill, who not only was autoless but frequently walked to the
station, and therefore to be classed with the Plotters? Certainly not;
while at the same moment the owner of the car decided the matter by
pulling out his watch and murmuring to his neighbour something about an
important committee meeting, and it being the one day in the month when
time meant money!

Into the road they plunged, and after several hair-breadth lurches, for
the cut is deep and in places the rocks parallel with the roadway, the
turnpike was visible; then a sudden jolt, a sort of groan from the
motor, and it ceased to breathe, the heavy wheels having settled in a
treacherous spot not wholly free from frost, its great stomach, or
whatever they call the part that holds its insides, wallowed hopelessly
in the mud!

The gentlemen from the Bluffs deciding that, after all, there was no
real need of going to town, as they had only moved into the country the
week previous, and the auto owner challenged to a game of billiards by
his friend, they returned home, while the Plotter and Evan walked back
two miles to the depot and caught the third train!

At home things still sizzled. Father had an important consultation at
the hospital at ten; ringing the stable call for the horses, he found
that Tim, evidently forgetting the hour, had taken them, Evan's also
being of the trio, to the shoer half an hour before. There was a
moment's consternation and Bertel left the digging over of my hardy beds
to speed down to the village on his bicycle, and when the stanhope
finally came up, father was as nearly irritable as I have ever seen him,
while Tim Saunders's eyes looked extra small and pointed. Evidently
Bertel had said things on his own account.

Was an explosion coming at last to end twelve years of out-of-door
peace, also involving my neighbour and domestic standby, Martha Corkle
Saunders?

No; the two elderly men glanced at each other; there was nothing of the
domineering or resentful attitude that so often renders difficult the
relation of master and man--"I must be getting old and forgetful," quoth
father, stepping into the gig.

"Nae, it's mair like I'm growin' deef in the nigh ear," said Tim, and
without further argument they drove away.

I was still pondering upon the real inwardness of the matter, when the
boys came home to luncheon. Two hungry, happy boys are a tonic at any
time, and for a time I buttered bread--though alack, the real necessity
for so doing has long since passed--when, on explaining father's absence
from the meal, Ian said abruptly, "Jinks! grandpa's gone the day before!
he told Tim _Tuesday_ at 'leven, I heard him!"

But, as it chanced, it was a slip of tongue, not memory, and I blessed
Timothy Saunders for his Scotch forbearance, which Evan insists upon
calling prudence.

My own time of trial came in the early afternoon. During the more than
ten years that I have been a gardener on my own account, I have
naturally tried many experiments and have gradually come to the
conclusion that it is a mistake to grow too many species of
flowers,--better to have more of a kind and thus avoid spinkiness. The
pink family in general is one of those that has stood the test, and this
year a cousin of Evan's sent me over a quantity of Margaret carnation
seed from prize stock, together with that of some exhibition single
Dahlias.

Late in February I sowed the seed in two of the most protected hotbeds,
muffled them in mats and old carpets every night, almost turned myself
into a patent ventilator in order to give the carnations enough air
during that critical teething period of pinks, when the first grasslike
leaves emerge from the oval seed leaves and the little plants are apt to
weaken at the ground level, damp off, and disappear, thinned them out
with the greatest care, and had (day before yesterday) full five hundred
lusty little plants, ready to go out into the deeply dug cool bed and
there wax strong according to the need of pinks before summer heat gains
the upper hand.

The Dahlias had also thriven, but then they are less particular, and if
they live well will put up with more snubs than will a carnation.

Weather and Bertel being propitious, I prepared to plant out my pets,
though of course they must be sheltered of nights for another half
month. As I was about to remove one of the props that held the sash
aloft, to let in air to the Dahlias, and still constitute it a
windbreak, I heard a violent whistling in our grass road north of the
barn that divides the home acres from the upper pastures and Martha's
chicken farm. At first I thought but little of it, as many people use it
as a short cut from the back road from the Bluffs down to the village.
Soon a shout came from the same direction, and going toward the wall, I
saw Mr. Vandeveer struggling along, his great St. Bernard Jupiter, prize
winner in a recent show and but lately released from winter confinement,
bounding around and over him to such an extent that the spruce New
Yorker, who had the reputation of always being on dress parade from the
moment that he left bed until he returned to it in hand-embroidered pink
silk pajamas, was not only covered with abundant April mud, but could
hardly keep his footing.

At the moment I spied the pair, a great brindled cat, who sometimes
ventures on the place, in spite of all the attentions paid her by the
beagles, and who had been watching sparrows in the barnyard, sprang to
the wall. Zip! There was a rush, a snarl, a hiss, and a smash! Dog and
what had been cat crashed through the sash of my Dahlia frame, and in
the rebound ploughed into the soft earth that held the carnations.

The next minute Mr. Vandeveer absolutely leaped over the wall, and
seeing the dog, apparently in the midst of the broken glass, turned
almost apoplectic, shouting, "Ah, his legs will be cut; he'll be ruined,
and Julie will never forgive me! He's her best dog and cost $3000 spot
cash! Get him out, somebody, why don't you? What business have people
to put such dangerous skylights near a public road?"

Meanwhile, as wrath arose in my throat and formed ugly words, Jupiter, a
great friend of ours, who has had more comfortable meals in our kitchen
during the winter than the careless kennel men would have wished to be
known, sprang toward me with well-meant, if rough, caresses,--evidently
the few scratches he had amounted to nothing. I forgave him the cat
cheerfully, but my poor carnations! They do not belong to the grovelling
tribe of herbs that bend and refuse to break like portulaca, chickweed,
and pusley the accursed. Fortunately, just then, a scene of the past
year, which had come to me by report, floated across my vision. Our
young hounds, Bob and Pete, in the heat of undisciplined rat-catching
(for these dogs when young and unbroken will chase anything that runs),
completely undermined the Vandeveers' mushroom bed, the door of the pit
having been left open!

When Mr. Vandeveer recovered himself, he began profuse apologies. Would
"send the glazier down immediately"--"so sorry to spoil such lovely
young onions and spinach!"

"What! not early vegetables, but flowers?" Oh, then he should not feel
so badly. Really, he had quite forgotten himself, but the truth was
Julie thought more of her dogs and horses than even of himself, he
sometimes thought,--almost, but not quite; "ha! ha! really, don't you
know!" While, judging by the comparative behaviour of dog and man, the
balance was decidedly in favour of Jupiter. But you see I never like men
who dress like ladies, I had lost my young plants, and I love dogs from
mongrel all up the ladder (lap dogs excepted), so I may be prejudiced.

After Bertel had carefully removed the splintered glass from the earth,
so that I could take account of my damaged stock, about half seemed to
be redeemable; but even those poor seedlings looked like soldiers after
battle, a limb gone here and an eye missing there.

At supper father, Evan, and I were silent and ceremoniously polite,
neither referring to the day's disasters, and I could see that the boys
were regarding us with open-eyed wonder. When the meal was almost
finished, the bell of the front door rang and Effie returned, bearing a
large, ornamental basket, almost of the proportions of a hamper, with a
card fastened conspicuously to the handle, upon which was printed "With
apologies from Jupiter!" Inside was a daintily arranged assortment of
hothouse vegetables,--cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant eggs,
artichokes,--with a separate basket in one corner brimming with
strawberries, and in the other a pink tissue-paper parcel, tied with
ribbon, containing mushrooms, proving that, after all, fussy Mr.
Vandeveer has the saving grace of humour.

My righteous garden-indignation dwindled; laughter caught me by the
throat and quenched the remainder. Evan, knowing nothing of the
concatenation, but scenting something from the card, joined
sympathetically. Glancing at father, I saw that his nose was twitching,
and in a moment his shoulders began to shake and he led the general
confession that followed. It seems that he arrived at the hospital
really the day of the consultation, but found that the patient, in need
of surgical care, had been seized with nervous panic and gone home!

After such a thoroughly vulgar day there is really nothing to do but
laugh and plan something pleasant for to-morrow, unless you prefer
crying, which, though frequently a relief to the spirit, is particularly
bad for eye wrinkles in the middle-aged.

_May-day._ I always take this as a holiday, and give myself up to any
sort of outdoor folly that comes into my head. There is nothing more
rejuvenating than to let one's self thoroughly go now and then.

Then, besides, to an American, May-day is usually a surprise in itself.
You never can tell what it will bring, for it is by no means the
amiable and guileless child of the poets, breathing perfumed south wind
and followed by young lambs through meadows knee deep in grass and
flowers.

In the course of fifteen years I have seen four May-days when there was
enough grass to blow in the wind and frost had wholly left for the
season; to balance this there have been two brief snow squalls, three
deluges that washed even big beans out of ground, and a scorching
drought that reduced the brooks, unsheltered by leafage, to August
shallowness. But to-day has been entirely lovable and full of the
promise that after all makes May the garden month of the year, the time
of perfect faith, hope, and charity when we may believe all things!

This morning I took a stroll in the woods, partly to please the dogs,
for though they always run free, they smile and wag furiously when they
see the symptoms that tell that I am going beyond the garden. What a
difference there is between the north and south side of things! On the
south slope the hepaticas have gone and the columbines show a trace of
red blood, while on the north, one is in perfection and the other only
as yet making leaves. This is a point to be remembered in the garden, by
which the season of blooming can be lengthened for almost all plants
that do not demand full, unalloyed sun, like the rose and pink families.

Every year I am more and more surprised at the hints that can be carried
from the wild to the cultivated. For instance, the local soil in which
the native plants of a given family nourish is almost always sure to
agree better with its cultivated, and perhaps tropical, cousin than the
most elaborately and scientifically prepared compost. This is a matter
that both simplifies and guarantees better success to the woman who is
her own gardener and lives in a country sufficiently open for her to be
able to collect soil of various qualities for special purposes. Lilies
were always a very uncertain quantity with me, until the idea occurred
of filling my bed with earth from a meadow edge where _Lilium
Canadense_, year after year, mounted her chimes of gold and copper bells
on leafy standards often four feet high.

We may read and listen to cultural ways and methods, but when all is
said and done, one who has not a fat purse for experiments and failures
must live the outdoor life of her own locality to get the best results
in the garden.

Then to have a woman friend to compare notes with and prove rules by is
a comforting necessity. No living being can say positively, "I _will_ do
so and so;" or "I _know_," when coming in contact with the wise old
earth!

Lavinia Cortright has only had a garden for half a dozen summers, and
consults me as a veteran, yet I'm discovering quite as much from her
experiments as she from mine. Last winter, when seed-catalogue time came
round, and we met daily and scorched our shoes before the fire, drinking
a great deal too much tea in the excitement of making out our lists, we
resolved to form a horticulture society of only three members, of which
she elected me the recording secretary, to be called "The Garden, You,
and I."

We expect to have a variety of experiences this season, and frequent
meetings both actual and by pen, for Lavinia, in combination with Horace
and Sylvia Bradford, last year built a tiny shore cottage, three miles
up the coast, at Gray Rocks, where they are going for alternate weeks or
days as the mood seizes them, and they mean to try experiments with real
seashore gardening, while Evan proposes that we should combine pleasure
with business in a way to make frequent vacations possible and take
driving trips together to many lovely gardens both large and small, to
our mutual benefit, his eyes being open to construction and landscape
effect, and mine to the soul of the garden, as it were; for he is
pleased to say that a woman can grasp and translate this more easily and
fully than a man. What if the records of The Garden, You, and I should
turn into a real book, an humble shadow of "Six of Spades" of jovial
memory! Is it possible that I am about to be seized with Agamemnon
Peterkin's ambition to write a book to make the world wise? Alas, poor
Agamemnon! When he had searched the woods for an oak gall to make ink,
gone to the post-office, after hours, to buy a sheet of paper, and
caused a commotion in the neighbourhood and rumour of thieves by going
to the poultry yard with a lantern to pluck a fresh goose quill for a
pen, he found that he had nothing to say, and paused--thereby, at least,
proving his own wisdom.

I'm afraid I ramble too much to be a good recording secretary, but this
habit belongs to my very own garden books that no critical eyes can see.
That reminds me! Father says that he met Bartram Penrose in town last
week and that he seemed rather nervous and tired, and worried about
nothing, and wanted advice. After looking him over a bit, father told
him that all he needed was a long vacation from keeping train, as well
as many other kinds of time, for it seems during the six years of his
marriage he has had no real vacation but his honeymoon.

Mary Penrose's mother, my mother, and Lavinia Cortright were all school
friends together, and since Mary married Bartram and moved to Woodridge
we've exchanged many little visits, for our husbands agree, and now
that she has time she is becoming an enthusiastic gardener, after my own
heart, having last season become convinced of the ugliness of cannas and
coleus beds about a restored colonial farmhouse. Why might they not join
us on our driving trips, by way of their vacation?

Immediately I started to telephone the invitation, and then paused. I
will write instead. Mary Penrose is on the long-distance line,--toll
thirty cents in the daytime! In spring I am very stingy; thirty cents
means six papers of flower seeds, or three heliotropes. Whereas in
winter it is simply thirty cents, and it must be a very vapid
conversation indeed that is not worth so much on a dark winter day of
the quality when neither driving nor walking is pleasant, and if you get
sufficiently close to the window to see to read, you develop a stiff
neck. Also, the difficulty is that thirty cents is only the beginning of
a conversation betwixt Mary Penrose and myself, for whoever begins it
usually has to pay for overtime, which provokes quarterly discussion. Is
it not strange that very generous men often have such serious objections
to the long-distance tails to their telephone bills, and insist upon
investigating them with vigour, when they pay a speculator an extra
dollar for a theatre ticket without a murmur? They must remember that
telephones, whatever may be said to the contrary, are one of the modern
aids to domesticity and preventives of gadding, while still keeping one
not only in touch with a friend but within range of the voice. Surely
there can be no woman so self-sufficient that she does not in silent
moments yearn for a spoken word with one of her kind.

When I had finished sowing my first planting of mignonette and growled
at the prospective labour entailed by thinning out the fall-sown Shirley
poppies (I have quite resolved to plant everything in the
vegetable-garden seed beds and then transplant to the flowering beds as
the easier task), Lavinia Cortright came up, note-book in hand, inviting
herself comfortably to spend the day, and thoroughly inspect the hardy
seed bed, to see what I had for exchange, as well as perfect her plan of
starting one of her own.

By noon the sun had made the south corner, where the Russian violets
grow, quite warm enough to make lunching out-of-doors possible, and
promising to protect Lavinia's rather thinly shod feet from the ground
with one of the rubber mats whereon I kneel when I transplant, she
consented to thus celebrate the coming of the season of liberty, doors
open to the air and sun, the soul to every whisper of Heart of Nature
himself, the steward of the plan and eternal messenger of God.

"Hard is the heart that loveth naught in May!" Yes, so hard that it is
no longer flesh and blood, for under the spell of renewal every grass
blade has new beauty, every trifle becomes of importance, and the humble
song sparrow a nightingale.

The stars that blazed of winter nights have fallen and turned to
dandelions in the grass; the Forsythias are decked in gold, a colour
that is carried up and down the garden borders in narcissus, dwarf
tulips, and pansies, peach blossoms giving a rosy tinge to the snow fall
of cherry bloom.

To-day there are two catbirds, Elle et Lui, and the first Johnny Wren is
inspecting the particular row of cottages that top the long screen of
honeysuckles back of the walk named by Richard _Wren Street_. Why is the
song sparrow calling "Dick, Dick!" so lustily and scratching so testily
in the leaves that have drifted under an old rose shrub? The birds' bath
and drinking basin is still empty; I pour out the libation to the day by
filling it.

The seed bed is reached at last. It has wintered fairly well, and the
lines of plants all show new growth. As I started to point out and
explain, Lavinia Cortright began to jot down name and quantity, and
then, stopping, said: "No, you must write it out as the first record for
The Garden, You, and I. I make a motion to that effect." As I was about
to protest, the postman brought some letters, one being from Mary
Penrose, to whom Mrs. Cortright stands as aunt by courtesy. I opened it,
and spreading it between us we began to read, so that afterward Lavinia
declared that her motion was passed by default.


                                              "WOODRIDGE, _April_ 30.
"MY DEAR MRS. EVAN,

"I am going into gardening in earnest this spring, and I want you and
Aunt Lavinia to tell me things,--things that you have done yourselves
and succeeded or failed in. Especially about the failures. It is a great
mistake for garden books and papers to insist that there is no such word
in horticulture as fail, that every flower bed can be kept in full
flower six months of the year, in addition to listing things that will
bloom outdoors in winter in the Middle States, and give all floral
measurements as if seen through a telephoto lens. It makes one feel the
exceptional fool. It's discouraging and not stimulating in the least.
Doesn't even nature meet with disaster once in a while as if by way of
encouragement to us? And doesn't nature's garden have on and off
seasons? So why shouldn't ours?

"There is a quantity of _Garden Goozle_ going about nowadays that is as
unbelievable, and quite as bad for the constitution and pocket, as the
guarantees of patent medicines. No, _Garden Goozle_ is not my word, you
must understand; it was invented by a clever professor of agriculture,
whom Bart met not long ago, and we loved the word so much that we have
adopted it. The mental quality of _Garden Goozle_ seems to be compounded
of summer squash and milkweed milk, and it would be quite harmless were
it not for the strong catbriers grafted in the mass for impaling the
purses of the trusting.

"Ah, if we only lived a little nearer together, near enough to talk over
the garden fence! It seems cruel to ask you to write answers to all my
questions, but after listing the hardy plants I want for putting the
garden on a consistent old-time footing, I find the amount runs quite to
the impossible three figures, aside from everything else we need, so
I've decided on beginning with a seed bed, and I want to know before we
locate the new asparagus bed how much ground I shall need for a seed
bed, what and how to plant, and everything else!

"I like all the hardy things you have, especially those that are mice,
lice, and water proof! If you will send me ever so rough a list, I
shall be grateful. Would I better begin at once or wait until July or
August, as some of the catalogues suggest?

"Bart has just come in and evidently has something on his mind of which
he wishes to relieve himself via speech.

                  "Your little sister of the garden,

                                              "MARY P."

"She must join The Garden, You, and I," said Lavinia Cortright, almost
before I had finished the letter. "She will be entertainer in chief, for
she never fails to be amusing!"

"I thought there were to be but three members," I protested, thinking of
the possible complications of a three-cornered correspondence.

"Ah, well," Lavinia Cortright replied quickly, "make the Garden an
_Honorary_ member; it is usual so to rank people of importance from whom
much is expected, and then we shall still be but three--with privilege
of adding your husband as councillor and mine as librarian and custodian
of deeds!"

So I have promised to write to Mary Penrose this evening.




III

CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS

THE SEED BED FOR HARDY FLOWERS


When the Cortrights first came to Oaklands, expecting to remain here but
a few months each summer, their garden consisted of some borders of
old-fashioned, hardy flowers, back of the house. These bounded a
straight walk that, beginning at the porch, went through an arched grape
arbour, divided the vegetable garden, and finally ended under a tree in
the orchard at the barrier made by a high-backed green wooden seat, that
looked as if it might have been a pew taken from some primitive church
on its rebuilding.

There were, at intervals, along this walk, some bushes of lilacs,
bridal-wreath spirea, flowering almond, snowball, syringa, and scarlet
flowering quince; for roses, Mme. Plantier, the half double Boursault,
and some great clumps of the little cinnamon rose and Harrison's yellow
brier, whose flat opening flowers are things of a day, these two
varieties having the habit of travelling all over a garden by means of
their root suckers. Here and there were groups of tiger and lemon
lilies growing out of the ragged turf, bunches of scarlet bee balm, or
Oswego tea, as it is locally called, while plantain lilies, with deeply
ribbed heart-shaped leaves, catnip, southernwood, and mats of grass
pinks. Single hollyhocks of a few colours followed the fence line; tall
phlox of two colours, white and a dreary dull purple, rambled into the
grass and was scattered through the orchard, in company with New England
asters and various golden rods that had crept up from the waste
pasture-land below; and a straggling line of button chrysanthemums,
yellow, white, maroon, and a sort of medicinal rhubarb-pink, had backed
up against the woodhouse as if seeking shelter. Lilies-of-the-valley
planted in the shade and consequently anaemic and scant of bells, blended
with the blue periwinkle until their mingled foliage made a great shield
of deep, cool green that glistened against its setting of faded,
untrimmed grass.

This garden, such as it was, could be truly called hardy, insomuch as
all the care it had received for several years was an annual cutting of
the longest grass. The fittest had survived, and, among herbaceous
things, whatsoever came of seed, self-sown, had reverted nearly to the
original type, as in the case of hollyhocks, phlox, and a few common
annuals. The long grass, topped by the leaves that had drifted in and
been left undisturbed, made a better winter blanket than many people
furnish to their hardy plants,--the word _hardy_ as applied to the
infinite variety of modern herbaceous plants as produced by selection
and hybridization not being perfectly understood.

While a wise selection of flowering shrubs and truly hardy roses will,
if properly planted, pruned, and fertilized, live for many years,
certain varieties even outlasting more than one human generation, the
modern hardy perennial and biennial of many species and sumptuous
effects must be watched and treated with almost as much attention as the
so-called bedding-plants demand in order to bring about the best
results.

The common idea, fostered by inexperience, and also, I'm sorry to say,
by what Mary Penrose dubs _Garden Goozle_, that a hardy garden once
planted is a thing accomplished for life, is an error tending to bitter
disappointment. If we would have a satisfactory garden of any sort, we
must in our turn follow Nature, who never rests in her processes, never
even sleeping without a purpose. But if fairly understood, looked
squarely in the face, and treated intelligently, the hardy garden,
supplemented here and there with annual flowers, is more than worth
while and a perpetual source of joy. If money is not an object to the
planter, she may begin by buying plants to stock her beds, always
remembering that if these thrive, they must be thinned out or the clumps
subdivided every few years, as in the case of hybrid phloxes,
chrysanthemums, etc., or else dug up bodily and reset; for if this is
not done, smaller flowers with poorer colours will be the result.

The foxglove, one of the easily raised and very hardy plants, of
majestic mien and great landscape value, will go on growing in one
location for many years; but if you watch closely, you will find that it
is rarely the original plant that has survived, but a seedling from it
that has sprung up unobserved under the sheltering leaves of its parent.
The old plant grows thick at the juncture of root stock and leaf, the
action of the frost furrows and splits it, water or slugs gain an
entrance, and it disappears, the younger growth taking its place.
Especially true is this also of hollyhocks. The larkspurs have different
roots and more underground vigour, and all tap-rooted herbs hold their
own well, the difficulty being to curb their spreading and undermining
their border companions.

[Illustration: ENGLISH LARKSPUR SEVEN FEET HIGH.]

It is conditions like these that keep the gardener of hardy things ever
on the alert. Beds for annuals or florists' plants are thoroughly dug
and graded each spring, so that the weeds that must be combated are
of new and comparatively shallow growth. The hardy bed, on the contrary,
in certain places must be stirred with a fork only and that with the
greatest care, for, if well-planned, plants of low growth will carpet
the ground between tall standing things, so that in many spots the
fingers, with a small weeding hoe only, are admissible. Thus a blade of
grass here, some chickweed there, the seed ball of a composite dropping
in its aerial flight, and lo! presently weedlings and seedlings are
wrestling together, and you hesitate to deal roughly with one for fear
of injuring the constitution of the other. To go to the other extreme
and keep the hardy garden or border as spick and span clean as a row of
onions or carrots in the vegetable garden, is to do away with the
informality and a certain gracious blending of form and colour that is
one of its greatest charms.

Thus it comes about, with the most successful of hardy mixed borders,
that, at the end of the third season, things will become a little
confused and the relations between certain border-brothers slightly
strained; the central flowers of the clumps of phloxes, etc., grow
small, because the newer growth of the outside circle saps their
vitality.

Personally, I believe in drastic measures and every third or fourth
year, in late September, or else April, according to season and other
contingencies, I have all the plants carefully removed from the beds and
ranged in rows of a kind upon the broad central walk. Then, after the
bed is thoroughly worked, manured, and graded, the plants are divided
and reset, the leavings often serving as a sort of horticultural wampum,
the medium of exchange among neighbours with gardens, or else going as a
freewill offering to found a garden for one of the "plotters" who needs
encouragement.

The limitations of the soil of my garden and surroundings serve as the
basis of an experience that, however, I have found carried out
practically in the same way in the larger gardens of the Bluffs and in
many other places that Evan and I have visited. So that any one thinking
that a hardy garden, at least of herbaceous plants, is a thing that,
once established, will, if not molested, go on forever, after the manner
of the fern banks of the woods or the wild flowers of marsh and meadow,
will be grievously disappointed.

Of course, where hardy plants are massed, as in nurseries, horticultural
gardens, or the large estates, each in a bed or plot of its kind, this
resetting is far simpler, as each variety can receive the culture best
suited to it, and there is no mixing of species.

Another common error in regard to the hardy garden, aided and abetted
by _Garden Goozle_, is that it is easy or even practicable to have every
bed in a blooming and decorative condition during the whole season. It
is perfectly possible always to have colour and fragrance in some part
of the garden during the entire season, after the manner of the natural
sequence of bloom that passes over the land, each bed in bloom some of
the time, but not every bed all of the time. Artifice and not nature
alone can produce this, and artifice is too costly a thing for the woman
who is her own gardener, even if otherwise desirable. For it should
appeal to every one having a grain of garden sense that, if the plants
of May and June are to grow and bloom abundantly, those that come to
perfection in July and August, if planted in their immediate vicinity,
must be overshadowed and dwarfed. The best that can be done is to leave
little gaps or lines between the hardy plants, so that gladioli, or some
of the quick-growing and really worthy annuals, can be introduced to
lend colour to what becomes too severely of the past.

There is one hardy garden, not far from Boston, one of those where the
landscape architect lingers to study the possibilities of the formal
side of his art in skilful adjustment of pillar, urn, pergola, and
basin,--this garden is never out of flower. At many seasons Evan and I
had visited it, early and late, only to find it one unbroken sheet of
bloom. How was it possible, we queried? Comes a day when the complex
secret of the apparent simple abundance was revealed. It was as the
foxgloves, that flanked a long alley, were decidedly waning when, quite
early one morning, we chanced to behold a small regiment of men remove
the plants, root and branch, and swiftly substitute for them immense
pot-grown plants of the tall flower snapdragon (_Antirrhinum_),
perfectly symmetrical in shape, with buds well open and showing colour.
These would continue in bloom quite through August and into September.
So rapidly was the change made that, in a couple of hours at most, all
traces were obliterated, and the casual passer-by would have been
unaware that the plants had not grown on the spot. This sort of thing is
a permissible luxury to those who can afford and desire an exhibition
garden, but it is not watching the garden growing and quivering and
responding to all its vicissitudes and escapes as does the humble owner.
Hardy gardening of this kind is both more difficult and costly, even if
more satisfactory, than filling a bed with a rotation of florists'
flowers, after the custom as seen in the parks and about club-houses: to
wit, first tulips, then pansies and daisies, next foliage plants or
geraniums, and finally, when frost threatens, potted plants of hardy
chrysanthemums are brought into play.

No, The Garden, You, and I know that hardy plants, native and
acclimated, may be had in bloom from hepatica time until ice crowns the
last button chrysanthemum and chance pansy, but to have every bed in
continuous bloom all the season is not for us, any more than it is to be
expected that every individual plant in a row should survive the frost
upheavals and thaws of winter.

If a garden is so small that half a dozen each of the ten or twelve
best-known species of hardy herbs will suffice, they may be bought of
one of the many reliable dealers who now offer such things; but if the
place is large and rambling, affording nooks for hardy plants of many
kinds and in large quantities, then a permanent seed bed is a positive
necessity.

This advice is especially for those who are now so rapidly taking up old
farmsteads, bringing light again to the eyes of the window-panes that
have looked out on the world of nature so long that they were growing
dim from human neglect. In these places, where land is reckoned by the
acre, not by the foot, there is no excuse for the lack of seed beds for
both hardy and annual flowers (though these latter belong to another
record), in addition to space for cuttings of shrubs, hardy roses, and
other woody things that may be thus rooted.

If there is a bit of land that has been used for a vegetable garden and
is not wholly worn out, so much the better. The best seed bed I have
ever seen belongs to Jane Crandon at the Jenks-Smith place on the
Bluffs. It was an old asparagus bed belonging to the farm, thoroughly
well drained and fertilized, but the original crop had grown thin and
spindling from being neglected and allowed to drop its seed.

In the birth of this bed the wind and sun, as in all happy gardens, had
been duly consulted, and the wind promised to keep well behind a thick
wall of hemlocks that bounded it on the north and east whenever he was
in a cruel mood. The sun, casting his rays about to get the points of
compass, promised that he would fix his eye upon the bed as soon as he
had bathed his face in mist on rising and turned the corner of the
house, and then, after watching it until past noon, turn his back, so no
wonder that the bed throve.

Any well-located bit of fairly good ground can be made into a hardy seed
bed, provided only that it is not where frozen water covers it in
winter, or in the way of the wind, coming through a cut or sweeping
over the brow of a hill, for flowers are like birds in this
respect,--they can endure cold and many other hardships, but they quail
before the blight of wind.

For all gardens of ordinary size a bit of ground ten feet by thirty feet
will be sufficient. If the earth is heavy loam and inclined to cake or
mould, add a little sifted sand and a thin sprinkling of either nitrate
of soda or one of the "complete" commercial manures. Barn-yard manure,
unless very well rotted and thoroughly worked under, is apt to develop
fungi destructive to seedlings. This will be sufficient preparation if
the soil is in average condition; but if the earth is old and worn out,
it must be either sub-soiled or dug and enriched with barnyard (not
stable) manure to the depth of a foot, or more if yellow loam is not met
below that depth.

If the bed is on a slight slope, so much the better. Dig a shallow
trench of six or eight inches around it to carry off the wash. An abrupt
hillside is a poor place for such a bed, as the finer seeds will
inevitably be washed out in the heavy rains of early summer. If the
surface soil is lumpy or full of small stones that escape fine raking,
it must be shovelled through a sand-screen, as it is impossible for the
most ambitious seed to grow if its first attempt is met by the pressure
of what would be the equivalent of a hundred-ton boulder to a man.

It is to details such as these that success or failure in seed raising
is due, and when people say, "I prefer to buy plants; I am very unlucky
with seeds," I smile to myself, and the picture of something I once
observed done by one of the so-called gardeners of my early married days
flits before me.

The man scraped a groove half an inch deep in hard-baked soil, with a
pointed stick, scattered therein the dustlike seeds of the dwarf blue
lobelia as thickly as if he had been sprinkling sugar on some very sour
article, then proceeded to trample them into the earth with all the
force of very heavy feet. Of course the seeds thus treated found
themselves sealed in a cement vault, somewhat after the manner of
treating victims of the Inquisition, the trickle of moisture that could
possibly reach them from a careless watering only serving to prolong
their death from suffocation.

The woman gardener, I believe, is never so stupid as this; rather is she
tempted to kill by kindness in overfertilizing and overwatering, but too
lavish of seed in the sowing she certainly is, and I speak from the
conviction born of my own experience.

When the earth is all ready for the planting, and the sweet, moist
odour rises when you open the seed papers with fingers almost trembling
with eagerness, it seems second nature to be lavish. If a few seeds will
produce a few plants, why not the more the merrier? If they come up too
thick, they can be thinned out, you argue, and thick sowing is being on
the safe side. But is it? Quite the contrary. When the seedlings appear,
you delay, waiting for them to gain a good start before jarring their
roots by thinning. All of a sudden they make such strides that when you
begin, you are appalled by the task, and after a while cease pulling the
individual plants, but recklessly attack whole "chunks" at once, or else
give up in a despair that results in a row of anaemic, drawn-out
starvelings that are certainly not to be called a success. After having
tried and duly weighed the labour connected with both methods, I find it
best to sow thinly and to rely on filling gaps by taking a plant here
and there from a crowded spot. For this reason, as well as that of
uniformity also, it is always better to sow seeds of hardy or annual
flowers in a seed bed, and then remove, when half a dozen leaves appear,
to the permanent position in the ornamental part of the garden.

With annuals, of course, there are some exceptions to this rule,--in the
case of sweet peas, nasturtiums, mignonette, portulaca, poppies, and
the like, where great quantities are massed.

When you have prepared a hardy seed bed of the dimensions of ten by
thirty feet, which will allow of thirty rows, ten feet long and a foot
apart (though you must double the thirty feet if you intend to cultivate
between the rows with any sort of weeding machine, and if you have room
there should be two feet or even three between the rows), draw a garden
line taut across the narrow way of the plot at the top, snap it, and you
will have the drill for your first planting, which you may deepen if the
seeds be large.

Before beginning, make a list of your seeds, with the heights marked
against each, and put the tallest at the top of the bed.

"Why bother with this, when they are to be transplanted as soon as they
are fist up?" I hear Mary Penrose exclaim quickly, her head tipped to
one side like an inquisitive bird.

Because this seed bed, if well planned, will serve the double purpose of
being also the "house supply bed." If, when the transplanting is done,
the seedlings are taken at regular intervals, instead of all from one
spot, those that remain, if not needed as emergency fillers, will bloom
as they stand and be the flowers to be utilized by cutting for house
decoration, without depriving the garden beds of too much of their
colour. At the commercial florists, and in many of the large private
gardens, rows upon rows of flowers are grown on the vegetable-garden
plan, solely for gathering for the house, and while those with limited
labour and room cannot do this extensively, they can gain the same end
by an intelligent use of their seed beds.

Many men (and more especially many women), many minds, but however much
tastes may differ I think that a list of thirty species of herbaceous
perennials should be enough to satisfy the ambition of an amateur, at
least in the climate of the middle and eastern United States. I have
tried many more, and I could be satisfied with a few less. Of course by
buying the seeds in separate colours, as in the single case of pansies,
one may use the entire bed for a single species, but the calculation of
size is based upon either a ten-foot row of a mixture of one species, or
else that amount of ground subdivided among several colours.

Of the seeds for the hardy beds themselves, the enticing catalogues
offer a bewildering array. The maker of the new garden would try them
all, and thereby often brings on a bit of horticultural indigestion in
which gardener and garden suffer equally, and the resulting plants
frequently perish from pernicious anaemia. Of the number of plants
needed, each gardener must be the judge; also, in spite of many warnings
and directions, each one must finally work on the lines of personally
won experience. What is acceptable to the soil and protected by certain
shelter in my garden on one side of hill crest or road may not flourish
in a different soil and exposure only a mile away. One thing is very
certain, however,--it is time wasted to plant a hardy garden of
herbaceous plants in shallow soil.

In starting the hardy seed bed it is always safe to plant columbines,
Canterbury bells, coreopsis, larkspur, pinks in variety, foxgloves,
hollyhocks, gaillardia, the cheerful evergreen candy-tuft, bee balm and
its cousin wild bergamot, forget-me-nots, evening primroses, and the
day-flowering sundrops, Iceland and Oriental poppies, hybrid phlox, the
primrose and cowslips of both English fields and gardens, that are quite
hardy here (at least in the coastwise New England and Middle states),
double feverfew, lupins, honesty, with its profusion of lilac and white
bloom and seed vessels that glisten like mother-of-pearl, the tall
snapdragons, decorative alike in garden or house, fraxinella or gas
plant, with its spikes of odd white flowers, and pansies, always
pansies, for the open in spring and autumn, in rich, shady nooks all
summer, and even at midwinter a few tufts left in a sunny spot, at the
bottom of a wall by the snowdrops, will surprise you with round,
cheerful faces with the snow coverlet tucked quite under their chins.

[Illustration: FRAXINELLA,--GERMAN IRIS AND CANDY-TUFT.]

It is well to keep a tabulated list of these old-time perennials in the
_Garden Boke_, so that in the feverish haste and excitement of the
planting season a mere glance will be a reminder of height, colour, and
time of bloom. I lend you mine, not as containing anything new or
original, but simply as a suggestion, a hint of what one garden has
found good and writ on its honour list. Newer things and hybrids are now
endless, and may be tested and added, one by one, but it takes at least
three seasons of this adorably unmonotonous climate of alternate
drought, damp, open or cold winter, to prove a plant hardy and worthy a
place on the honour roll. (See p. 376.)

Before you plant, sit down by yourself with the packages spread before
you and examine the seeds at your leisure. This is the first uplifting
of the veil that you may see into the real life of a garden, a personal
knowledge of the seed that mothers the perfect plant.

It may seem a trivial matter, but it is not so; each seed, be it
seemingly but a dust grain, bears its own type and identity. Also, from
its shape, size, and the hardness or thinness of its covering, you may
learn the necessities of its planting and development, for nowhere more
than in the seed is shown the miraculous in nature and the forethought
and economy of it all.

The smaller the seed, the greater the yield to a flower, as if to guard
against chances of loss. The stately foxglove springs from a dust grain,
and fading holds aloft a seed spike of prolific invention; the lupin has
stout, podded, countable seeds that must of necessity fall to the ground
by force of weight. Also in fingering the seeds, you will know why some
are slow in germinating: these are either hard and gritty, sandlike,
like those of the English primrose, smooth as if coated with varnish,
like the pansy, violet, columbine, and many others, or enclosed in a
rigid shell like the iris-hued Japanese morning-glories and other
ipomeas. Heart of Nature is never in a hurry, for him time is not. What
matters it if a seed lies one or two years in the ground?

With us of seed beds and gardens, it is different. We wish present
visible growth, and so we must be willing to lend aid, and first aid to
such seeds is to give them a whiff of moist heat to soften what has
become more hard than desirable through man's intervention. For in wild
nature the seed is sown as soon as it ripens, and falls to the care of
the ground before the vitality of the parent plant has quite passed
from it. That is why the seed of a hardy plant, self-sown at midsummer,
grows with so much more vigour than kindred seed that has been lodged in
a packet since the previous, season.

My way of "first aiding" these seeds is to tie them loosely in a wisp of
fine cheese-cloth or muslin, leaving a length of string for a handle (as
tea is sometimes prepared for the pot by those who do not like mussy tea
leaves). Dip the bag in hot (not boiling) water, and leave it there at
least an hour, oftentimes all night. In this way the seed is softened
and germination awakened. I have left pansy seeds in soak for
twenty-four hours with good results. Of course the seed should be
planted before it dries, and rubbing it in a little earth (after the
manner of flouring currants for cake) will keep the seeds from sticking
either to the fingers or to each other.

What a contrast it all is, our economy and nature's lavishness; our
impatience, nature's calm assurance! In the garden the sower feels a
responsibility, the sweat beads stand on the brow in the sowing. With
nature undisturbed it may be the blind flower of the wild violet
perfecting its moist seed under the soil, a nod of a stalk to the wind,
a ball of fluff sailing by, or the hunger of a bird, and the sowing is
done.




IV

THEIR GARDEN VACATION

(From Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


                                             WOODRIDGE, _May_ 10.

"DEAR MRS. EVAN,

"For the past week I have been delving in the seed bed, and until it was
an accomplished fact, that is as far as putting on the top sheet of
finely sifted dirt over the seeds sleeping in rows and rounding the
edges after the most approved methods of bed-making, praying the while
for a speedy awakening, I had neither fingers for pen, ink, and paper,
nor the head to properly think out the answer to your May-day
invitation.

"So you have heard that we are to take a long vacation this summer, and
therefore ask us to join your driving and tramping trip in search of
garden and sylvan adventure; in short to become your fellow-strollers in
the Forest of Arden, now transported to the Berkshires.

"It was certainly a kind and gracious thought of yours to admit
outsiders into the intimacies of such a journey, and on the moment we
both cried, 'Yes, we will go!' and then appeared _but_--that little
word of three letters, and yet the condensation of whole volumes, that
is so often the stumbling-block to enthusiasm.

"The translation of this particular _but_ will take a quire of paper,
much ink, and double postage on my part, and a deal of perusive patience
on yours, so to proceed. Like much else that is hearable the report is
partly true, insomuch that your father, Dr. Russell, thinks it necessary
for Bart to take a real vacation, as he put it, 'An entire change in a
place where time is not beaten insistently at the usual
sixty-seconds-a-minute rate, day in and out,' where he shall have no
train-catching or appointments either business or social hanging over
him. At the same time he must not hibernate physically, but be where he
will feel impelled to take plenty of open-air exercise, as a matter of
course! For you see, as a lawyer, Bart breathes in a great deal of bad
air, and his tongue and pen hand get much more exercise than do his
legs, while all the spring he has 'gone back on his vittles that
reckless it would break your heart,' as Anastasia, our devoted, if
outspoken, Celtic cook puts it.

"The exact location of this desired valley of perfection, the ways and
means of reaching it, as well as what shall become of the house and
Infant during our absence, have formed a daily dialogue for the past
fortnight, or I should say triologue, for Anastasia has decided
opinions, and has turned into a brooding raven, informing us constantly
of the disasters that have overtaken various residents of the place who
have taken vacations, the head of one family having acquired typhoid in
the Catskills, a second injured his spine at the seaside by diving in
shallow water, while the third was mistaken for a moose in Canada and
shot. However, her interest is comforting from the fact that she
evidently does not wish to part with us at present.

"It must be considered that if we take a really comfortable trip of a
couple of months' duration, and Bart's chief is willing to allow him a
three months' absence, as it will be his first real vacation since we
were married six years ago, it will devour the entire sum that we have
saved for improving the farm and garden.

"You live on the place where you were born, which has developed by
degrees like yourselves, yet you probably know that rescuing, not an
abandoned farm but the abode of ancient and decayed gentility, even
though the house is oak-ribbed Colonial, and making it a tangible home
for a commuter, is not a cheap bit of work.

"As to the Infant--to take a human four-and-a-half-year-old travelling,
for the best part of a summer, is an imposition upon herself, her
parents, and the public at large. To leave her with Bart's mother, whose
forte is Scotch crossed with Pennsylvania Dutch discipline, will
probably be to find on her return that she has developed a quaking fear
of the dark; while, if she goes to my mother, bless her! who has the
beautiful and soothing Southern genius for doing the most comfortable
thing for the moment, regardless of consequences, the Infant for months
after will expect to be sung to sleep, my hand cuddled against her
cheek, until I develop laryngitis from continued vocal struggles with
'Ole Uncle Ned,' 'Down in de Cane Brake,' and 'De Possum and de Coon.'

"This mental and verbal struggle was brought to an end yesterday by _The
Man from Everywhere_. Do you remember, that was the title that we gave
Ross Blake, the engineer, two summers ago, when you and Evan visited us,
because he was continually turning up and always from some new quarter?
Just now he has been put in charge of the construction of the reservoir
that is to do away with our beloved piece of wild-flower river woods in
the valley below Three Brothers Hills.

"As usual he turned up unexpectedly with Bartram Saturday afternoon and
'made camp,' as a matter of course. A most soothing sort of person is
this same _Man from Everywhere_, and a special dispensation to any woman
whose husband's best friend he chances to be, as in my case, for a man
who is as well satisfied with crackers, cheese, and ale as with your
very best company spread, praises the daintiness of your guest chamber,
but sleeps equally sound in a hammock swung in the Infant's attic
play-room, is not to be met every day in this age of finnickiness. Then
again he has the gift of saying the right thing at difficult moments,
and meaning it too, and though a born rover, has an almost feminine
sympathy for the little dilemmas of housekeeping that are so vital to us
and yet are of no moment to the masculine mind. Yes, I do admire him
immensely, and only wish I saw an opportunity of marrying him either
into the family or the immediate neighbourhood, for though he is nearly
forty, he is neither a misanthrope nor a woman hater, but rather seems
to have set himself a difficult ideal and had limited opportunities.
Once, not long ago, I asked him why he did not marry. 'Because,' he
answered, 'I can only marry a perfectly frank woman, and the few of that
clan I have met, since there has been anything in my pocket to back my
wish, have always been married!'

"'I have noticed that too,' said Bart, whom I did not know was
listening; 'then there is nothing for us to do but find you a widow!'

"'No, that will not do, either; I want born, not acquired, frankness,
for that is only another term for expediency,' he replied with emphasis.

"So you see this _Man_ is not only somewhat difficult, but he has
observed!

"Last night after dinner, when the men drew their chairs toward the
fire,--for we still have one, though the windows are open,--and the
fragrance from the bed of double English violets, that you sent me,
mingled with the wood smoke, we all began to croon comfortably. As soon
as _he_ had settled back in the big chair, with closed eyes and finger
tips nicely matched, we propounded our conundrum of taking three from
two and having four remain.

"A brief summary of the five years we have lived here will make the
needs of the place more clear.

"The first year, settling ourselves in the house and the arrival of the
Infant completely absorbed ourselves, income, and a good bit of savings.
Repairing the home filled the second year. The outdoor time and money of
the third year was eaten up by an expensive and obliterative process
called 'grading,' a trap for newly fledged landowners. This meant taking
all the kinks and little original attitudes out of the soil and
reproving its occasional shoulder shrugs, so to speak,--Delsarte methods
applied to the earth,--and you know that Evan actually laughed at us for
doing it.

"Even in the beginning we didn't care much for this grading, but it was
in the plan that father Penrose had made for us by a landscape gardener,
renowned about Philadelphia at the time he gave us the place as a 'start
in life,' so we felt in some way mysteriously bound by it. And I may as
well assert right here that, though it is well to have a clear idea of
what you mean to do in making a garden, or ever so small pleasure
grounds, that every bit of labour, however trivial, may go toward one
end and not have to be undone, a conventional plan unsympathetically
made and blindly followed often becomes a cross between Fetish and
Juggernaut. It has taken me exactly four years of blundering to find
that you must live your garden life, find out and study its
peculiarities and necessities yourself, just as you do that of your
indoor home, if success is to be the result!

"As it was, the grading began behind the lilac bushes inside the front
fence and proceeded in fairly graceful sweeps, dividing each side of the
level bit where the old garden had been, the still remaining boxwood
bushes and outlines of walks and beds, saving this from obliteration,
and meeting again at the drying yard.

"Here the proceeding stopped abruptly, as if it had received a shock,
which it had, as at this point the family purse wholly collapsed with a
shudder, for the next requirement of the plan was the turning of a long
crest of rocky woodland, shaped like a three-humped camel, that bounded
us on the northwest, into a series of terraces, to render the assent
from a somewhat trim residential section to the pastures of the real
farming country next door less abrupt.

"In its original state this spur of woodland had undoubtedly been very
beautiful, with hemlocks making a windbreak, and all manner of shrubs,
wild herbs, and ferns filling in the leaf-mould pockets between the
boulders. Now it is bare of everything except a few old hemlocks that
sweep the pasture and the rocks, wandering cattle and excursionists from
the village, during the 'abandoned' period of the place, having caused
havoc among the shrubs and ferns.

"Various estimates have been given, but $1000 seemed to be the average
for carrying out the terrace plan even partially, as much blasting is
involved, and $1000 is exactly one-fourth of the spendable part of
Bart's yearly earnings!

"The flower garden also cries for proper raiment, for though the
original lines have been preserved and the soil put in a satisfactory
shape, in lieu of the hardy plants and old-time favourites that belong
to such a place, in emergency we were reduced, last summer, to the
quick-growing but monotonous bedding plants for fillers. Can you imagine
anything more jarring and inconsistent than cannas, castor-oil beans,
coleus, and nasturtiums in a prim setting of box?

"Then, too, last Christmas, Bart's parents sent us a dear old sundial,
with a very good fluted column for a base. The motto reads 'Never
consult me at night,' which Bart insists is an admonition for us to
keep, chickenlike, early hours! Be this as it may, in order to live up
to the dial, the beds that form its court must be consistently
clothed--for cannas, coleus, and beans, read peonies, Madonna lilies,
sweet-william, clove-pinks, and hollyhocks, which latter the seed bed I
hope will duly furnish.

"All these details, and more too, I poured into the ears of _The Man
from Everywhere_, while Bart kept rather silent, but I could tell by the
way his pipe breathed, short and quick, that he was thinking hard. One
has to be a little careful in talking over plans and wishes with Bart;
his spirit is generous beyond his pocket-power and he is a bit
sensitive. He wants to do so much for the Infant, the home, and me, that
when desire outruns the purse, he seems to feel that the limit lies
somewhere within the range of his own incapacity, and that bare,
camel-backed knoll outlining the horizon, as seen from the dining-room
window, showing the roof of the abandoned barn and hen yards, and the
difficulty of wrestling with it, is an especially tender spot.

"'If it was anything possible, I'd hump my back and do it, but it
isn't!' he jerked, knocking his pipe against the chimney-side before it
was half empty and then refilling it; 'it's either a vacation _or_ the
knoll--which shall it be?

"'I don't hanker after leaving home, but that's what a complete change
means, I suppose, though I confess I should enjoy a rest for a time from
travelling to and fro, like a weaver's shuttle! Mary hates to leave home
too; she's a regular sit-by-the-fire! Come, which shall it be? This
indecision makes the cure worse than the disease!' and Bart fingered a
penny prior to giving it the decisive flip--'head, a vacation; tail, an
attack on the knoll!' The penny spun, and then taking a queer backward
leap fell into the ashes, where it lay buried.

"'That reads like neither!' said Bart, sitting up with a start.

"'No, both!' replied _The Man from Everywhere_, opening his eyes and
gazing first at Bart and then at me with a quizzical expression.

"Instantly curiosity was piqued, for compared to this most domestic of
travelled bachelors, the Lady from Philadelphia was without either
foresight or resources.

"'You said that your riddle was to take three from two and have four. My
plan is very simple; just add three to two and you have not only four
but five! Take a vacation from business, but stay at home; do your own
garden improvements with your head and a horse and cart and a pair of
strong hands with a pick and spade to help you out, for you can't, with
impunity, turn an office man, all of a sudden, into a day labourer. As
to hewing the knoll into terraces up and down again, tear up that
confounded plan. Restore the ground on nature's lines, and you'll have a
better windbreak for your house and garden in winter than the best
engineer could construct, besides having a retreat for hot weather where
you can sit in your bones without being observed by the neighbours!'

"He spoke very slowly, letting the smoke wreaths float before his eyes,
as if in them he sought the solution he was voicing.

"'A terrace implies closely shorn turf and formal surroundings, out of
keeping with this place; besides, young people with only a general maid
and a useful man can't afford to be formal,--if they would, the game
isn't worth the strain.' (Did I not tell you that he observes?)

"'Let us take a look at the knoll to-morrow and see what has grown there
and guess at what may be coaxed to grow, and then you can spend a couple
of months during this summer and autumn searching the woods and byways
for native plants for the restoration. This reservoir building is your
opportunity; you can rob the river valley with impunity, for the
clearing will begin in October, consequently anything you take will be
in the line of a rescue. So there you are--living in the fresh air,
improving your place, and saving money at both ends.'

"'By George! It sounds well, as far as I'm concerned!' ejaculated Bart,
'but how will such a scheme give Mary a vacation from housekeeping and
the everlasting three meals a day? She seldom growls, but the last month
she too has confessed to feeling tired.'

"'I think it's a perfectly fascinating idea, but how will it give Bart
a "complete change, away from the sound of the beat of time," as the
doctor puts it?' I asked with more eagerness than I realized, for I
always dislike to be far away from home at night, and you see there has
been whooping cough in the neighbourhood and there are also green apples
to be reckoned with in season, even though the Infant has long ago
passed safely through the mysteries of the second summer.

"_The Man from Everywhere_ did not answer Bart at all, but, turning to
me with the air of a paternal sage and pointing an authoritative
forefinger, said, somewhat sarcastically, I thought, 'What greater
change can an American have than leisure in which to enjoy his own home?
For giving Time the slip, all you have to do is to stop the clocks and
follow the sun and your own inclinations. As to living out of doors, the
old open-sided hay barn on the pasture side of the knoll, that you have
not decided whether to rebuild or tear down, will make an excellent
camp. Aside from the roof, it is as open as a hawk's nest. Don't hurry
your decision; incubate the idea over Sunday, Madam Penrose, and I'll
warrant by Monday you will have hatched a really tangible plan, if not a
brood of them.'

"I looked at Bart, he nodded back approvingly, so I slipped out, first
to see that the Infant was sleeping properly, head up, and not down
under the clothes, as I had once found her, and then to walk to and fro
under the budding stars for inspiration, leaving the pair to talk the
men's talk that is so good and nourishing for a married man like Bart,
no matter how much he cares for the Infant and me.

"Jumbled up as the garden is, the spring twilight veils all deficiencies
and releases persuasive odours from every corner, while the knoll, with
its gnarled trees outlined against the sky, appealed to me as never
before, a thing desirable and to be restored and preserved even at a
cost rather than obliterated.

"'Oh, Mrs. Evan, I wish I could tell you how _The Man's_ plan touches me
and seems made for me especially this spring. I seem fairly to have a
passion for home and the bit of earth about and sky above it that is all
our own. And unlike other times when I loved to have my friends come and
visit me, and share and return the hospitality of neighbours, I want to
be alone with myself and Bart, to spend long days under the sky and
trees and have nothing come between our real selves and God, not even
the ticking and dictation of a clock! There is so much that I want to
tell my husband just now, that cannot be put in words, and that he may
only read by intuition. When I was younger and first married, I did not
feel this need so much, but now life seems to take on so much deeper a
meaning! Do you understand? Ah, yes, I know you do! But I am wandering
from the point, just as I yearn to wander from all the stringencies of
life this summer.

"Evidently seeing me, the Rural Delivery man whistled from his cart,
instead of leaving the evening mail in its wren box, as usual. I went to
the gate rather reluctantly, I was so absorbed in garden dreams, took
the letters from the carrier, and, as the men were still sitting in the
dark, carried them up to the lamp in my own sitting room, little
realizing that even at that moment I was holding the key to the 'really
tangible plan' in my hand.

       *       *       *       *       *

"_The next morning._ Two of the letters I received on Saturday night
would have been of great importance if we were still planning to go away
for a vacation, instead of hoping to stay at home for it. The first,
from mother, told me that she and my brother expect to spend the summer
in taking a journey, in which Alaska is to be the turning-point. She
begs us to go with them and offers to give me her right-hand-reliable,
Jane McElroy, who cared for me when a baby, to stay here with the
Infant. The second letter was from Maria Maxwell, a distant cousin of
Bart's. She has also heard of our intended vacation,--indeed the
rapidity with which the news travels and the interest it causes are good
proofs of our stay-at-home tendencies and the general sobriety of our
six years of matrimony!

"Maria is a very bright, adaptable woman of about thirty-five, who
teaches music in the New York public schools, is alone in the world, and
manages to keep an attractive home in a mere scrap of a flat. When she
comes to visit us, we like her as well the last day of her stay as the
first, which fact speaks volumes for her character! Though forced by
circumstances to live in town, she has a deep love for the country, and
wishes, if we intend to leave the house open, to come and care for it in
our absence, even offering to cook for herself if we do not care to have
the expense of a maid, saying, 'to cook a real meal, with a real fire
instead of gas, will be a great and refreshing change for me, so you
need feel under no obligation whatever!'

"Thinking of the pity of wasting such tempting offers as these, I went
to church with my body only, my mind staying outside under a
horse-chestnut tree, and instead of listening as I should, I looked
sidewise out of the window at my double in the shade and wondered if,
after all, the stay-at-home vacation was not a wild scheme. There being
a Puritan streak in me, via my father, I sometimes question the right of
what I wish to do simply because I like to do it.

"At dinner I was so grumpy, answering in monosyllables, that sensitive
Bart looked anxious, and as if he thought I was disappointed at the
possible turn of affairs, but _The Man from Everywhere_ laughed, saying,
'Let her alone; she is not through incubating the plan, and you know the
best of setting hens merely cluck and growl when disturbed.'

"Immediately after dinner Bart and _The Man_ went for a walk up the
river valley, and I, going to the living room, seated myself by the
window, where I could watch the Infant playing on the gravel outside, it
being the afternoon out of both the general maid Anastasia and Barney
the man, between whom I suspect matrimonial intentions.

"The singing of the birds, the hum of bees in the opening lilacs, and
the garden fragrance blending with the Infant's prattle, as she babbled
to her dolls, floated through the open door and made me drowsy, and I
turned from the light toward the now empty fireplace.

"A snap! and the air seemed suddenly exhilarating! Was it an electric
spark from the telephone? No, simply the clarifying of the thoughts that
had been puzzling me.

"Maria Maxwell shall come during our vacations,--at that moment I
decided to separate the time into several periods,--she shall take
entire charge of all within doors.

"Bart and I will divide off a portion of the old hay-barn with screens,
and camp out there (unless in case of very bad thunder or one of the
cold July storms that we sometimes have). Anastasia shall serve us a
very simple hot dinner at noon in the summer kitchen, and keep a supply
of cooked food in the pantry, from which we can arrange our breakfasts
and suppers in the opposite side of the barn from our sleeping place,
and there we can have a table, chairs, and a little oil stove for making
tea and coffee.

"Maria, besides attending to domestic details, must also inspect the
mail and only show us letters when absolutely necessary, as well as to
say 'not at home,' with the impenetrable New York butler manner to every
one who calls.

"Thus Bart and I will be equally free without the rending of heart
strings--free to love and enjoy home from without, for it is really
strange when one comes to think of it, we learn of the outside world by
looking out the windows, but we so seldom have time to stand in another
view-point and look in. Thus it occurred to me, instead of taking one
long vacation, we can break the time into three or four in order to
follow the garden seasons and the work they suggest. A bit at the end of
May for both planning and locating the spring wild flowers before they
have wholly shed their petals, and so on through the season, ending in
October by the transplanting of trees and shrubs that we have marked and
in setting out the hardy roses, for which we shall have made a garden
according to the plan that Aunt Lavinia says is to be among the early
Garden, You, and I records.

"_May 15._ Maria Maxwell has joyfully agreed to come the twenty-first,
having obtained a substitute for her final week of teaching, as well as
rented her 'parlor car,' as she calls her flat, to a couple of students
who come from the South for change of air and to attend summer school at
Columbia College. It seems that many people look upon New York as a
summer watering place. Strange that a difference in climate can be
merely a matter of point of view.

"Now that we have decided to camp out at home, we are beginning to
realize the positive economy of the arrangement, for as we are not going
among people,--neither are they coming to us,--we shall need no new
clothes!

"We, a pair of natural spendthrifts, are actually turning miserly for
the garden's sake.

"Last night Bart went to the attic with a lantern and dragged from
obscurity two frightful misfit suits of the first bicycle
cuff-on-the-pants period, that were ripening in the camphor chest for
future missionary purposes, announcing that these, together with some
flannel shirts, would be his summer outfit, while this morning I went
into town and did battle at a sale of substantial, dollar shirt-waists,
and turning my back upon all the fascinations of little girls' frills
and fur-belows, bought stout gingham for aprons and overalls, into which
I shall presently pop the Infant, and thus save both stitches and
laundry work.

"Mother has sent a note expressing her pleasure in our plan and
enclosing a cheque for $50, suggesting that it should be put into a
birthday rose bed--my birthday is in two days--in miniature like the old
garden at her home on the north Virginia border. I'm sending you the
list of such roses as she remembered that were in it, but I'm sure
many, like Gloire de Dijon, would be winter killed here. Will you revise
the list for me?

"Bart has arranged to shut off the back hall and stairs, so that when we
wish, we can get to our indoor bedroom and bath at any hour without
going through the house or disturbing its routine.

"Anastasia has been heard to express doubts as to our entire sanity
confidentially to Barney, on his return from the removal of two cots
from the attic to the part of the barn enclosed by some old piazza
screens, thereby publicly declaring our intention of sleeping out in all
seasonable weather.

"_May 20._ The Blakes, next door below, are going to Europe, and have
offered us their comfortable family horse, the buggy, and a light-work
wagon, if we will feed, shoe, pet, and otherwise care for him (his name,
it seems, is Romeo). Could anything be more in keeping with both our
desires and needs?

"To-day, half as a joke, I've sent out P.P.C. cards to all our formal
friends in the county. Bart frowns, saying that they may be taken
seriously and produce like results!

"_May 22._ Maria has arrived, taken possession of the market-book,
housekeeping box, and had a satisfactory conference with Anastasia.

"Hurrah for Liberty and outdoors! _It_ begins to-morrow. You may label
it Their Garden Vacation, and admit it to the records of The Garden,
You, and I, at your own risk and peril; but as you say that if you are
to boil down the practical part of your garden-boke experiences for the
benefit of Aunt Lavinia and me and I must send you my summer doings, I
shall take this way of accomplishing it, at intervals, the only regular
task, if gossiping to you can be so called, that I shall set myself this
summer.

"A new moon to-night. Will it prove a second honeymoon, think you, or
end in a total eclipse of our venture? I'm poppy sleepy!

"_May 23._ 10 A.M. (A postal.) Starting on vacation; stopped bedroom
clock and put away watches last night, and so overslept. It seems quite
easy to get away from Time! Please tell me what annuals I can plant as
late in the season as this, while we are locating the rose bed.

                                                   "MARY PENROSE."




V

ANNUALS--WORTHY AND UNWORTHY

THE MIDSUMMER GARDEN


_Oaklands, May 25._ A garden vacation! Fifty dollars to spend for roses!
What annuals may be planted now to tide you easily over the summer?
Really, Mary Penrose, the rush of your astonishing letter completely
took away my breath, and while I was recovering it by pacing up and down
the wild walk, and trying to decide whether I should answer your
questions first, and if I did which one, or ask you others instead,
Scotch fashion, about your unique summer plans, Evan came home a train
earlier than usual, with a pair of horticultural problems for which he
needed an immediate solution.

Last evening, in the working out of these schemes, we found that we were
really travelling on lines parallel with your needs, and so in due
course you shall have Evan's prescription and design for A Simple Rose
Garden (if it isn't simple enough, you can begin with half, as the
proportions will be the same), while I now send you my plans for an
inexpensive midsummer garden, which will be useful to you only as a part
of the whole chain, but for which Evan has a separate need.

Over at East Meadow, a suburb of Bridgeton that lies toward the shore
and is therefore attractive to summer people, a friend of Evan's has put
up a dozen tasteful, but inexpensive, Colonial cottages, and Evan has
planned the grounds that surround them, about an acre being allotted to
each house, for lawn and garden of summer vegetables, though no
arbitrary boundaries separate the plots. The houses are intended for
people of refined taste and moderate means who, only being able to leave
town during the school vacation, from middle June to late September, yet
desire to have a bit of garden to tend and to have flowers about them
other than the decorative but limited piazza boxes or row of geraniums
around the porch.

The vegetable gardens consist of four squares, conveniently intersected
by paths, these squares to be edged by annuals or bulbs of rapid growth,
things that, planted in May, will begin to be interesting when the
tenants come a month later.

But here am I, on the verge of rushing into another theme, without
having expressed our disappointment that you cannot bear us company
this summer, yet I must say that the edge of regret is somewhat dulled
by my interest in the progress and result of your garden vacation, which
to us at least is a perfectly unique idea, and quite worthy of the
inventive genius of _The Man from Everywhere_.

Plainly do I see by the scope of this same letter of yours that the
records of The Garden, You, and I, instead of being a confection of
undistinguishable ingredients blended by a chef of artistic soul, will
be a home-made strawberry shortcake, for which I am to furnish the
necessary but uninspired crust, while you will supply the filling of
fragrant berries.

With the beginning of your vacation begin my questions domestic that
threaten to overbalance your questions horticultural. If the Infant
should wail at night, do you expect to stay quietly out "in camp" and
not steal on tiptoe to the house, and at least peep in at the window?
Also, you have put a match-making thought in a head swept clean of all
such clinging cobwebs since Sukey Crandon married Carthy Latham and,
turning their backs on his ranch experiment, they decided to settle near
the Bradfords at the Ridge, where presently there will be another garden
growing. If you have no one either in the family or neighbourhood likely
to attract _The Man from Everywhere_, why may we not have him? Jane
Crandon is quite unexpectedly bright, as frank as society allows, this
being one of his requirements, besides having grown very pretty since
she has virtually become daughter to Mrs. Jenks-Smith and had sufficient
material in her gowns to allow her chest to develop.

But more of this later; to return to the annuals, I understand that you
have had your hardy beds prepared and that you want something to
brighten them, as summer tenants, until early autumn, when the permanent
residents may be transplanted from the hardy seed bed.

Annuals make a text fit for a very long sermon. Verily there are many
kinds, and the topic forms easily about a preachment, for they may be
divided summarily into two classes, the worthy and the unworthy, though
the worth or lack of it in annuals, as with most of us humans, is a
matter of climate, food, and environment, rather than inherent original
sin. The truth is, nature, though eternally patient and good-natured,
will not be hurried beyond a certain point, and the life of a flower
that is born under the light cloud shelter of English skies, fed by
nourishing mist through long days that have enough sunlight to stimulate
and not scorch, has a different consummation than with us, where the
climate of extremes makes the perfection of flowers most uncertain, at
least in the months of July and August when the immature bud of one day
is the open, but often imperfect, flower of the next. As no one may
change climatic conditions, the only thing to be done is to give to this
class of flowers of the summer garden room for individual development,
all the air they need to breathe both below ground, by frequent stirring
of the soil, and above, by avoidance of over-crowding, and then select
only those varieties that are really worth while.

This qualification can best be settled by pausing and asking three
questions, when confronting the alluring portrait of an
above-the-average specimen of annual in a catalogue, for _Garden Goozle_
applies not only to the literature of the subject, but to the pictures
as well, and a measurement of, for instance, a flower stalk of Drummond
phlox, taken from a specimen pot-grown plant, raised at least partly
under glass, is sure to cause disappointment when the average border
plant is compared with it.

First--is the species of a colour and length of flowering season to be
used in jungle-like masses for summer colour? Second--has it fragrance
or decorative quality for house decoration? Thirdly, has it the
backbone to stand alone or will the plant flop and flatten shapelessly
at the first hard shower and so render an array of conspicuous stakes
necessary? Stakes, next to unsightly insecticides and malodorous
fertilizers, are the bane of gardening, but that subject is big enough
for a separate chronicle.

By ability to stand alone, I do not mean is every branchlet stiff as if
galvanized, like a balsam, for this is by no means pretty, but is the
plant so constructed that it can languish gracefully, petunia fashion,
and not fall over stark and prone like an uprooted castor bean.
Hybridization, like physical culture in the human, has evidently infused
grace in the plant races, for many things that in my youth seemed the
embodiment of stiffness, like the gladiolus, have developed suppleness,
and instead of the stiff bayonet spike of florets, this useful and
indefatigable bulb, if left to itself and not bound to a stake like a
martyr, now produces flower sprays that start out at right angles,
curve, and almost droop, with striking, orchid-like effect.

For making patches of colour, without paying special heed to the size of
flower or development of individual plants, annuals may be sown thinly
broadcast, raked in lightly, and, if the beds or borders are not too
wide for reaching, thinned out as soon as four or five leaves appear.
Portulaca, sweet alyssum, Shirley poppies, and the annual gaillardias
belong to this class, as well as single petunias of the inexpensive
varieties used to edge shrubberies, and dwarf nasturtiums.

Sweet peas, of course, are to be sown early and deep, where they are to
stand half an inch apart, like garden peas, and then thinned out so that
there is not less than an inch between (two is better, but it is usually
heartbreaking to pull up so many sturdy pealets) and reenforced by brush
or wire trellising. Otherwise I plant the really worthy, or what might
be called major annuals, in a seed bed much like that used for the hardy
plants, at intervals during the month of May, according to the earliness
of the season, and the time they are wanted to bloom. Later, I
transplant them to their summer resting places, leaving those that are
not needed, for it is difficult to calculate too closely without
scrimping, in the seed bed, to cut for house decoration, as with the
perennials. Of course if annuals are desired for very early flowering,
many species may be started in a hotbed and taken from thence to the
borders. Biennials that it is desired shall flower the first season are
best hurried in this way, yet for the gardenerless garden of a woman
this makes o'er muckle work. The occasional help of the "general useful"
is not very efficient when it comes to tending hotbeds, giving the
exact quantity of water necessary to quench the thirst of seedlings
without producing dropsy, and the consequent "damping off" which, when
it suddenly appears, seems as intangible and makes one feel as helpless
as trying to check a backing horse by helpless force of bit. A frame for
Margaret carnations, early asters, and experiments in seedling Dahlias
and chrysanthemums will be quite enough.

The woman who lives all the year in the country can so manage that her
spring bulbs and hardy borders, together with the roses, last well into
July. After this the annuals must be depended upon for ground colour,
and to supplement the phloxes, gladioli, Dahlias, and the like. By the
raising of these seeds in hotbeds they are apt to reach their high tide
of bloom during the most intense heat of August, when they quickly
mature and dry away; while, on the other hand, if they are reared in an
open-air seed bed, they are not only stronger but they last longer,
owing to more deliberate growth. Asters sown out-of-doors in May bloom
well into October, when the forced plants barely outlast August.

Of many annuals it is writ in the catalogues, "sow at intervals of two
weeks or a month for succession." This sounds very plausible, for are
not vegetables so dealt with, the green string-beans in our garden being
always sown every two weeks from early April until September first? Yes,
but to vegetables is usually given fresher and deeper soil for the crop
succession than falls to flower seeds, and in addition the seeds are of
a more rugged quality.

My garden does not take kindly to this successive sowing, and I have
gradually learned to control the flower-bearing period by difference in
location. Spring, and in our latitude May, is the time of universal seed
vitality, and seeds germinating then seem to possess the maximum of
strength; in June this is lessened, while a July-sown seed of a common
plant, such as a nasturtium or zinnia, seems to be impressed by the
lateness of the season and often flowers when but a few inches high, the
whole plant having a weazened, precocious look, akin to the progeny of
people, or higher animals, who are either born out of due season or of
elderly parents. On the other hand, the plant retarded in its growth by
a less stimulating location, when it blooms, is quite as perfect and of
equal quality with its seed-bed fellows who were transplanted at once
into full sunlight.

Take, for example, mignonette, which in the larger gardens is always
treated by successive sowings. A row sown early in April, in a sunny
spot in the open garden and thinned out, will flower profusely before
very hot weather, bloom itself out, and then leave room for some late,
flowering biennial. That sown in the regular seed bed early in May may
be transplanted (for this is the way by which large trusses of bloom may
be obtained) early in June into three locations, using it as a border
for taller plants, except in the bed of sweet odours, where it may be
set in bunches of a dozen plants, for in this bed individuality may be
allowed to blend in a universal mass of fragrance.

In order to judge accurately of the exact capabilities for shade or
sunlight of the different portions of a garden, one must live with it,
follow the shadows traced by the tree fingers on the ground the year
through, and know its moods as the expressions that pass over a familiar
face. For you must not transplant any of these annuals, that only live
to see their sun father for one brief season, into the shade of any tree
or overhanging roof, but at most in the travelling umbra of a distant
object, such as a tall spruce, the northeastern side of a hedge, or such
like.

In my garden one planting of mignonette in full sun goes in front of the
March-planted sweet peas; of the two transplantings from the seed, one
goes on the southwest side of the rose arbour and the other on the upper
or northeast side, where it blooms until it is literally turned into
green ice where it stands.

This manipulation of annuals belongs to the realm of the permanent
resident; the summer cottager must be content to either accept the
conditions of the garden as arranged by his landlord, or in a brief
visit or two made before taking possession, do his own sowing where the
plants are to stand. In this case let him choose his varieties carefully
and spare his hand in thickness of sowing, and he may have as many
flowers for his table and as happy an experience with the summer garden,
even though it is brief, as his wealthy neighbour who spends many
dollars for bedding plants and foliage effects that may be neither
smelled, gathered nor familiarized.

Among all the numerous birds that flit through the trees as visitors, or
else stay with us and nest in secluded places, how comparatively few do
we really depend upon for the aerial colour and the song that opens a
glimpse of Eden to our eager eyes and ears each year, for our eternal
solace and encouragement? There are some, like the wood thrush,
song-sparrow, oriole, robin, barn-swallow, catbird, and wren, without
which June would not be June, but an imperfect harmony lacking the
dominant note.

[Illustration: LONGFELLOW'S GARDEN.]

Down close to the earth, yes, in the earth, the same obtains. Upon how
few of all the species of annuals listed does the real success of the
summer garden rest? This is more and more apparent each year, when the
fittest are still further developed by hybridization for survival and
the indifferent species drop out of sight.

We often think erroneously of the beauty of old-time gardens. This
beauty was largely that of consistency of form with the architecture of
the dwelling and simplicity, rather than the variety, of flowers grown.
Maeterlinck brings this before us with forcible charm in his essay on
Old-Fashioned Flowers, and even now Martin Cortright is making a little
biography of the flowers of our forefathers, as a birthday surprise for
Lavinia. These flowers depended more upon individuality and association
than upon their great variety.

First among the worthy annuals come sweet peas, mignonette, nasturtiums,
and asters, each one of the four having two out of the three necessary
qualifications, and the sweet pea all of them,--fragrance and decorative
value for both garden and house. To be sure, the sweet pea, though an
annual, must be planted before May if a satisfactory, well-grown hedge
with flowers held on long stems well above the foliage is to be
expected, and in certain warm, well-drained soils it is practicable to
sow seed the autumn before. This puts the sweet pea a little out of the
running for the hirer of a summer cottage, unless he can have access to
the place early in the season, but sown thinly and once fairly rooted
and kept free from dead flowers and pods, the vines will go on yielding
quite through September, though on the coming of hot weather the flower
stems shorten.

I often plant seeds of the climbing nasturtium in the row with the sweet
peas at a distance of one seed to the fist, the planting not being done
until late May. The peas mature first, and after the best of their
season has passed they are supplanted by the nasturtiums, which cover
the dry vines and festoon the supporting brush with gorgeous colour in
early autumn, keeping in the same colour scheme with salvia, sunflowers,
gaillardias, and tritomas. This is excellent where space is of account,
and also where more sweet peas are planted for their early yield than
can be kept in good shape the whole season. Centaurea or cornflower, the
bachelor's button or ragged sailor of old gardens, is in the front rank
of the worthies. The flowers have almost the keeping qualities of
everlastings, and are of easy culture, while the sweet sultan, also of
this family, adds fragrance to its other qualities. The blue cornflower
is best sown in a long border or bed of unconventional shape, and may be
treated like a biennial, one sowing being made in September so that the
seedlings will make sturdy tufts before cold weather. These, if lightly
covered with salt hay or rough litter (not leaves), will bloom in May
and June, and if then replaced by a second sowing, flowers may be had
from September first until freezing weather, so hardy is this true, blue
_Kaiser-blumen_.

All the poppies are worthy, from the lovely Shirley, with its
butterfly-winged petals, to the Eschscholtzia, the state flower of
California.

One thing to be remembered about poppies is not to rely greatly upon
their durability and make the mistake of expecting them to fill too
conspicuous a place, or keep long in the marching line of the garden
pageant. They have a disappointing way, especially the great,
long-stemmed double varieties, of suddenly turning to impossible
party-coloured mush after a bit of damp weather that is most
discouraging. Treated as mere garden episodes and massed here and there
where a sudden disappearance will not leave a gap, they will yield a
feast of unsurpassed colour.

To me the Shirley is the only really satisfactory annual poppy, and I
sow it in autumn and cover it after the fashion of the cornflower, as
it will survive anything but an open, rainy winter, and in the resulting
display that lasts the whole month of June it rivals the roses in
everything but perfume.

Godetia is a good flower for half-shady places that it is difficult to
fill, and rings the colour change from white through pink to crimson and
carmine. Marigolds hold their own for garden colour, but not for
gathering or bringing near the nose, and zinnias meet them on the same
plane.

The morning-glory tribe of _ipomaea_ is both useful and decorative for
rapid-growing screens, but heed should be taken that the common
varieties be not allowed to scatter their seeds at random, or the next
season, before you know it, every plant in the garden will be held tight
in their insinuating grasp. Especially beautiful are the new Imperial
Japanese morning glories that are exquisitely margined and fringed, and
of the size and pattern of rare glass wine cups. Petunias, if
judiciously used, and of good colour, belong in the second grade of the
first rank. They have their uses, but the family has a morbid tendency
to run to sad, half-mourning hues, and I have put a black mark against
it as far as my own garden is concerned.

Drummond phlox deserves especial mention, for so wide a colour range
has it, and so easy is its growth (if only you give it plenty of water
and elbow room, and remember that a crowded Drummond phlox is an unhappy
plant of short life), that a very tasteful group of beds could be made
of this flower alone by a careful selection of colours, while by
constant cutting for the house the length of the blooming season is
prolonged.

The dwarf salvias, too, grow readily from seed, and balsams, if one has
room, line up finely along straight walks, the firm blossoms of the
camelia-flowered variety, with their delicate rosettes of pink, salmon,
and lavender, also serving to make novel table decorations when arranged
in many ways with leaves of the laurel, English ivy, or fern fronds.

Portulaca, though cousin to the objectionable "pusley," is most useful
where mere colour is wanted to cover the ground in beds that have held
early tulips or other spring bulbs, as well as for covering dry, sandy
spots where little else will grow. It should not be planted until really
warm weather, and therefore may be scattered between the rows of
narcissi and late tulips when their tops are cut off, and by the time
they are quite withered and done away with, the cheerful portulaca,
feeding upon the hottest sunbeams, will begin to cover the ground, a
pleasure to the eye as well as a decorative screen to the bulbs
beneath, sucking the fiercest sun rays before they penetrate.

Chief among the low-growing worthies comes the verbena, good for
bedding, good for cutting, and in some of the mammoth varieties subtly
fragrant. Verbenas may be raised to advantage in a hotbed, but if the
seed be soaked overnight in warm water, it will germinate freely out of
doors in May and be a mass of bloom from July until late October. For
beds grouped around a sundial or any other garden centre, the verbena
has no peer; its trailing habit gives it grace, the flowers are borne
erect, yet it requires no staking and it is easily controlled by
pinching or pinning to the soil with stout hair-pins.

One little fragrant flower, fraught with meaning and remembrance,
belongs to the annuals, though its family is much better known among the
half-hardy perennials that require winter protection here. This is the
gold and brown annual wall-flower, slender sister of _die gelbe violet_,
and having that same subtle violet odour in perfect degree. It cannot be
called a decorative plant, but it should have plenty of room given it in
the bed of sweet odours and be used as a border on the sunny side of
wall or fence, where, protected from the wind and absorbing every ray of
autumn sunlight, it will often give you at least a buttonhole bouquet
on Christmas morning.

[Illustration: THE SUMMER GARDEN--VERBENAS.]

The cosmos is counted by catalogues and culturists one of the most
worthy of the newer annuals, and so it is when it takes heed to its ways
and behaves its best, but otherwise it has all the terrible uncertainty
of action common to human and garden parvenues. From the very beginning
of its career it is a conspicuous person, demanding room and abundance
of food. Thinking that its failure to bloom until frost threatened was
because I had sown the seed out of doors in May, I gave it a front room
in my very best hotbed early in March, where, long before the other
occupants of the place were big enough to be transplanted, Mrs. Cosmos
and family pushed their heads against the sash and insisted upon seeing
the world. Once in the garden, they throve mightily, and early in July,
at a time when I had more flowers than I needed, the entire row
threatened to bloom. After two weeks of coquettish showing of colour
here and there, up and down the line, they concluded that midsummer sun
did not agree with any of the shades of pink, carmine, or crimson of
which their clothes were fashioned, and as for white, the memory of
recent acres of field daisies made it too common, so they changed their
minds and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. When they were
pinched in on top, they simply expanded sidewise; ordinary and
inconspicuous staking failed to restrain them, and they even pulled away
at different angles from poles of silver birch with stout rope between,
like a festive company of bacchantes eluding the embraces of the police.
A heavy wind storm in late September snapped and twisted their hollow
trunks and branches. Were they discouraged? Not a particle; they simply
rested comfortably upon whatever they had chanced to fall and grew again
from this new basis. Meanwhile the plants in front of them and on the
opposite side of the way began to feel discouraged, and a fine lot of
asters, now within the shadow, were attacked by facial paralysis and
developed their blossoms only on one side.

The middle of October, the week before the coming of Black Frost, the
garden executioner, the cosmos, now heavy with buds, settled down to
bloom. Two large jars were filled with them, after much difficulty in
the gathering, and then the axe fell. Sometimes, of course, they behave
quite differently, and those who can spare ground for a great hedge
backed by wall or fence and supported in front by pea brush deftly
insinuated betwixt and between ground and plants, so that it restrains,
but is at the same time invisible, may feast their eyes upon a spectacle
of billows of white and pink that, at a little distance, are reminiscent
of the orchards of May.

But if you, Mary Penrose, are leaning toward cosmos and reading in the
seed catalogue of their size and wonderful dawn-like tints, remember
that the best of highly hybridized things revert unexpectedly to the
commonest type, and somewhere in this family of lofty Mexicans there
must have been a totally irresponsible wayside weed. Then turn backward
toward the front of the catalogue, find the letter A, and buy, in place
of cosmos, aster seeds of every variety and colour that your pocket will
allow.

Of course the black golden-rod beetle may try to dwell among the aster
flowers, and the aphis that are nursery maids to the ants infest their
roots; you must pick off the one and dig sulphur and unslaked lime
deeply into the soil to discourage the other, but whatever labour you
spend will not be lost.

Other annuals there are, and their name is legion, that are pretty
enough, perhaps, and well adapted to special purposes, like the
decorative and curious tassel flower, cockscombs, gourds, four o'clocks,
etc., and the great tribe of "everlastings" for those people, if such
there be, who still prefer dried things for winter bouquets, when an
ivy-wreathed window filled with a succession of bulbs, ferns, or oxalis
is so easily achieved! It is too harsh, perhaps, to call these minor
annuals unworthy, but as they are unimportant and increase the labour
rather than add to the pleasure, they are really unworthy of admission
to the woman's garden where there is only time and room for the best
results.

But here I am rambling at large instead of plainly answering your
question, "What annuals can we plant as late as this (May 25) while we
are locating the rose bed?" You may plant any or all of them up to the
first of June, the success of course depending upon a long autumn and
late frosts. No, not quite all; the tall-growing sweet peas should be in
the ground not later than May 1 in this south New England latitude,
though in the northern states and Canada they are planted in June as a
matter of course. Blanche Ferry, of the brilliant pink-and-white
complexion, however, will do very nicely in the light of a labour-saving
afterthought, as, only reaching a foot and a half high, little, if any,
brush is needed.

[Illustration: ASTERS WELL MASSED.]

We found your rose list replete with charming varieties, but most of
them too delicate for positive success hereabouts. I'm sending you
presently the list for a fifty-dollar rose garden, which it seems is
much in demand, so that I've adapted my own experience to the simple
plan that Evan drew to enlighten amateur rose lovers and turn them from
coveting their wealthy neighbours' goods to spending their energy in
producing covetable roses of their own!

By the way, I send you my own particular list of Worthy Annuals to match
the hardy plants and keep heights and colours easily before you until
your own Garden Book is formulated and we can compare notes. (See page
387.)

You forgot to tell me whether you have decided to keep hens or not! I
know that the matter has been discussed every spring since you have
lived at Woodridge. If you are planning a hennery, I shall not encourage
the rosary, for the days of a commuter's wife are not long enough for
both without encountering nervous prostration on the immediate premises.

Some problems are ably solved by cooeperation. As I am a devotee of the
ornamental and comfortable, Martha Saunders _nee_ Corkle runs a
cooeperative hen-yard in our north pasture for the benefit of the
Cortrights and ourselves to our mutual joy!




VI

THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE

CONCERNING EVERGREENS AND HENS

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_June 5._ I have not dipped pen in ink for an entire week, which has
been one of stirring events, for not only have we wholly emerged from
indoor life, but we have had a hair-breadth escape from something that
not only threatened to mar the present summer, but to cast so heavy a
shadow over the garden that no self-respecting flowers could flourish
even under the thought of it. You cannot possibly guess with what we
were threatened, but I am running ahead of myself.

The day that we began _it_--the vacation--by stopping the clocks, we
overslept until nine o'clock. When we came downstairs, the house was in
a condition of cheerful good order unknown to that hour of the day.

There is such a temperamental difference in this mere setting things to
rights. It can be done so that every chair has a stiffly repellent look,
and the conspicuous absence of dust makes one painfully conscious that
it has not always been thus, while the fingers inadvertently stray over
one's attire, plucking a shred here and a thread there. Even flowers can
be arranged in a vase so as to look thoroughly and reproachfully
uncomfortable, and all the grace and meaning crushed out of them. But
Maria Maxwell has the touch gracious that makes even a plainly furnished
room hold out detaining hands as you go through, and the flowers on the
greeting table in the hall (yes, Lavinia Cortright taught me that little
fancy of yours during her first visit), though much the same as I had
been gathering for a week past, wore an air of novelty!

For a moment we stood at the foot of the stairs looking about and
getting our bearings, as guests in an unfamiliar place rather than
householders. It flitted through my body that I was hungry, and one of
the "must be's" of the vacation country was that we were to forage for
breakfast. At the same time Bart sauntered unconsciously toward the
mail-box under the hat-rack and then, suddenly putting his hands behind
him, turned to me with a quizzical expression, saying: "Letters are
forbidden, I know, but how about the paper? Even the 'Weekly Tribune'
would be something; you know that sheet was devised for farmers!"

"If this vacation isn't to be a punishment, but a pleasure, I think we
had both better 'have what we want when we want it'!" I replied, for at
that moment I spied the Infant out on the porch, and to hug her ladyship
was a swiftly accomplished desire. For some reason she seemed rather
astonished at this very usual performance, and putting her hands,
boy-fashion, into the pockets of her checked overalls, surveyed herself
deliberately, and then looking up at me rather reproachfully remarked,
"Tousin Maria says that now you and father are tumpany!"

"And what is company?" I asked, rather anxious to know from what new
point we were to be regarded.

"Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink room wif trunks, and
we play wif them and make them do somfing to amuse 'em all the time
hard, and give 'em nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves
too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat to dinner. And by
and by when they've gone away Ann-stasia says, 'Glory be!' and muvver
goes to sleep. But muvver, if you are the tumpany, you can't go to sleep
when you've gone away, can you?"

A voice joined me in laughter, Maria Maxwell's, from inside the open
window of the dining room. Looking toward the sound, I saw that, though
the dining table itself had been cleared, a side table drawn close to
the window was set with places for two, a posy of poets' narcissus and
the last lilies-of-the-valley between, while a folded napkin at one
place rested on a newspaper!

"I thought we were to get our own breakfasts," I said, in a tone of very
feeble expostulation, which plainly told that, at that particular
moment, it was the last thing I wished to do.

"You are, the very minute you feel like it, and not before! You must let
yourselves down gradually, and not bolt out of the house as if you had
been evicted. If Bart went paperless and letterless this very first
morning, until he has met something that interests him more, he would
think about the lack of the news and the mail all day until they became
more than usually important!" So saying, Maria swept the stems and
litter of the flowers she had been arranging into her apron, and
annexing the Infant to one capable finger, all the other nine being
occupied, she went down the path toward the garden for fresh supplies,
leaving Ann-stasia, as the Infant calls her, to serve the coffee, a
prerogative of which she would not consent to be bereft, not even upon
the plea of lightening her labours!

"Isn't this perfect!" I exclaimed, looking toward a gap in the hills
that was framed by the debatable knoll on one side and reached by a
short cut across the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm
above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of field flowers.

"Entirely!" assented Bart, his spoon in the coffee cup stirring
vigorously and his head enveloped in the newspaper. But what did the
point of view matter: he was content and unhurried--what better
beginning for a vacation? In fact in those two words lies the real
vacation essence.

Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious irresponsibility, I
watched Maria moving to and fro between the shrubs that bounded the east
alley of the old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she had
always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with an efficiency that
was at times overpowering, whose brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way
of fixing one, as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force of
eye had become a habit. But here, her most cherished belongings given
room to breathe in the spare room that rambles across one end of the
house, while her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep
closet, Maria in two short days had become another person.

She does not seem large, but merely well built. The black gowns and
straight white collars that she always wore, as a sort of professional
garb, have vanished before a shirtwaist with an openwork neck and half
sleeves, while the flesh exposed thereby is pink and wholesome. Hair not
secured for the wear and tear of the daily rounds of school, but allowed
to air itself, requires only a few hair-pins, and, if it is naturally
wavy, follows its own will with good effect. While as to her eyes, what
in them seemed piercing at short range melted to an engaging frankness
in the soft light under the trees. In short, if she had been any other
than Maria Maxwell, music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed
family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine-looking woman
who only needed a magic touch of some sort to become positively
handsome. Coffee and paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing
at me.

"Well," I said, extending my hand, "what next?" I had speedily made up
my mind that Bart should take the initiative in our camping-out
arrangement, and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be
done was to set our camp itself in order.

"Come out," he said, taking my hand in the same way that the Infant does
when she wishes to lead the way to the discovery of the fairyland that
lies beyond the meadows of the farm. So we sauntered out. Once under
the sun, the same delicious thought occurred to each that, certain
prudences having been seen to, we were for the time without
responsibilities, and the fact made us laugh for the very freedom of it
and pull one another hither and thither like a couple of children.

Meanwhile the word _knoll_ had not been uttered, but our feet were at
once drawn in its direction by an irresistible force, and presently we
found ourselves standing at the lower end of the ridge and looking up
the slope!

"I wish we had a picture of it as it must have been before the land was
cleared,--it would be a great help in replanting," I said; "it needs
something dense and bold for a background to the rocks."

"The skeleton of the old barn on the other side spoils it; it ought to
come down," was Bart's rejoinder. "It seems as if everything we wish to
do hinges on some other thing."

This barn had been set back against the knoll so that from the house the
hayloft window seemed like a part of a low shed. Certainly our forbears
knew the ways of the New England wind very thoroughly, judging by the
way they huddled their houses and outbuildings in hollows or under
hillsides to avoid its stress. And when they couldn't do that, they
turned sloping, humpbacked roofs toward the northeast to shed the snow
and tempt the wind in its wild moods to play leapfrog and thus pass
over.

Such a roof as this has the house at the next farm, and judging by the
location of the old hay barn, and the lay of the road, it must have once
belonged to this adjoining property rather than to ours.

Slowly we circled the knoll, dropped into the hollow, and stood upon the
uneven floor of wide chestnut planks that was to be our camp. Other
lodgers had this barn besides ourselves and, unlike ourselves,
hereditary tenants. Swallows of steel-blue wings hung their nests in a
whispering colony against the beams, a pair of gray squirrels arched
their tails at us and chattering whisked up aloft, where they evidently
have a family in the dilapidated pigeon cote, while among some
cornstalks and other litter in the low earth cellar beneath we could
hear the rustling doubtless born of the swift little feet of mice. (Yes,
I know that it is a feminine quality lacking in me, but I have never yet
been able to conjure up any species of fear in connection with these
playful little rodents.)

The cots, table, chairs, and screens were as I had placed them several
days ago; but it was not the interior that held us but the view looking
eastward across the sunlit meadows. In fact this side of the barn had
the wide openings of an observatory. The gnarled apple trees of the
orchard still bore pink-and-white wreaths on the shady side, and the
purling of bluebirds blended with the voice of the river that ran
between the hills afar off--the same stream that further up country was
to be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. Sitting
there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty of it all, with never a
thought of pick and spade, grub axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks
of the knoll to find the depth or quality of its soil or test the
planting possibilities.

"Let us go up to the woods and see Blake; he wrote me that he is to be
there to-day, and suggested we should both meet him and see the
treasure-trove to be found there before the spring blossoms are quite
shed," said Bart, suddenly, fumbling among the letters in his pocket;
"and by the way, he said he would come back with us. He evidently
forgets that we are not 'at home' to company!"

"But _The Man from Everywhere_ is not company. He is simply a permanent
institution and can go on dropping in as usual all summer if he likes.
Ann-stasia adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandalwood
rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair of real tortoise-shell
combs not two months ago? And of course Maria Maxwell will not object;
why should she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly know
that he is in the house."

Barney harnessed the mild-faced horse of our neighbour's lending to that
most comfortable of all vehicles, a buggy with an ample box behind and a
top that can be dropped and made into a deep pocket to hold gleanings,
or raised as a shield from sun and rain. Ah! dear Mrs. Evan, is there
anything that turns a sober, settled married couple backward to the
enchanted "engaged" region like driving away through the spring lanes in
a buggy pulled by a horse who has had nature-loving owners, so that he
seems to know by intuition when to pause and when it would be most
acceptable to his passengers to have him wander from the beaten track
and browse among the tender wayside grasses that always seem so much
more tempting than any pasture grazing?

As you will infer from this, Romeo is not only of a gentle, meditative
disposition, but his harness is destitute of a check rein, overdraw, or
otherwise.

"Have you put in the trowels?" I asked, as we drove out the gate, the
reins hanging so loosely from between Bart's knees, as he lit his pipe,
that it was by mere chance that Romeo took the right turn.

"No, I never thought of them; this is merely a prospecting trip. Did you
put in the lunch?"

I was obliged to confess that I had not, but later on a box of
sandwiches was found under the seat in company with Romeo's nose-bag of
oats, this indication being that, as Barney alone knew directly of our
destination, he must have informed Anastasia, who took pity, regarding
us, as she does, as a cross between lunatics and the babes in the woods.

We chose byways, and only crossed the macadamized highroad, that haunt
of automobiles, once, and after an hour's sauntering crossed the river
and drove into the woodlots to the north of it, now the property of the
water company, who have already posted warning to trespassers. We
straightway began to trespass, seeing _The Man from Everywhere_ on
horseback coming down to meet us.

Without an apparent change of soil or altitude, the scenery at once grew
more bold and dramatic.

"What is it?" I said. "We have been driving through lanes lined by
dogwood and yet that little tree below and the scrubby bit of hillside
make a more perfect picture than any we have seen!"

[Illustration: THE PICTORIAL VALUE OF EVERGREENS.]

Bart, who had left the buggy and was walking beside it with _The Man_,
who had dismounted and led his nag, turned and looked backward, but did
not answer.

"It is the evergreens that give it the quality," said _The Man_, "even
though they are only those stiff little Noah's-ark cedars. I notice it
far and wide, wherever I go; a landscape is never monotonous so long as
there is a pine, spruce, hemlock, or bit of a cedar to bind it together.
I believe that is why I am never content for long in the land of palms!"

"I love evergreens in winter, but I've never thought much about them in
the growing leafy season; they seem unimportant then," I said.

"Unimportant or not, they are still there. Look at that wall of trees
rising across the river! Every conceivable tint of green is there,
besides shades of pink and lavender in leaf case and catkin, but what
dominates and translates the whole? The great hemlocks on the crest and
the dark pointed cedars off on the horizon where the woodland thins
toward the pastures. Whether you separate them or not, they are there.
People are only just beginning to understand the value of evergreens in
their home gardens, both as windbreaks and backgrounds. No, I don't mean
stark, isolated specimens, stiff as Christmas trees. You have a
magnificent chance to use them on that knoll of yours that you are going
to restore!"

As he was speaking I thought Bart paid very scant attention, but
following his pointing finger I at once saw what had absorbed him. On
the opposite side of the river, extending into the brush lots, was a
knoll the size and counterpart of ours, even in the way that it lay by
the compass, only this was untouched, as nature planned it, and the
model for our restoration.

"Do you clear the land as far back as this?" Bart asked of _The Man_,
eagerly.

"Yes, not for the sake of the land, but for the boulders and loose rock
on those ledges; all the rock hereabout will be little enough for our
masonry!"

"Then," said Bart, "I'm going to transplant the growth on this knoll,
root and branch, herb and shrub, moss and fern, to our own, if it takes
me until Christmas! It isn't often that a man finds an illustrated plan
with all the materials for carrying it out under his hand for merely the
taking. There are enough young hemlocks up there to windbreak our whole
garden. The thing I'm not sure about is just when it will do to begin
the transplanting. Meanwhile I'll make a list of the plants we know that
we can add to as others develop and blossom."

So he set to work on his list then and there, _The Man from Everywhere_
helping, because he can name a plant from its leaves or even the twigs.

I said that I would write to you _at once_ and ask you or Evan to tell
us about the best way to transplant all the wild things, except woody
shrubs and trees, because we know it's best to wait for those until leaf
fall. But as it turns out, I've waited six days--oh! such aggravating
days when there is so much to decide and do!

That afternoon _The Man_ rode home with us, as a matter of course, we
quite forgetting that instead of late dinner, as usual, the meal would
be tea, as the Infant and Maria Maxwell are to dine now at one! As a
shower threatened, it seemed much more natural for us to turn into the
house than the camp, and before I knew how it happened I was sitting at
the head of my own table serving soup instead of tea! I dared not look
at Maria, but as the meal was nearly ended she remarked demurely,
looking out of the west window to where the shower was passing off
slantwise, leaving a glorious sunset trail in its wake, "Wouldn't you
like to have your coffee in camp, as the rain forced you to take dinner
indoors?" by which I knew that Maria would not allow us to lose sight of
our outdoor intentions.

Bart laughed, and _The Man_, gazing around the table innocently said,
"Oh, has _it_ begun, and am I intruding and breaking up plans? Why
didn't you tell me?"

So we went out through the sweet-smelling twilight, or rather the glow
that comes before it, and as we idly sipped the coffee, lo and behold,
the old farm lay before us--a dream picture painted by the twilight! The
little window-panes, iridescent with age and bulged into odd shapes by
yielding sashes, caught the sunset hues and turned to fire opals; the
light mist rising over the green meadows where the flowers now slept
with heads bent and eyes closed lent the green and pearl tints of those
mysterious gems to which drops of rain or dew strung everywhere made
diamond settings.

"By Jove!" exclaimed Bart, "how beautiful the Opie farm looks to-night!
If a real-estate agent could only get a photograph of what we see, we
should soon have a neighbour to rescue the place!"

"You mustn't call it the Opie farm any more; it is Opal Farm from
to-night!" I cried, "and no one shall buy it unless they promise to
leave in the old windows and let the meadow and crab orchard stay as
they are, besides giving me right of way through it quite down to the
river woods!"

But to get back by this circuitous route to the threatened danger with
which I opened this letter--

The postman whistled, as he has an alluring way of doing when he brings
the evening mail, always hoping that some one will come out for a bit of
evening gossip, in which he is rarely disappointed.

We all started to our feet, but Maria, whose special duty it had become
to look over the mail, distanced us all by taking a short cut,
regardless of wet grass.

Talk branched into divers pleasant ways, and we had almost forgotten her
errand when she returned and, breaking abruptly into the conversation,
said to Bart, "Sorry to interrupt, but the postman reports that there
are three large crates of live stock down at the station, and the agent
says will you please send for them to-night, as he doesn't dare leave
them out, there are so many strangers about, and they will surely stifle
if he crowds them into the office!"

"Live stock!" exclaimed Bart, "I'm sure I've bought nothing!" Then, as
light broke in his brain,--"Maybe it's that setter pup that Truesdale
promised me as soon as it was weaned, which would be about now!"

"Would a setter pup come in three crates?" inquired _The Man_, solemnly.

"It must be live plants and not live stock!" I said, coming to Bart's
rescue, "for Aunt Lavinia Cortright wrote me last week that she was
sending me some of her prize pink Dahlias, and some gladioli bulbs!"

"Possibly these might fill three large cases!" laughed Bart, in his
turn.

"Why not see if any of those letters throw light upon the mystery, and
then I'll help 'hook up,' as I suppose Barney has gone home, and we will
bring up the crates even if they contain crocodiles!" said _The Man_,
cheerfully. Complications always have an especially cheering effect upon
him, I've often noticed.

The beams of a quarter moon were picturesque, but not a satisfactory
light by which to read letters, especially when under excitement, so
Bart brought out a carriage lantern with which we had equipped our camp,
and proceeded to sort the mail, tossing the rejected letters into my
lap.

Suddenly he paused at one, extra bulky and bearing the handwriting of
his mother, weighed it on the palm of his hand, and opened it slowly.
From it fell three of the yellow-brown papers upon which receipts for
expressage are commonly written; I picked them up while Bart read
slowly--

"MY DEAR SON,

"We were most glad to hear through daughter Mary of your eminently
sensible and frugal plan for passing your summer vacation in the
improvement of your land without the expense of travel.

"Wishing to give you some solid mark of our approval, as well as to
contribute what must be a material aid to your income, father and I send
you to-day, by express, three crates of Hens--one of White Leghorns, one
of Plymouth Rocks, and one of Brown Dorkings, a male companion
accompanying each crate, as I am told is usual. We did not select an
incubator, thinking you might have some preference in the matter, but it
will be forthcoming when your decision is made.

"Of course I know that you cannot usually spare the time for the care of
these fowls, but it will be a good outdoor vocation for Mary, amusing
and lucrative, besides being thoroughly feminine, for such poultry
raising was considered even in my younger days.

"A book, _The Complete Guide to Poultry Farming_, which I sent Mary a
year ago on her birthday, as a mere suggestion, will tell her all she
need know in the beginning, and the responsibility and occupation itself
will be a good corrective for giving too much time to the beauties of
the flower garden, which are merely pleasurable.

"I need not remind you that the different breeds should be housed
separately, but you who always had a gift for carpentry can easily
arrange this. Indeed it was only yesterday that in opening a chest of
drawers I came across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which
you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria vine on
Grandma Bartram's porch! I wished to punish you, but she said--'No,
Susanna, rather preserve the tool as a memento of his industry and
patience.'

"I wish that I could be near to witness your natural surprise on
receiving this token of our approval, but I must trust Mary to write us
of it.

                 "Your mother,
                     "SUSAN BARTRAM PENROSE."


With something between a groan and a laugh Bart dropped this letter into
my lap, with the others.

"So, after a successful struggle all these five years of our country
life against the fatal magnetism of _Hens_ that has run epidemic up and
down the population of commuting householders, bringing financial
prostration to some and the purely nervous article to others; after
avoiding 'The Wars of the Chickens, or Who scratched up those Early
Peas,'--events as celebrated in local history as the Revolution or War
of the Rebellion,--we are to be forced into the chicken business for the
good of Bart's health and pocket, and my mental discipline, and also
that a thrifty Pennsylvania air may be thrown about our altogether too
delightful and altruistic summer arrangements! It's t-o-o bad!" I
wailed.

Of course I know, Mrs. Evan, that I was in a temper, and that my
"in-laws" mean well, but since comfortable setting hens have gone out of
fashion, and incubators and brooders taken their place, there is no more
pleasure or sentiment about raising poultry than in manufacturing any
other article by rule. It's a business, and a very pernickety one to
boot, and it's to keep Bart away from business that we are striving.
Besides, that chicken book tells how many square feet per hen must be
allowed for the exercising yards, and how the pens for the little chicks
must be built on wheels and moved daily to fresh pasture. All the
vegetable garden and flower beds and the bit of side lawn which I want
for mother's rose garden would not be too much! But I seem to be leaving
the track again.

Bart didn't say a word, except that "At any rate we must bring the fowls
up from the station," and as the stable door was locked and the key in
Barney's pocket, Bart and _The Man_ started to walk down to the village
to look him up in some of his haunts, or failing in this to get the
express wagon from the stable.

Maria and I sat and talked for some time about _The_ _Man from
Everywhere_, the chickens, and the location of the rose beds. She is
surprisingly keen about flowers, considering that it is quite ten years
since her own home in the country was broken up, but then I think this
is the sort of knowledge that stays by one the longest of all. I hope
that I have succeeded in convincing her that _The Man_ is not company to
be bothered about, but a comfortable family institution to come and go
as he likes, to be taken easily and not too seriously.

When the moon disappeared beyond the river woods, we went to the
southwest porch, and there decided that the piece of lawn where we had
some uninteresting foliage beds one summer was the best place for the
roses and we might possibly have a trellis across the north wall for
climbers. Would you plant roses in rows or small separate beds? And how
about the soil? But perhaps the plan you are sending me will explain all
this.

It was more than an hour before the men returned, and, not having found
Barney, Bart had signed for the poultry in order to leave the express
agent free to go home, and had left word at the stable for them to send
the crates up as soon as the long wagon returned from Leighton, whither
it had gone with trunks.

After much discussion we decided that the fowls should be housed for
the night in the small yard back of the stable, where the Infant's cow
(a present from _my_ mother) spends her nights under the shed.

"Did you find any signs of a chicken house on the place when you first
came?" asked Maria, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if its location was the
only thing now to be considered.

"Yes, there was one directly in the fence line at the eastern gap where
we see the Three Brothers Hills," said Bart, "and I've always intended
to plant a flower bed of some sort there both to hide the gap in the
wall and that something may be benefited by the hen manure of decades
that must have accumulated there!"

"How would the place do for the new hen-house?" pursued Maria,
relentlessly.

"Not at all!" I snapped very decidedly: "it is directly in the path the
cool summer winds take on their way to the dining room, and you know at
best fowl houses are not bushes of lemon balm!"

"Then why not locate your bed of good-smelling things in the gap, and
sup on nectar and distilled perfume," said _The Man from Everywhere_,
soothingly.

"The very thing! and I will write Mrs. Evan at once for a list of the
plants in her 'bed of sweet odours,' as she calls it." Then presently,
as the men sat talking, Maria having gone into the house, our summer
work seemed to lie accomplished and complete before me, even as you once
saw your garden of dreams before its making,--the knoll restored to its
wildness, ending not too abruptly at the garden in some loose rock; the
bed of sweet odours filling the gap between it and the gate of the
little pasture in the rear; straight beds of hardy plants bordering the
vegetable squares; the two seed beds topping the furthest bit, then a
space of lawn with the straight walk of the old garden running through,
to the sundial amid some beds of summer flowers at the orchard end,
while the open lawn below the side porch is given up to roses!

I even crossed the fence in imagination, and took in the possibilities
of Opal Farm. If only I could have some one there to talk flowers and
other perplexities to, as you have Lavinia Cortright, without going
through the front gate!

Two hours must have passed in pleasant chat, for the hall clock, the
only one in the front part of the house we had not stopped, was chiming
eleven when wheels paused before the house and the latch of the gate
that swung both ways gave its double click!

"The hens have come!" I cried in dismay, the dream garden vanishing
before an equally imaginary chorus of clucks and crows.

Mr. Hale himself, the stable keeper, appeared at the house corner at the
same moment that Bart and _The Man_ reached it. Consternation sat upon
his features, and his voice was fairly husky as he jerked out,--"They've
gone,--clean gone,--Mr. Penrose, all three crates! and the dust is so
kicked up about that depot that you can't read out no tracks. Some
loafers must hev seen them come and laid to get in ahead o' you, as
hevin' signed the company ain't liable! What! don't you want to drive
down to the sheriff's?" and Mr. Hale's lips hung loose with dismay at
Bart's apparent apathy.

"Mr. Hale," said Bart, in mock heroic tones, "I thank you for your
sympathy, but because some troubles fall upon us unawares, it does not
follow that we should set bait for others!"

Whereupon Mr. Hale the next day remarked that he didn't know whether or
not Penrose was taking action in the matter, because you could never
judge a good lawyer's meanings by his speech.

However, if the hens escaped, so did we, and the next morning Bart
forgot his paper until afternoon, so eager was he to test the depth of
soil in the knoll.

I'm sending you a list of the wild things at hand. Will you tell me in
due course which of the ferns are best for our purpose? I've noticed
some of the larger ones turn quite shabby early in August.




VII

A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)


_Oaklands, June 5._ Yesterday my roses began to bloom. The very old bush
of thorny, half-double brier roses with petals of soft yellow crepe, in
which the sunbeams caught and glinted, took the lead as usual. Before
night enough Jacqueminot buds showed rich colour to justify my filling
the bowl on the greeting table, fringing it with sprays of the yellow
brier buds and wands of copper beech now in its velvety perfection of
youth. This morning, the moment that I crossed my bedroom threshold, the
Jacqueminot odour wafted up. Is there anything more like the incense of
praise to the flower lover? Not less individual than the voice of
friends, or the song of familiar birds, is the perfume of flowers to
those who live with them, and among roses none impress this
characteristic more poignantly than the crimson Jacqueminot and the
silver-pink La France, equally delicious and absolutely different.

As one who has learned by long and sometimes disastrous experience, to
one who is now really plunging headlong into the sea of garden
mysteries and undercurrents for the first time, I give you warning! if
you have a real rose garden, or, merely what Lavinia Cortright calls
hers, a rosary of assorted beads, try as far as possible to have all
your seed sowing and transplanting done before the June rose season
begins, that you may give yourself up to this one flower, heart, soul,
yes, and body also! It was no haphazard symbolist that, in troubadour
days, gave Love the rose for his own flower, for to be its real self the
rose demands all and must be all in all to its possessor.

As for you, Mary Penrose, who eschewed hen-keeping as a deceitful
masquerade of labour, under the name of rural employment, ponder deeply
before you have spade put to turf in your south lawn, and invest your
birthday dollars in the list of roses that at this very moment I am
preparing to send you, with all possible allurement of description to
egg you on. For unless you have very poor luck, which the slope of your
land, depth of soil, and your own pertinacity and staying qualities
discount, many more dollars in quarters, halves, or entire will follow
the first large outlay, and I may even hear of your substituting the
perpetual breakfast prune of boarding-houses for your grapefruit in
winter, or being overcome in summer by the prevailing health-food
epidemic, in order that you may plunder the housekeeping purse
successfully.

[Illustration: MY ROSES ARE SCATTERED HERE, THERE, AND
EVERYWHERE.]

But this is the time and hour that one gardener, on a very modest scale,
may be excused if she overrates the charms of rose possessing, for it is
a June morning, both bright and overcast by turns. A wood thrush is
practising his arpegios in the little cedar copse on one side, and a
catbird is hurling every sort of vocal challenge and bedevilment from
his ancestral syringa bush on the other, and all between is a gap filled
with a vista of rose-bushes--not marshalled in a garden together, but
scattered here, there, and everywhere that a good exposure and deep
foothold could be found.

As far as the arrangement of my roses is concerned, "do as I say, not as
I do" is a most convenient motto. I have tried to formalize my roses
these ten years past, but how can I, for my yellow brier (Harrison's)
has followed its own sweet will so long that it makes almost a hedge.
The Madame Plantiers of mother's garden are stalwart shrubs, like many
other nameless bushes collected from old gardens hereabout, one
declining so persistently to be uprooted from a particularly cheerful
corner that it finds itself in the modern company of Japanese iris, and
inadvertently sheds its petals to make rose-water of the birds' bath.

An English sweetbrier of delicious leafage hobnobs with honeysuckle and
clematis on one of the wren arbours, while a great nameless bush of
exquisite blush buds, quite destitute of thorns (one of the many
cuttings sent "the Doctor's wife" in the long ago), stands an
unconscious chaperone between Marshall P. Wilder and Mrs. John Lang.

I must at once confess that it is much better to keep the roses apart in
long borders of a kind than to scatter them at random. By so doing the
plants can be easily reached from either side, more care being taken not
to overshadow the dwarf varieties by the more vigorous.

Lavinia Cortright has left the old-fashioned June roses that belonged to
her garden where they were, but is now gathering the new hybrids after
the manner of Evan's little plan. In this way, without venturing into
roses from a collector's standpoint, she can have representatives of the
best groups and a continuous supply of buds of some sort both outdoors
and for the house from the first week in June until winter.

To begin with, roses need plenty of air. This does not mean that they
flourish in a draught made by the rushing of north or east wind between
buildings or down a cut or roadway. If roses are set in a mixed border,
the tendency is inevitably to crowd or flank them by some succulent
annual that overgrows the limit we mentally set for it, thereby stopping
the circulation of air about the rose roots, and lo! the harm is done!

If you want good roses, you must be content to see a little bare, brown
earth between the bushes, only allowing a narrow outside border of
pansies, the horned bedding violets (_cornuta_), or some equally compact
and clean-growing flower. To plant anything thickly between the roses
themselves prevents stirring the soil and the necessary seasonal
mulchings, for if the ground-covering plants flourish you will dislike
to disturb them.

The first thing to secure for your rosary is sun--sun for all the
morning. If the shadow of house, barn, or of distant trees breaks the
direct afternoon rays in July and August, so much the better, but no
overhead shade at any time or season. This does not prevent your
protecting a particularly fine quantity of buds, needed for some special
occasion, with a tentlike umbrella, such as one sees fastened to the
seat in pedlers' wagons. A pair of these same umbrellas are almost a
horticultural necessity for the gardener's comfort as well, when she
sits on her rubber mat to transplant and weed.

Given your location, consideration of soil comes next, for this can be
controlled in a way in which the sun may not be, though if the ground
chosen is in the bottom of a hollow or in a place where surface water is
likely to settle in winter, you had better shift the location without
more ado. It was a remark pertinent to all such places that Dean Hole
made to the titled lady who showed him an elaborately planned rose
garden, in a hollow, and waited for his praise. She heard only the
remark that it was an admirable spot for _ferns_!

If your soil is clayey, and holds water for this reason, it can be
drained by porous tiles, sunk at intervals in the same way as meadow or
hay land would be drained, that is if the size of your garden and the
lay of the land warrants it. If, however, the roses are to be in
separate beds or long borders, the earth can be dug out to the depth of
two and a half or three feet, the good fertile portion being put on one
side and the clay or yellow loam, if any there be, removed. Then fill
the hole with cobblestones, rubbish of old plaster, etc., for a foot in
depth (never tin cans); mix the good earth thoroughly with one-third its
bulk of well-rotted cow dung, a generous sprinkling of unslaked lime and
sulphur, and replace, leaving it to settle for a few days and watering
it thoroughly, if it does not rain, before planting.

One of the advantages of planting roses by themselves is that the
stirring of the soil and giving of special fertilizers when needful may
be unhampered.

In the ordinary planting of roses by the novice, the most necessary
rules are usually the first violated. The roses are generally purchased
in pots, with a certain amount of foliage and a few buds produced by
forcing. A hole is excavated, we will suppose, in a hardened border of
hardy plants that, owing to the tangle of roots, can be at best but
superficially dug and must rely upon top dressing for its nutriment.
Owing to the difficulty of digging the hole, it is likely to be a tight
fit for the pot-bound ball of calloused roots that is to fill it. Hence,
instead of the woody roots and delicate fibres being carefully spread
out and covered, so that each one is surrounded by fresh earth, they are
jammed just as they are (or often with an additional squeeze) into a
rigid socket, and small wonder if the conjunction of the two results in
blighting and a lingering death rather than the renewal of vitality and
increase.

Evan, who has had a wide experience in watching the development of his
plans, both by professional gardeners and amateurs, says that he is
convinced more and more each day that, where transplanting of any sort
fails, it is due to carelessness in the securing of the root anchors,
rather than any fault of the dealer who supplies the plants, this of
course applying particularly to all growths having woody roots, where
breakage and wastage cannot be rapidly restored. When a rose is once
established, its persistent roots may find means of boring through soil
that in its first nonresistant state is impossible. While stiff,
impervious clay is undesirable, a soil too loose with sand, that allows
the bush to shift with the wind, instead of holding it firmly, is quite
as undesirable.

In planting all hardy or half-hardy roses,--whether they are of the type
that flower once in early summer, the hybrid perpetuals that bloom
freely in June and again at intervals during late summer and autumn, or
the hybrid teas that, if wisely selected and protected, combine the
wintering ability of their hardy parents with the monthly blooming cross
of the teas,--it is best to plant dormant field-grown plants in October,
or else as early in April as the ground is sufficiently dry and frost
free.

These field-grown roses have better roots, and though, when planted in
the spring, for the first few months the growth is apparently slower
than that of the pot-grown bushes, it is much more normal and
satisfactory, at least in the Middle and New England states of which I
have knowledge.

All roses, even the sturdy, old-fashioned damasks, Madame Plantier, and
the like, should have some covering in winter, such as stable litter of
coarse manure with the straw left in. Hybrid perpetuals I hill up well
with earth after the manner of celery banked for bleaching, the trenches
between making good water courses for snow water, while in spring cow
manure and nitrate of soda is scattered in these ruts before the soil is
restored to its level by forking.

The hybrid teas, of which La France is the best exponent, should be
hilled up and then filled in between with evergreen branches, upland
sedge grass, straw or corn stalks, and if you have the wherewithal, they
may be capped with straw.

I do not care for leaves as a covering, unless something coarse
underlies them, for in wet seasons they form a cold and discouraging
poultice to everything but the bob-tailed meadow mice, who love to bed
and burrow under them. Such tea roses as it is possible to winter in the
north should be treated in the same way, but there is something else to
be suggested about their culture in another place.

The climbing roses of arbours, if in very exposed situations, in
addition to the mulch of straw and manure, may have corn stalks stacked
against the slats, which makes a windbreak well worth the trouble. But
the more tender species of climbing roses should be grown upon pillars,
English fashion. These can be snugly strawed up after the fashion of
wine bottles, and then a conical cap of the waterproof tar paper used by
builders drawn over the whole, the manure being banked up to hold the
base firmly in place. With this device it is possible to grow the lovely
Gloire de Dijon, in the open, that festoons the eaves of English
cottages, but is our despair.

[Illustration: PILLAR FOR CORNERS OF ROSE BED.]

Not long ago we invented an inexpensive "pillar" trellis for roses and
vines which, standing seven feet high and built about a cedar
clothes-pole, the end well coated with tar before setting, is both
symmetrical and durable, not burning tender shoots, as do the metal
affairs, and costing, if the material is bought and a carpenter hired by
the day, the moderate price of two dollars and a half each, including
paint, which should be dark green.

[Illustration: ROSE GARDEN WITH OUTSIDE BORDER OF GRAVEL AND
GRASS.]

Evan has made a sketch of it for you. He finds it useful in many ways,
and in laying out a new garden these pillars, set at corners or at
intervals along the walks, serve to break the hot look of a wide expanse
and give a certain formality that draws together without being too stiff
and artificial.

For little gardens, like yours and mine, I think deep-green paint the
best colour for pergola, pillars, seats, plant tubs, and the like. White
paint is clean and cheerful, but stains easily. If one has the
surroundings and money for marble columns and garden furniture, it must
form part of a well-planned whole and not be pitched in at random, but
the imitation article, compounded of cement or whitewashed wood, belongs
in the region of stage properties or beer gardens!

The little plan I'm sending you needs a bit of ground not less than
fifty feet by seventy-five for its development, and that, I think, is
well within the limits of your southwest lawn. The pergola can be made
of rough cedar posts with the bark left on. Evan says that there are any
quantity of cedar trees in your river woods that are to be cleared for
the reservoir, and you can probably get them for a song.

The border enclosing the grass plots is four feet in width, which allows
you to reach into the centre from either side. Two rows of hybrid
perpetuals or three of hybrid tea or summer roses can be planted in
these beds, according to their size, thus allowing, at the minimum, for
one hundred hybrid perpetuals, fifty hybrid teas, fifty summer roses,
and eighteen climbers, nine on either side of the pergola, with four
additional for the corner pillars.

The irregular beds in the small lawns should not be planted in set rows,
but after the manner of shrubberies. Rugosa roses, if their colours be
well chosen, are best for the centre of these beds. They are striking
when in flower and decorative in fruit, while the handsome leaves, that
are very free from insects, I find most useful as green in arranging
other roses the foliage of which is scanty. The pink-and-white damask
roses belong here, and the dear, profuse, and graceful Madame
Plantier,--a dozen bushes of this hybrid China rose of seven leaflets
are not too many. For seventy years it has held undisputed sway among
hardy white roses and has become so much a part of old gardens that we
are inclined to place its origin too far back in the past among
historic roses, because we cannot imagine a time when it was not. This
is a rose to pick by the armful, and grown in masses it lends an air of
luxury to the simplest garden.

[Illustration: MADAME PLANTIER AT VAN CORTLAND MANOR.]

Personally, I object to the rambler tribe of roses for any but large
gardens, where in a certain sense the personality of flowers must
sometimes be lost in decorative effect. A scentless rose has no right to
intrude on the tender intimacies of the woman's garden, but pruned back
to a tall standard it may be cautiously mingled with Madame Plantier
with good effect, lending the pale lady the reflected touch of the
colour that gives life.

For the pergola a few ramblers may be used for rapid effect, while the
slower growing varieties are making wood, but sooner or later I'm sure
that they will disappear before more friendly roses, and even to-day the
old-fashioned Gem of the Prairies, Felicite Perpetual, and Baltimore
Belle seem to me worthier. Colour and profusion the rambler has, but
equally so has the torrent of coloured paper flowers that pours out of
the juggler's hat, and they are much bigger.

No, I'm apt to be emphatic (Evan calls it pertinacious), but I'm sure
the time will come when at least the crimson rambler, trained over a
gas-pipe arch, except for purely decorative purposes, will be as much
disliked by the real rose lover as the tripod with the iron pot painted
red and filled with red geraniums!

The English sweetbrier is a climbing or pillar rose, capable of being
pruned into a bush or hedge that not only gives fragrance in June but
every time the rain falls or dew condenses upon its magic leaves.
This you must have as well as some of its kin, the Penzance
hybrid-sweetbriers, either against the pergola or trained to the corner
pillars, where you will become more intimate with them.

You may be fairly sure of success in wintering well-chosen hybrid
perpetual roses and the hybrid teas. If, for any reason, certain
varieties that succeed in Lavinia Cortright's garden and ours do not
thrive with you, they must be replaced by a gradual process of
elimination. You alone may judge of this. I'm simply giving you a list
of varieties that have thriven in my garden; others may not find them
the best. Only let me advise you to begin with roses that have stood a
test of not less than half a dozen years, for it really takes that long
to know the influence of heredity in this highly specialized race. After
the rose garden has shown you all its colours, it is easy to supplement
a needed tint here or a proven newcomer there without speculating, as
it were, in garden stock in a bull market. Too much of spending money
for something that two years hence will be known no more is a financial
side of the _Garden-Goozle_ question that saddens the commuter, as well
as his wife. It is a continual proof of man's, and particularly woman's,
innocency that such pictures as horticultural pedlers show when
extolling their wares do not deter instead of encouraging purchasers. If
the fruits and flowers were believable, as depicted, still they should
be unattractive to eye and palate.

The hybrid perpetuals give their great yield in June, followed by a more
or less scattering autumn blooming. It is foolish to expect a rose
specialized and proven by the tests climatic and otherwise of Holland,
England, or France, and pronounced a perpetual bloomer, to live up to
its reputation in this country of sudden extremes: unveiled summer heat,
that forces the bud open before it has developed quality, causing
certain shades of pink and crimson to fade and flatten before the flower
is really fit for gathering. Americans in general must be content with
the half loaf, as far as garden roses are concerned, for in the cooler
parts of the country, where the development of the flower is slower and
more satisfactory, the winter lends added dangers.

Good roses--not, however, the perfect flowers of the connoisseur or
even of the cottage exhibitions of England--may be had from early June
until the first week of July, but the hybrid tea roses that brave the
latter part of that month and August are but short lived, even when
gathered in the bud. Those known as summer bedders of the Bourbon class,
chiefly scentless, of which Appoline is a well-known example, are simply
bits of decorative colour without the endearing attributes of roses, and
garden colour may be obtained with far less labour.

In July and August you may safely let your eyes wander from the rosary
to the beds of summer annuals, the gladioli, Japan lilies, and Dahlias,
and depend for fragrance on your bed of sweet odours. But as the nights
begin to lengthen, at the end of August, you may prepare for a tea-rose
festival, if you have a little forethought and a very little money.

You have, I think, a florist in your neighbourhood who raises roses for
the market. This is my method, practised for many years with comforting
success. Instead of buying pot-grown tea roses in April or May, that,
unless a good price (from twenty-five cents up) is paid for them, will
be so small that they can only be called bushes at the season's end, I
go to our florist and buy fifty of the bushes that he has forced during
the winter and being considered spent are cast out about June first, in
order to fill in the new stock.

All such roses are not discarded each season, but the process is carried
on in alternate benches and years, so that there are always some to be
obtained. These plants, big, tired-looking, and weak in the branches, I
buy for the nominal sum of ten dollars per hundred, five dollars' worth
filling a long border when set out in alternating rows. On taking these
home, I thin out the woodiest shoots, or those that interfere, and plant
deep in the border, into which nitrate of soda has been dug in the
proportion of about two ounces to a plant.

After spreading out the roots as carefully as possible, I plant firmly
and water thoroughly, but do not as yet prune off the long branches. In
ten days, having given meanwhile two waterings of liquid manure, I prune
the bushes back sharply. By this time they will have probably dropped
the greater part of their leaves, and having had a short but sufficient
nap, are ready to grow, which they proceed to do freely. I do not
encourage bloom in July, but as soon as we have dew-heavy August nights
it begins and goes on, increasing in quality until hard frost. Many of
these bushes have wintered comfortably and on being pruned to within
three inches of the ground have lasted many years.

As to the varieties so treated, that is a secondary consideration, for
under these circumstances you must take what the florist has to offer,
which will of course be those most suitable to the winter market. I have
used Perle des Jardins, Catherine Mermet, Bride and Bridesmaid, Safrano,
Souvenir d'un Ami, and Bon Silene (the rose for button-hole buds) with
equal success, though a very intelligent grower affirms that both Bride
and Bridesmaid are unsatisfactory as outdoor roses.

I do not say that the individual flowers from these bushes bear relation
to the perfect specimens of greenhouse growth in anything but fragrance,
but in this way I have roses all the autumn, "by the fistful," as
Timothy Saunders's Scotch appreciation of values puts it, though his
spouse, Martha Corkle, whose home memories are usually expanded by the
perspective of time and absence, in this case speaks truly when she says
on receiving a handful, "Yes, Mrs. Evan, they're nice and sweetish and I
thank you kindly, but, ma'am, they couldn't stand in it with those that
grows as free as corn poppies round the four-shillin'-a-week cottages
out Gloucester way, and _no_ disrespec' intended."

The working season of the rose garden begins the first of April with
the cutting out of dead wood and the shortening and shaping of last
year's growth. With hardy roses the flowers come from fresh twigs on old
growth. I never prune in the autumn, because winter always kills a bit
of the top and cutting opens the tubular stem to the weather and induces
decay. Pruning is a science in itself, to be learned by experience. This
is the formula that I once wrote on a slate and kept in my attic desk
with my first _Boke of the Garden_.

_April 1._ Uncover bushes, prune, and have the winter mulch thoroughly
dug in. Place stakes in the centre of bushes that you know from
experience will need them. Re-tie climbers that have broken away from
supports, but not too tightly; let some sprays swing and arch in their
own way.

_May._ As soon as the foliage begins to appear, spray with whale-oil
soap lotion mixed hot and let cool: strength--a bit the size of a walnut
to a gallon of water. Do this every two weeks until the rosebuds show
decided colour, then stop. This is to keep the rose Aphis at bay, the
little soft green fly that is as succulent as the sap upon which it
feeds.

If the spring is damp and mildew appears, dust with sulphur flower in a
small bellows.

_June._ The Rose Hopper or Thrip, an active little pale yellow,
transparent-winged insect that clings to the under side of the leaf,
will now come if the weather is dry; dislodged easily by shaking, it
immediately returns. _Remedy_, spraying leaves from underneath with
water and applying powdered helebore with a bellows.

If _Black Spot_, a rather recent nuisance, appears on the leaves, spray
with Bordeaux Mixture, bought of a horticultural dealer, directions
accompanying.

Meanwhile the leaf worm is sure to put in appearance. This is also
transparent and either brownish green, or yellow, seemingly according to
the leaves upon which it feeds. _Remedy_, if they won't yield to
helebore (and they seldom do unless very sickly), brush them off into a
cup. An old shaving brush is good for this purpose, as it is close set
but too soft to scrape the leaf.

_June 15._ When the roses are in bloom, stop all insecticides. There is
such a thing as the cure being worse than the disease, and a rose garden
redolent of whale-oil soap and phosphates and encrusted with helebore
and Bordeaux Mixture has a painful suggestion of a horticultural
hospital.

Now is the time for the Rose Chafer, a dull brownish beetle about half
an inch long, who times his coming up out of the ground to feast upon
the most fragrant and luscious roses. These hunt in couples and are
wholly obnoxious. Picking into a fruit jar with a little kerosene in
the bottom is the only way to kill them. In one day last season Evan
came to my rescue and filled a quart jar in two hours; they are so fat
and spunky they may be considered as the big game among garden bugs, and
their catching, if not carried to an extreme, in the light of sport.

_July._ See that all dead flowers are cut off and no petals allowed to
mould on the ground. Mulch with short grass during hot, dry weather, and
use liquid manure upon hybrid teas and teas every two weeks, immediately
after watering or a rain. Never, at any season, allow a rose to wither
on the bush!

_August._ The same, keeping on the watch for all previous insects but
the rose beetle; this will have left. Mulch hybrid perpetuals if a dry
season, and give liquid manure for the second blooming.

_September._ Stir the ground after heavy rains, and watch for tendencies
of mould.

_October._ The same.

_November._ Begin to draw the soil about roots soon after black frost,
and bank up before the ground freezes, but do not add straw, litter, or
manure in the trenches until the ground is actually frozen, which will
be from December first onward, except in the case of teas, which should
be covered gradually until the top is reached.

By this you will judge, Mary Penrose, that a rosary has its labours, as
well as pleasures, and that like all other joys it is accompanied by
difficulties. Yet you can grow good roses if you _will_, but the
difficulty is that most people _won't_. I think, by the way, that remark
belongs to Dean Hole of fragrant rose-garden memory, and of a truth he
has said all that is likely to be spoken or written about the rose on
the side of both knowledge and human fancy for many a day.

Modern roses of the hybrid-perpetual and hybrid-tea types may be bought
of several reliable dealers for twenty-five dollars per hundred, in two
conditions, either grown on their own roots or budded on Manette or
brier stock. Personally I prefer the first or natural condition, if the
constitution of the plant is sufficiently vigorous to warrant it. There
are, however, many indispensable varieties that do better for the
infusion of vigorous brier blood. A budded rose will show the junction
by a little knob where the bud was inserted; this must be planted at
least three inches below ground so that new shoots will be encouraged to
spring from _above_ the bud, as those below are merely wild, worthless
suckers, to be removed as soon as they appear.

[Illustration: A CONVENIENT ROSE BED.]

How can you tell wild suckers from the desired growth? At first by
following them back to the root until you have taken their measure, but
as soon as experience has enlightened you they will be as easily
recognized at sight as the mongrel dog by a connoisseur. Many admirable
varieties, like Jacqueminot, Anne de Diesbach, Alfred Colomb, Madame
Plantier, and all the climbers, do so well on their own roots that it is
foolish to take the risk of budded plants, the worse side of which is a
tendency to decay at the point of juncture. Tea roses, being of rapid
growth and flowering wholly upon new wood, are perfectly satisfactory
when rooted from cuttings.

Of many well-attested varieties of hybrid perpetuals, hybrid China, or
other so-called June roses, you may at the start safely select from the
following twenty.



_Pink, of various shades_

 1. Anne de Diesbach.              One of the most fragrant, hardy, and
                                 altogether satisfactory of hybrid
                                 perpetual roses. Forms a large bush,
                                 covered with large deep carmine-pink
                                 flowers. Should be grown on own root.
 2. Paul Neyron.                   Rose pink, of large size, handsome
                                 even when fully open. Fragrant and
                                 hardy.
 3. Cabbage, or Rose               The Provence rose of history and old
    of 100 Leaves.               gardens, supposed to have been known
                                 to Pliny. Rich pink, full, fragrant,
                                 and hardy. Own roots.
 4. Magna Charta.                  A fine fragrant pink rose of the
                                 hybrid China type. Not seen as often
                                 as it should be. Own roots.
 5. Clio.                          A vigorous grower with flesh-coloured
                                 and pink-shaded blossoms.
 6. Oakmont.                       Exquisite deep rose, fragrant,
                                 vigorous, and with a long blooming
                                 season.

_White_

 7. Marchioness of                 Free, full, and fragrant. Immense
    Londonderry.                 cream-white flowers, carried on long
                                 stems. Very beautiful.
 8. Madame Plantier                 A medium-sized, pure white rose,
   (Hybrid China).               with creamy centre; flowers so
                                 profusely as to appear to be in
                                 clusters. Delicately fragrant, leaves
                                 deep green and remarkably free from
                                 blights. Perfectly hardy; forms so
                                 large a bush in time that it should
                                 be placed in the rose shrubbery
                                 rather than amid smaller species.
 9. Margaret Dickson.              A splendid, finely formed, fragrant
                                 white rose, with deep green foliage.
10. Coquette des Blanches.         One of the very hardy white roses,
                                 an occasional pink streak tinting the
                                 outside petals. Cup-shaped and a
                                 profuse bloomer.
11. Coquette des Alps.             A very hardy bush, coming into bloom
                                 rather later than the former and
                                 lasting well. Satisfactory.

_Red and Crimson_

12. General Jacqueminot.           Bright velvety crimson. The
                                 established favourite of its
                                 colour and class, though fashion has
                                 in some measure pushed it aside for
                                 newer varieties. May be grown to a
                                 large shrub. Fragrant and hardy. Best
                                 when in bud, as it opens rather flat.
13. Alfred Colomb.                 Bright crimson. Full, sweet. A
                                 vigorous grower and entirely
                                 satisfactory. If you can grow but one
                                 red rose, take this.
14. Fisher Holmes.                 A seedling of Jacqueminot, but of
                                 the darkest velvety crimson; fragrant,
                                 and blooms very early.
15. Marshal P. Wilder.             Also a seedling of Jacqueminot.
                                 Vigorous and of well-set foliage.
                                 Full, large flowers of a bright
                                 cherry red. Very fragrant.
16. Marie Bauman.                  A crimson rose of delicious
                                 fragrance and lovely shape. This does
                                 best when budded on brier or Manette
                                 stock, and needs petting and a diet of
                                 liquid manure, but it will repay the
                                 trouble.
17. Jules Margottin.               A fine, old-fashioned, rich red
                                 rose, fragrant, and while humble in
                                 its demands, well repays liberal
                                 feeding.
18. John Hopper.                   A splendid, early crimson rose,
                                 fragrant and easily cared for.
19. Prince Camille de Rohan.       The peer of dark red roses, not
                                 large, but rich in fragrance and of
                                 deep colour.
20. Ulrich Brunner.                One of the best out-of-door roses,
                                 hardy, carries its bright cerise
                                 flowers well, which are of good shape
                                 and substance; has few diseases.

_Moss Roses_

 1. Blanch Moreau (Perpetual).      A pure, rich white; the buds, which
                                 are heavily mossed, borne in clusters.
 2. White Bath.                    The most familiar white moss rose,
                                 sometimes tinged with pink. Open
                                 flowers are attractive as well as
                                 buds.
 3. Crested Moss.                  Rich pink, deeply mossed, each bud
                                 having a fringed crest; fragrant and
                                 full.
 4. Gracilis.                      An exquisite moss rose of fairylike
                                 construction, the deep pink buds being
                                 wrapped and fringed with moss.
 5. Common Moss.                   A hardy pink variety, good only in
                                 the bud.

The moss roses as a whole only bloom satisfactorily in June.


_Climbers_

1.

 1. English Sweetbrier.            Single pink flowers of the wild-rose
                                 type. Foliage of delicious fragrance,
                                 perfuming the garden after rain the
                                 season through.

_Penzance Hybrid Sweetbriers,
Having Fragrant Foliage and Flowers
of Many Beautiful Colours_

 2. Amy Robsart.                   Pink.
 3. Anne of Geierstein.            Crimson.
 4. Minna.                         White.
 5. Rose Bradwardine.              Deep rose.


2.

 1. Climbing Jules Margottin.      Rosy carmine, very fragrant
                                 and full, satisfactory for the
                                 pergola, but more so for a pillar,
                                 where in winter it can be protected
                                 from wind by branches or straw.
 2. Baltimore Belle.               The old-fashioned blush rose, with
                                 clean leaves and solid flowers of good
                                 shape. Blooms after other varieties are
                                 over. Trustworthy and satisfactory,
                                 though not fragrant in flower or leaf.
 3. Gem of the Prairie.            Red flowers of large size, but
                                 rather flat when open. A seedling from
                                 Queen of the Prairie, and though not
                                 as free as its parent, it has the
                                 desirable quality of fragrance.
 4. Climbing Belle Siebrecht       Fragrant, vigorous, and of
   (Hybrid Tea).                 the same deep pink as the standard
                                 variety. Grow on pillars.
 5. Gloire de Dijon.               Colour an indescribable blending of
                                 rose, buff, and yellow, deliciously
                                 fragrant, double to the heart of
                                 crumpled, crepelike petals. A tea rose
                                 and, as an outdoor climber, tender
                                 north of Washington, yet it can be
                                 grown on a pillar by covering as
                                 described on page 126.

_Hybrid Tea Roses_

 1. La France.                     The fragrant silver-pink rose, with
                                 full, heavy flowers,--the combination
                                 of all a rose should be. In the open
                                 garden the sun changes its delicate
                                 colour quickly. Should be gathered in
                                 the bud at evening or, better yet,
                                 early morning. Very hardy if properly
                                 covered, and grows to a good-sized
                                 bush.
 2. Kaiserin Augusta               White, with a lemon tint in the
    Victoria.                    folds; the fragrance is peculiar to
                                 itself, faintly suggesting the
                                 Gardenia.
 3. Gruss an Teplitz.              One of the newer crimson roses,
                                 vigorous, with well-cupped flowers.
                                 Good for decorative value in the
                                 garden, but not a rose of sentiment.
 4. Killarney.                     One of the newer roses that has made
                                 good. Beautiful pointed buds of
                                 shell-pink, full and at the same time
                                 delicate. The foliage is very
                                 handsome. If well fed, will amply
                                 repay labour.
 5. Souvenir de Malmaison.         A Bourbon rose that should be
                                 treated like a hybrid tea. Shell-pink,
                                 fragrant flowers, that have much the
                                 same way of opening as Gloire de
                                 Dijon. A constant bloomer.
 6. Clothilde Soupert.             A polyantha or cluster rose of
                                 vigorous growth and glistening
                                 foliage, quite as hardy as the hybrid
                                 tea. It is of dwarf growth and
                                 suitable for edging beds of larger
                                 roses. The shell-pink flowers are of
                                 good form and very double; as they
                                 cluster very thickly on the ends of
                                 the stems, the buds should be thinned
                                 out, as they have an aggravating
                                 tendency to mildew before opening.
 7. Souvenir de President          A charming rose with shadows of all
    Carnot.                      the flesh tints, from white through
                                 blush to rose; sturdy and free.
 8. Caroline Testout.              Very large, round flowers, of a
                                 delicate shell-pink, flushed with
                                 salmon; sturdy.

_Teas_

 1. Bon Silene.                    The old favourite, unsurpassed for
                                 fragrance as a button-hole flower, or
                                 table decoration when blended with
                                 ferns or fragrant foliage plants.
                                 Colour "Bon Silene," tints of shaded
                                 pink and carmine, all its own.
 2. Papa Gontier.                  A rose as vigorous as the hybrid
                                 teas, and one that may be easily
                                 wintered. Pointed buds of deep rose
                                 shading to crimson and as fragrant as
                                 Bon Silene, of which it is a hybrid.
                                 Flowers should be gathered in the bud.
 3. Safrano.                       A true "tea" rose of characteristic
                                 shades of buff and yellow, with the
                                 tea fragrance in all its perfection.
                                 Best in the bud. Vigorous and a fit
                                 companion for Papa Gontier and Bon
                                 Silene.
 4. Perle des Jardins.             An exquisite, fragrant double rose
                                 of light clear yellow, suggesting the
                                 Marechal Niel in form, but of paler
                                 colour. Difficult to winter out of
                                 doors, but worth the trouble of
                                 lifting to cold pit or light cellar,
                                 or the expense of renewing annually.
                                 One of the lovable roses.
 5. Bride.                         The clear white rose, sometimes with
                                 lemon shadings used for forcing; clean,
                                 handsome foliage and good fragrance.
                                 Very satisfactory in my garden when
                                 old plants are used, as described.
 6. Bridesmaid.                    The pink companion of the above with
                                 similar attributes.
 7. Etoille de Lyon.               A vigorous, deep yellow rose, full
                                 and sweet. Almost as hardy as a hybrid
                                 tea and very satisfactory.
 8. Souvenir d'un Ami.             A deliciously fragrant light pink
                                 rose, with salmon shadings. Very
                                 satisfactory and as hardy as some of
                                 the hybrid teas.

_Miscellaneous Roses for the Shrubbery_

 1.  Harrison's Yellow.            An Austrian brier rose with clear
                                 yellow semi-double flowers. Early and
                                 very hardy. Should be grown on its own
                                 roots, as it will then spread into a
                                 thicket and make the rosary a mass of
                                 shimmering gold in early June.

_Damask Roses_

                                   Should be grown on own root, when
                                 they will form shrubs five feet high.
 2.  Madame Hardy.                 Pure white. Very fragrant,
                                 well-cupped flower, Time tried and
                                 sturdy.
 3. Rosa Damascena                 Rose colour.
    Triginitipela.

_Rugosa_

                                   The tribe of Japanese origin,
                                 conspicuous as bushes of fine foliage
                                 and handsome shape, as well as for the
                                 large single blossoms that are
                                 followed by seed vessels of brilliant
                                 scarlet hues.
 4. Agnes Emily Carman.            Flowers in clusters, "Jacqueminot"
                                 red, with long-fringed golden stamens.
                                 Continuous bloomer. Hardy and perfect.
 5. Rugosa alba.                   Pure white, highly scented.
 6. Rugosa rubra.                  Single crimson flowers of great
                                 beauty.
 7. Chedane Guinoisseau.           Flowers, satin pink and very large.
                                Blooms all the summer.


Now, Mary Penrose, having made up your mind to have a rosary, cause
garden line and shovel to be set in that side lawn of yours without
hesitation. Do not wait until autumn, because you cannot plant the hardy
roses until then and do not wish to contemplate bare ground. This sight
is frequently wholesome and provocative of good horticultural digestion.
You need only begin with one-half of Evan's plan, letting the pergola
enclose the walk back of the house, and later on you can add the other
wing.

If the pergola itself is built during the summer, you can sit under it,
and by going over your list and colour scheme locate each rose finally
before its arrival. By the way, until the climbers are well started you
may safely alternate them with vines of the white panicled clematis,
that will be in bloom in August and can be easily kept from clutching
its rose neighbours!

By and by, when you have planted your roses, tucked them in their winter
covers, and can sit down with a calm mind, I will lend you three
precious rose books of mine. These are Dean Hole's _Book about Roses_,
for both the wit and wisdom o't; _The Amateur Gardener's Rose Book_,
rescued from the German by John Weathers, F.R.H.S., for its common
sense, well-arranged list of roses, and beautiful coloured plates, and
H.B. Ellwanger's little treatise on _The Rose_, a competent chronology
of the flower queen up to 1901, written concisely and from the American
standpoint. If I should send them now, you would be so bewildered by the
enumeration of varieties, many unsuited to this climate, intoxicated by
the descriptions of Rose-garden possibilities, and carried away by the
literary and horticultural enthusiasm of the one-time master of the
Deanery Garden, Rochester, that, like the child turned loose in the toy
shop, you would lose the power of choosing.

Lavinia Cortright lost nearly a year in beginning her rosary, owing to a
similar condition of mind, and Evan and I long ago decided that when we
read we cannot work, and _vice versa_, so when the Garden of Outdoors is
abed and asleep each year, we enter the Garden of Books with fresh
delight.

Have you a man with quick wit and a straight eye to be the spade hand
during the Garden Vacation? If not, make haste to find him, for, as you
have had Barney for five years, he is probably too set in his ways to
work at innovations cheerfully!




VIII

A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_June 21._ The rosary has been duly surveyed, staked according to the
plan, and the border lines fixed with the garden line dipped in
whitewash, so that if we only plant a bed at a time, our ambition will
always be before us. But as yet no man cometh to dig. This process is of
greater import than it may seem, because with the vigorous
three-year-old sod thus obtained do we purpose to turf the edges of the
beds for hardy and summer flowers that border the squares of the
vegetable garden. These strips now crumble earth into the walks, and the
slightest footfall is followed by a landslide. We had intended to use
narrow boards for edging, but Bart objects, like the old retainer in
Kipling's story of _An Habitation Enforced_, on the ground that they
will deteriorate from the beginning and have to be renewed every few
years, whereas the turf will improve, even if it is more trouble to care
for.

At present the necessity of permanence is one of the things that is
impressing us both, for after us--the Infant! Until a year ago I had a
positive dread of being so firmly fixed anywhere that to spread wings
and fly here and there would be difficult, but now it seems the most
delightful thing to be rooted like the old apple tree on the side hill,
the last of the old orchard, that has leaned against the upland winds so
many years that it is well-nigh bent double, yet the root anchors hold
and it is still a thing of beauty, like rosy-cheeked old folk with snowy
hair. I do not think that I ever realized this in its fulness until I
left the house and came out, though but a short way, to live with and in
it all.

You were right in thinking that Barney would not encourage
innovations,--he does not! He says that turf lifted in summer always
lies uneasy and breeds worms.

This seems to be an age for the defiance of horticultural tradition, for
we are finding out every day that you can "lift" almost anything of
herbaceous growth at any time and make it live, if you are willing to
take pains enough, though of course transplanting is done with less
trouble and risk at the prescribed seasons.

The man-with-the-shovel question is quite a serious one hereabouts at
present, for the Water Company has engaged all the rough-and-ready
labourers for a long season and that has raised both the prices and
the noses of the wandering accommodators in the air. Something will
probably turn up. Now we are transplanting hardy ferns; for though the
tender tops break, there is yet plenty of time for a second growth and
rooting before winter.

[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE OLD ORCHARD.
Copyright, 1903, H. Hendrickson.]

Meanwhile there is a leisurely old carpenter who recently turned up as
heir of the Opal Farm, Amos Opie by name, who is thinking of living
there, and has signified his willingness to undertake the pergola by
hour's work, "if he is not hustled," as soon as the posts arrive.

The past ten days have been full of marvellous discoveries for the
"peculiar Penroses," as Maria Maxwell heard us called down at the Golf
Club, where she represented me at the mid-June tea, which I had wholly
forgotten that I had promised to manage when I sent out those P.P.C.
cards and stopped the clocks!

It seems that the first impression was that financial disaster had
overtaken us, when instead of vanishing in a touring car preceded by
tooting and followed by a cloud of oil-soaked steam, we took to our own
woods, followed by Barney with our effects in a wheelbarrow. It is a
very curious fact--this attributing of every action a bit out of the
common to the stress of pocket hunger. It certainly proves that
advanced as we are supposed to be to-day as links in the evolutionary
chain, we have partially relapsed and certainly show strong evidences of
sheep ancestry.

Haven't you noticed, Mrs. Evan, how seldom people are content to accept
one's individual tastes or desire to do a thing without a good and
sufficient reason therefor? It seems incomprehensible to them that any
one should wish to do differently from his neighbour unless from
financial incapacity; the frequency with which one is suspected of being
in this condition strongly points to the likelihood that the critics
themselves chronically live beyond their means and in constant danger of
collapse.

If this was thought of us a few weeks ago, it seems to have been
sidetracked by Maria Maxwell's contribution to, and management of, the
golf tea. She is said not only to have compounded viands that are
ordinarily sold in exchange for many dollars by New York confectioners,
but she certainly made more than a presentable appearance as "matron" of
the receiving committee of young girls. Certainly Maria with a music
roll, a plain dark suit, every hair tethered fast, and common-sense
shoes, plodding about her vocation in snow and mud, and Maria "let
loose," as Bart calls it, are a decided contrast. Except that she has
not parted with her sunny common-sense, she is quite a new person. Of
course I could not have objected to it, but I was afraid that she might
take it into her head to instruct the Infant in vocal music after the
manner of the locustlike sounds that you hear coming over the lowered
tops of school windows as soon as the weather grows warm, or else take
to practising scales herself, for we had only known the technical part
of her calling. In short, we feared that we should be do-re-mi-ou'd past
endurance. Instead of which, scraps of the gayest of ballads float over
the knoll in the evening, and the Infant's little shrill pipe is being
inoculated with real music, _via_ Mother Goose melodies sung in a
delightfully subdued contralto.

From the third day after her arrival people began to call upon Maria. I
made such a positive declaration of surrender of all matters pertaining
to the household, including curiosity, when Maria took charge,--and she
in return promised that we should not be bothered with anything not "of
vital importance to our interests,"--that, unless she runs through the
housekeeping money before the time, I haven't a ghost of an excuse for
asking questions,--but I do wonder how she manages! Also, to whom the
shadows belong that cross the south piazza at night or intercept the
rays of the dining-room lamp, our home beacon of dark nights.

In addition to the usual and convenient modern shirt-waist-and-skirt
endowment, Maria had when she came but two gowns, one of black muslin
and the other white, with improvised hats to match,--simple, graceful
gowns, yet oversombre.

But lo! she has blossomed forth like a spring seed catalogue, and Bart
insists that I watched the gate with his field-glass an hour the
afternoon of the tea, to see her go out. I did no such thing; I was
looking at an oriole's nest that hangs in the elm over the road, but I
could not help seeing the lovely pink flower hat that she wore atilt,
with just enough pink at the neck and streamers at the waist of her
dress to harmonize.

I visited the larder that evening for supper supplies,--yes, we have
become so addicted to the freedom of outdoors that for the last few days
Bart has brought even the dinner up to camp, waiting upon me
beautifully, for now we have entirely outgrown the feeling of the first
few days that we were taking part in a comedy, and have found ourselves,
as it were--in some ways, I think, for the first time.

Anastasia seemed consumed with a desire for a dish of gossip, but was
not willing to take the initiative. She chuckled to herself and tried
several perfectly transparent ways of attracting my attention, until I
took pity on her, a very one-sided pity too, for, between ourselves,
Anastasia is the domestic salt and pepper that gives the Garden Vacation
a flavour that I should sadly miss.

"Miss Marie," she exclaimed, "do be the tastiest creaytur ever I set me
eyes on." (She refused absolutely to call her Maria; that name, she
holds, is only fit for a settled old maid, "and that same it's not sure
and fair to mark any woman wid being this side the grave.")

Then I knew that I only had to sit down and raise my eyes to Anastasia's
face in an attitude of attention, to open the word gates, and this I
did.

"Well, fust off win she got the invite ter sing at the swarry that tops
off the day's doings down to that Golf Club, she was that worried about
hats you never seen the like! She wus over ter Bridgeton, and Barney
swore he drove her ter every milliner in the place, and says she ter me,
pleasant like, that evenin', when returned, in excuse fer havin' nothin'
to show, 'Oh, Annie, Annie, it would break yer heart to see the little
whisp of flowers they ask five dollars for; to fix me hats a trifle
would part me from a tin-dollar bill!'"

(The sentiments I at once perceived might be Maria's, but their
translation Anastasia's.)

"Now Miss Marie, she's savin' like,--not through meanness, but because
she's got the good Irish heart that boils against payin' rint, and she's
hoardin' crown by shillin' till she kin buy her a cabin and to say a
pertaty patch for a garden, somewhere out where it's green! Faith! but
she'll do it too; she's a manager! Yez had orter see the illigant boned
turkey she made out o' veal, stuck through with shrivelled black ground
apples, she called 'puffles'! an glued it up foine wid jelly. Sez I,
'They'll never know the difference,' but off she goes and lets it out
and tells the makin' uv it ter every woman on the hill,--that's all I
hev agin her. She's got a disease o' truth-telling when there's no need
that would anguish the saints o' Hiven theirselves!

"'I kin make better 'n naturaler-lookin' hats fer nothin', here at home,
than they keep in N' York,' she says after looking out the back window a
piece. 'And who'll help yer?' says I, 'and where'll yer git the posies
and what all?'

"'I bought some bolts o' ribbon to-day,' says she, smilin'; 'and fer the
rest, the garden, you, and I will manage it together, if you'll lend me
a shelf all to meself in the cold closet whenever I need it!' Sure fer a
moment I wuz oneasy, fer I thought a wild streak run branchin' through
all the boss's family!"

(At the words Garden, You, and I, there flashed through me the thought
of some telepathic influence at work.)

"'The garden's full o' growin' posies that outshames the flower-makers;
watch out and see, Anastasia!'

"Well and I did!! This mornin' early she picks a lot o' them sticky pink
flowers by the stoop, the colour o' chiny shells, wid spokes in them
like umbrellas, and the thick green leaves, and after leavin' 'em in
water a spell, puts 'em in me cold closet, a small bit o' wet moss tied
to each stem end wid green sewin' silk! A piece after dinner out she
comes wid the hat that's covered with strong white lace, and she cocks
it this way and pinches it that and sews the flowers to it quick wid a
big thread and a great splashin' bow on behind, and into the cold box
agin!

"'That's fer this afternoon,' says she, and before she wore it off (a
hat that Eve, mother o' sin, and us all would envy), she'd another ready
for the night! 'Will it spoil now and give yer away, I wonder?' says I,
anxious like.

"'Not fer two hours, at least; and it'll keep me from stayin' too long;
if I do, it'll wither away and leave me all forlorn, like Cinderella and
her pumpkin coach!' she said a-smilin' kind uv to herself in me kitchen
mirror, when she put the hat on. 'But I'm not insultin' God's flowers
tryin' to pass them off for French ones, Annie,' says she. 'I'm settin'
a new garden fashion; let them follow who will!' and away wid her! That
same other is in here now, and it's no sin to let yer peep, gin it's ye
own posies and ye chest they're in." So, throwing open the door
Anastasia revealed the slate shelf covered by a sheet of white paper,
while resting on an empty pickle jar, for a support, was the second hat,
of loosely woven black straw braid, an ornamental wire edging the brim
that would allow it to take a dozen shapes at will. It was garlanded by
a close-set wreath of crimson peonies grading down to blush, all in half
bud except one full-blown beauty high in front and one under the brim
set well against the hair, while covering the wire, caught firm and
close, were glossy, fragrant leaves of the wild sweetbrier made into a
vine.

Ah, well, this is an unexpected development born of our experiment and a
human sort of chronicle for The Garden, You, and I.

One of the most puzzling things in this living out-of-doors on our own
place is the reversal of our ordinary viewpoints. Never before did I
realize how we look at the outdoor world from inside the house, where
inanimate things force themselves into comparison. Now we are seeing
from outside and looking in at ourselves, so to speak, very much like
the robin, who has his third nest, lop-sided disaster having overtaken
the other two, in the old white lilac tree over my window.

Some of our doings, judged from the vantage point of the knoll, are very
inconsistent. The spot occupied by the drying yard is the most suitable
place for the new strawberry bed, and is in a direct line between the
fence gap, where my fragrant things are to be, and the Rose Garden.
Several of the walks that have been laid out according to the plan, when
seen from this height, curve around nothing and reach nowhere. We shall
presently satisfy their empty embraces with shrubs and locate various
other conspicuous objects at the terminals.

Also, the house is kept too much shut up; it looks inhospitable, seen
through the trees, with branches always tossing wide to the breeze and
sun. Even if a room is unoccupied by people, it is no reason why the sun
should be barred out, and at best we ourselves surely spend too much
time in our houses in the season when every tree is a roof. We have
decided not to move indoors again this summer, but to lodge here in the
time between vacations and to annex the Infant.

Oh, Mrs. Evan, dear! there is one thing in which _The Man from
Everywhere_ reckoned without his host! Stopping the clocks when we went
in camp did not dislodge Time from the premises; rather did it open the
door to his entrance hours earlier than usual, when one of the chiefest
luxuries we promised ourselves was late sleeping.

Stretched on our wire-springed, downy cots (there is positively no
virtue in sleeping on hard beds, and Bart considers it an absolute
vice), there is a delicious period before sleep comes. Bats flit about
the rafters, and an occasional swallow twitters and shifts among the
beams as the particular nest it guarded grew high and difficult to mount
from the growth of the lusty brood within. The scuffle of little feet
over the rough floor brings indolent, half-indifferent guessing as to
which of the lesser four-foots they belonged. The whippoorwills down in
the river woods call until they drop off, one by one, and the timid
ditty of a singing mouse that lives under the floor by my cot is the
last message the sandman sends to close our eyes before sleep. And such
sleep! That first steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that we
meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we lost a whole day by it. It
seemed but a moment after sleep had claimed us, when, struggling through
the heavy darkness, came far-away light strands groping for our eyes,
and soft, half-uttered music questioning the ear. Returning I opened my
eyes, and there was the sun struggling slowly through the screen of
white birches in Opie's wood lot, and scattering the night mists that
bound down the Opal Farm with heavy strands; the air was tense with
flitting wings, bird music rose, fell, and drifted with the mist, and it
was only half-past four! You cannot kill time, you see, by stopping
clocks--with nature day _Is_, beyond all dispute. In two days, by
obeying instead of opposing natural sun time, we had swung half round
the clock, only now and then imitating the habits of our four-footed
brothers that steal abroad in the security of twilight.

[Illustration: THE SCREEN OF WHITE BIRCHES.
Copyright, 1901, H. Hendrickson.]

_June 24._ Amos Opie, the carpenter, owner of Opal Farm, is now keeping
widower's hall in the summer kitchen thereof. A thin thread of smoke
comes idly from the chimney of the lean-to in the early morning, and at
evening the old man sits in the well-house porch reading his paper so
long as the light lasts, a hound of the ancient blue-spotted variety,
with heavy black and tan markings, keeping him company.

These two figures give the finishing touch to the picture that lies
beyond us as we look from the sheltered corner of the camp, and
strangely enough, though old Opie is not of the direct line and has
never lived in this part of New England before, he goes about with a
sort of half-reminiscent air, as if picking up a clew long lost, while
Dave, the hound, at once assumed proprietary rights and shows an uncanny
wisdom about the well-nigh fenceless boundaries. After his master has
gone to bed, Dave will often come over to visit us, after the calm
fashion of a neighbour who esteems it a duty. At least that was his
attitude at first; but after a while, when I had told him what a fine,
melancholy face he had, that it was a mistake not to have christened him
Hamlet, and that altogether he was a good fellow, following up the
conversation with a comforting plate of meat scraps (Opie being
evidently a vegetarian), Dave began to develop a more youthful
disposition. A week ago Bart's long-promised, red setter pup arrived, a
spirit of mischief on four clumsy legs. Hardly had I taken him from his
box (I wished to be the one to "first foot" him from captivity into the
family, for that is a courtesy a dog never forgets) when we saw that
Dave was sitting just outside the doorless threshold watching solemnly.

The puppy, with a gleeful bark, licked the veteran on the nose, whereat
the expression of his face changed from one of uncertainty to a smile of
indulgent if mature pleasure, and now he takes his young friend on a
daily ramble down the pasture through the bit of marshy ground to the
river, always bringing him back within a reasonable length of time, with
an air of pride. Evidently the hound was lonely.

_The Man from Everywhere_, who prowls about even more than usual, using
Bart's den for his own meanwhile, says that the setter will be ruined,
for the hound will be sure to trail him on fox and rabbit, and that in
consequence he will never after keep true to birds, but somehow we do
not care, this dog-friendship between the stranger and the pup is so
interesting.

By the way, we have financially persuaded Opie to leave his straggling
meadow, that carpets our vista to the river, for a wild garden this
summer, instead of selling it as "standing grass," which the purchasers
had usually mown carelessly and tossed into poor-grade hay, giving a
pittance in exchange that went for taxes.

So many flowers and vines have sprung up under shelter of the
tumble-down fences that I was very anxious to see what pictures would
paint themselves if the canvas, colour, and brushes were left free for
the season through. Already we have had our money's worth, so that
everything beyond will be an extra dividend. The bit of marshy ground
has been for weeks a lake of iris, its curving brink foamed with meadow
rue and Osmundas that have all the dignity of palms.

Now all the pasture edge is set with wild roses and wax-white blueberry
flowers. Sundrops are grouped here and there, with yellow thistles; the
native sweetbrier arches over gray boulders that are tumbled together
like the relic of some old dwelling; and the purple red calopogon of the
orchid tribe adds a new colour to the tapestry, the cross-stitch filling
being all of field daisies. Truly this old farm is a well-nigh perfect
wild garden, the strawberries dyeing the undergrass red, and the hedges
bound together with grape-vines. It does not need rescuing, but letting
alone, to be the delight of every one who wishes to enjoy.

On being approached as to his future plans, Amos Opie merely sets his
lips, brings his finger-tips together, and says, "I'm open to offers,
but I'm not bound to set a price or hurry my decisions."

Meanwhile I am living in a double tremor, of delight at the present and
fear lest some one may snap up the place and give us what the comic
paper called a Queen Mary Anne cottage and a stiff lawn surrounded by a
gas-pipe fence to gaze upon. O for a pair of neighbours who would join
us in comfortable vagabondage, leave the white birches to frame the
meadows and the wild flowers in the grass!

_June 25._ We have been having some astonishing thunder-storms of nights
lately, and I must say that upon one occasion I fled to the house. Two
nights ago, however, the sun set in an even sky of lead, there was no
wind, no grumblings of thunder. We had passed a very active day and
finished placing the stakes on the knoll in the locations to be occupied
by shrubs and trees, all numbered according to the tagged specimens over
in the reservoir woods.

_The Man from Everywhere_ suggested this system, an adaptation, he says,
from the usual one of numbering stones for a bit of masonry. It will
prevent confusion, for the perspective will be different when the leaves
have fallen, and as we lift the bushes, each one will go to its place,
and we shall not lose a year's growth, or perhaps the shrub itself, by a
second moving. Our one serious handicap is the lack of a pair of extra
hands, in this work as in the making of the rose bed, for our
transplanting has developed upon a wholesale plan. Barney does not
approve of our passion for the wild; besides, between potatoes and corn
to hoe, celery seedlings to have their first transplanting, vegetables
to pick, turf grass to mow, and edges to keep trim, with a horse and
cow to tend in addition, nothing more can be expected of him.

I was half dozing, half listening, as usual, to the various little night
sounds that constantly pique my curiosity, for no matter how long you
may have lived in the country you are not wholly in touch with it until
you have slept at least a few nights in the open,--when rain began to
fall softly, an even, persevering, growing rain, entirely different from
the lashing thunder-showers, and though making but half the fuss, was
doubly penetrating. Thinking how good it was for the ferns, and
venturing remarks to Bart about them, which, however, fell on sleep-deaf
ears, I made sure that the pup was in his chosen place by my cot and
drifted away to shadow land, glad that something more substantial than
boughs covered me!

I do not know how long it was before I wakened, but the first sound that
formulated itself was the baying of Dave, the hound, from the well-house
porch, where he slept when his evening rambles kept him out until after
Amos Opie had gone to bed. Having freed his mind, Dave presently
stopped, but other nearer-by sounds made me again on the alert.

The rain, that was falling with increasing power, held one key; the drip
from the eaves and the irregular gush from a broken waterspout played
separate tunes. I am well used to the night-time bravado of mice, who
fight duels and sometimes pull shoes about, of the pranks of squirrels
and other little wood beasts about the floor, but the noise that made me
sit up in the cot and reach over until I could clutch Bart by the arm
belonged to neither of these. There was a swishing sound, as of water
being wrung from something and dropping on the floor, and then a human
exclamation, blended of a sigh, a wheeze, and a cough, at which the pup
wakened with a growl entirely out of proportion to his age and
inexperience.

"I wonder, now, is that a dog or only uts growl ter sind me back in the
wet fer luv av the laugh at me?" chirped a voice as hoarse as a buttery
brogue would allow it to be.

My clutch had brought Bart to himself instantly, and at the words he
turned the electric flashlight, that lodged under his pillow, full in
the direction of the sound, where it developed a strange picture and
printed it clearly on the opposite wall.

In the middle of the circle of light was a little barefoot man, in
trousers and shirt; a pair of sodden shoes lay at different angles where
they had been kicked off, probably making the sound that had wakened me,
and at the moment of the flash he was occupied in the wringing out of a
coat that seemed strangely long for the short frame upon which it had
hung. The face turned toward us was unmistakably Irish, comical even,
entirely unalarming, and with the expression, blended of terror and
doubt, that it now wore, he might have slipped from the pages of a
volume of Lever that lay face down on the table. The nose turned up at
the tip, as if asking questions of the eyes, that hid themselves between
the half-shut lids in order to avoid answering. The skin was tanned, and
yet you had a certain conviction that minus the tan the man would be
very pale, while the iron-gray hair that topped the head crept down to
form small mutton-chop whiskers and an Old Country throat thatch that
was barely half an inch long.

Bart touched me to caution silence, and I, seeing at once that there was
nothing to fear, waited developments.

As soon as he could keep his eyes open against the sudden glare, the
little man tried to grasp the column of light in his fingers, then
darted out of it, and I thought he had bolted from the barn; but no, he
was instantly back again, and dilapidated as he was, he did not look
like a professional tramp.

"No, yez don't fool Larry McManus agin! Yez are a mane, cold light with
all yer blinkin', and no fire beneath to give 'im the good uv a cup o'
tay or put a warm heart in 'im! Two nights agone 'twas suspicion o' rats
kep' me from shlapin', yesternight 'twas thought o' what wud become of
poor Oireland (Mary rest her) had we schnakes there ter fill the drames
o' nights loike they do here whin a man's a drap o'er full o' comfort.
'Tis a good roof above! Heth, thin, had I a whisp o' straw and a bite,
wid this moonlight fer company, I'd not shog from out this the night to
be King!

"Saints! but there's a dog beyant the bark!" he cried a minute after, as
the pup crept over to him and began to be friendly,--"I wonder is a mon
sinsible to go to trustin' the loight o' any moon that shines full on a
pitch-black noight whin 'tis rainin'? Och hone! but me stomach's that
empty, gin I don't put on me shoes me lungs'll lake trou the soles o' me
fate, and gin I do, me shoes they're that sopped, I'll cough them
up--o-whurra-r-a! whurra-a! but will I iver see Old Oireland agin,--I
don't know!"

Bart shut off the light, slipped on his shoes, and drawing a coat over
his pajamas lighted the oil stable lantern, hung it with its back toward
me, on a long hook that reached down from one of the rafters, and bore
down upon Larry, whose face was instantly wreathed in puckered smiles
at the sight of a fellow-human who, though big, evidently had no
intention of being aggressive.

"Well, Larry McManus," said Bart, cheerfully, "how came you in this barn
so far away from Oireland a night like this?"

"Seein' as yer another gintleman o' the road in the same ploice, what
more loike than the misfortune's the same?" replied he, lengthening his
lower lip and stretching his stubby chin, which he scratched cautiously.
Then, as he raised his eyes to Bart's, he evidently read something in
his general air, touselled and tanned as he was, that shifted his
opinion at least one notch.

"Maybe, sor, you're an actor mon, sor, that didn't suit the folks in the
town beyant, sor, but I'd take it as praise, so I would, for shure
they're but pigs there,--I couldn't stop wid thim meself! Thin agin,
mayhap yer jest a plain gintleman, a bit belated, as it were,--a little
belated on the way home, sor,--loike me, sor, that wus moinded to be in
Kildare, sor, come May-day, and blessed Peter's day's nigh come about
an' I'm here yit!"

"You are getting on the right scent, Larry," said Bart, struggling with
laughter, and yet, as he said after, not wishing possibly to huff this
curious person. "I hope I'm a gentleman, but I'm not tramping about;
this is my barn, in which my wife and I are sleeping, so if I were you,
I wouldn't take off that shirt until I can find you a dry one!"

The change that came over the man was comical. In a lightning flash he
had fastened the few buttons in his blouse that it had taken his
fumbling fingers several moments to unloose, and dropping one hand to
his side, he held it there rigid as he saluted with two fingers at the
brim of an imaginary hat; while his roving eye quickly took in the
various motley articles of furniture of our camp,--a small kitchen table
with oil-stove and tea outfit of plain white ware, some plates and
bowls, a few saucepans, half a dozen chairs, no two alike, and the two
cots huddled in the shadows,--his voice, that had been pitched in a
confidential key, arose to a wail:--

"The Saints luv yer honor, but do they be afther havin' bad landlords in
Meriky too, that evicted yer honor from yer house, sor? I thought here
nigh every poor body owned their own bit, ground and roof, sor, let
alone a foine man loike yerself that shows the breedin' down to his tin
toes, sor. Oi feel fer yer honor, fer there wuz I meself set out wid pig
and cow both, sor (for thim bein' given Kathy by her aunt fer her
fortin could not be took), six years ago Patrick's tide, sor, and hadn't
she married Mulqueen that same week, sor (he bein' gardener a long time
to his Riverence over in England, sor, and meetin' Kathy only at his
mother's wakin'), I'd maybe been lodged in a barn meself, sor! Sure, hev
ye the cow below ud let me down a drap o' milk?"

Then did Bart laugh long and heartily, for this new point of view in
regard to our doings amused him immensely. Of all the local motives
attributed to our garden vacation, none had been quite so naive and
unexpected as this!

"But we haven't been evicted," said Bart, unconsciously beginning to
apologize to an unknown straggler. "I own this place and my home is
yonder; we are camping here for our health and pleasure. Come, it's time
you gave an account of yourself, as you are trespassing." That the
situation suddenly began to annoy Bart was plain.

Ignoring the tail of the speech, Larry saluted anew: "Sure, sor, I knew
ye at first fer gintleman and leddy, which this same last proves; a rale
gintleman and his leddy can cut about doin' the loikes of which poor
folks ud be damned fer! I mind well how Lord Kilmartin's youngest--she
wid the wild red hair an' eyes that wud shame a doe--used to go
barefoot through the dew down to Biddie Macks's cabin to drink fresh
buttermilk, whin they turned gallons o' it from their own dairy. Some
said, underbreath, she was touched, and some wild loike, but none spoke
loud but to wish her speed, fer that's what it is to be a leddy!

"Meself, is it? Och, it's soon told. Six years lived I there wid Kathy
and Mulqueen, workin' in the garden, he keepin' before me, until one day
his Riverence come face agin me thruble. Oh, yis, sor, that same, that
bit sup that's too much for the stomick, sor, and so gets into the toes
and tongue, sor! Four times a year the spell's put on me, sor, and gin I
shlape it over, I'm a good man in between, sor, but that one time, sor,
Mulqueen was sint to Lunnon, sor, and I missed me shlape fer mischief.

"Well, thinks I, I'll go to Meriky and see me Johnny, me youngest; most
loike they're more used to the shlapin' spells out there where all is
free; but they wasn't! Johnny's a sheriff and got money wid his woman,
and she's no place in her house fit fer the old man resting the drap
off. So he gives me money to go home first class, and says he'll sind
another bit along to Kathy fer me keepin'.

"This was come Easter, and bad cess, one o' me shlapes was due, and so
I've footed it to get a job to take me back to Kathy. If I could strike
a port just right, Hiven might get me home between times in a cattle
boat.

"I'm that well risted now I could do good work if I had full feed, maybe
till Michaelmas. Hiven rest ye, sor, but have ye ever a job o' garden
work now on yer estate, sor, that would kape me until I got the bit to
cross to Kathy?"

As Bart hesitated, I burst forth, "Have you ever tended flowers, Larry?"

"Flowers, me leddy?--that's what I did fer his Riverence, indoors and
out, and dressed them fer the shows, mem, and not few's the prize money
we took. His Riverence, he called a rose for Kathy, that is to say
Kathleen; 'twas that big 'twould hide yer face. Flowers, is it? Well, I
don't know!"

Bart, meanwhile, had made a plan, telling Larry that he would draw a cup
of tea and give him something to eat, while he thought the matter over.
He soon had the poor fellow wrapped in an old blanket and snoring
comfortably in the straw, while, as the rain had stopped and dawn began
to show the outlines of Opal Farm, Bart suggested that I had best go
indoors and finish my broken sleep, while he had a chance to scrutinize
Larry by daylight before committing himself.

When he rejoined me several hours later for an indoor breakfast, for it
had turned to rain again and promised several days of the saturate
weather that makes even a mountain camp utterly dreary, he brought me
the news that Larry was to work for me especially, beginning on the rose
bed,--that he would lodge with Amos Opie and take his meals with
Anastasia, who thinks it likely that they are cousins on the mothers'
side, as they are both of the same parish and name. The _exact_ way of
our meeting with him need not be dwelt upon domestically, for the sake
of discipline, as he will have more self-respect among his fellows in
the combination clothes we provided, "until his baggage arrives." He is
to be paid no money, and allowed to "shlape" if a spell unhappily
arrives. When the season is over, Bart agrees to see him on board ship
with a prepaid passage straight to Kathy, and whatever else is his due
sent to her! Meanwhile he promised to "fit the leddy with the tastiest
garden off the old sod!"

So here we are!

This chronicle should have a penny-dreadful title, "Their Midnight
Adventure, or How it Rained a Rose Gardener!" Tell me about the ferns
next time; we have only moved the glossy Christmas and evergreen-crested
wood ferns as yet, being sure of these.

How about our fencing? Ask Evan. You remember that we have a
picket-fence toward the road, but on three sides the boundary is only a
tumble-down stone wall in which bird cherries have here and there found
footing. We have a chance to sell the stones, and Bart is thinking of
it, as it will be too costly to rebuild on a good foundation. The old
wall was merely a rough-laid pile.




IX

FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)


_Hemlock Hills, July 3._ For nearly a week we have been sauntering
through this most entrancing hill country, practically a pedestrian
trip, except that the feet that have taken the steps have been shod with
steel instead of leather. Your last chronicle has followed me, and was
read in a region so pervaded by ferns that your questions concerning
their transplanting would have answered themselves if you could have
only perched on the rock beside me. There is a fern-lined ravine below,
a fern-bordered road in front; and above a log cottage, set in a
clearing in the hemlocks which has for its boundaries the tumble-down
fence piled by the settlers a century or two ago, its crevices now
filled by leaf-mould, has become at once a natural fernery and a
barrier. Why do you not use your old wall in a like manner? Of course
your stones may be too closely piled and lack the time-gathered
leaf-mould, but a little discretion in removing or tipping a stone here
and there, and a crowbar for making pockets, would work wonders. You
might even exchange the surplus rocks for leaf-mould, load by load; at
any rate large quantities of fern soil must be obtainable for the
carting at the reservoir woods.

Imagine the effect, if you please, of that irregular line of rocks
swathed in vines and sheltering great clumps of ferns, while it will
afford an endless shelter for every sort of wild thing that you may pick
up in your rambles. Of course you need not plant it all at once, but
having made the plan, develop it at leisure.

You should never quite finish a country place unless you expect to leave
it. The something more in garden life is the bale of hay before the
horse's nose on the uphill road. Last year, for almost a week, we
thought our garden quite as finished as the material and surroundings
would allow,--it was a strange, dismal, hollow sort of feeling. However,
it was soon displaced by the desire that I have to collect my best roses
in one spot, add to them, and gradually form a rosary where the Garden
Queen and all her family may have the best of air, food, and lodgings.
You see I feared that the knoll, hardy beds, and rose garden were not
sufficient food for your mind to ruminate, so I add the fern fence as a
sort of dessert!

[Illustration: AN ENDLESS SHELTER FOR EVERY SORT OF WILD
THING.]

"Where is the shade that ferns need?" I hear you ask, "for except
under some old apple trees and where the bird cherries grow (and they,
though beautiful at blooming time and leaf fall, attract tent
caterpillars), the stone wall lies in the sun!"

Yes, but in one of the woodland homes of this region I have seen a
screen placed by such a rustic stone fence that it not only served the
purpose of giving light shade, but was a thing of beauty in itself,
dividing the vista into many landscapes, the frame being long or upright
according to the planter's fancy.

Do you remember the old saying "When away keep open thine eyes, and so
pack thy trunk for the home-going?"

On this drive of ours I've been cramming my trunk to overflowing, and
yet the ideas are often the simplest possible, for the people of this
region, with more inventive art than money, have the perfect gift of
adapting that which lies nearest to hand.

You spoke in your last chronicle of the screen of white birches through
which you saw the sun rise over the meadows of Opal Farm. This birch
springs up in waste lands almost everywhere. We have it in abundance in
the wood lot on the side of our hill, and it is scattered through the
wet woods below our wild walk, showing that all it needs is a foothold.

Because it is common and the wood rather weak and soft, landscape
gardening has rather passed it by, turning a cold shoulder, yet the
slender tree is very beautiful. True, it has not the length of life, the
girth and strength of limb, of the silver-barked canoe birch, but the
white birch will grow in a climate that fevers its northern cousin. In
spite of its delicate qualities, it is not a trivial tree, for I have
seen it with a bole of more than forty feet in length, measuring
eighteen inches through at the ground. When you set it, you are not
planting for posterity, perhaps, but will gain a speedy result; and the
fertility of the tree, when once established, will take care of the
future.

What is more charming after a summer shower than a natural cluster of
these picturesque birches, as they often chance to group themselves in
threes, like the Graces--the soft white of the trunks, with dark
hieroglyphic shadows here and there disappearing in a drapery of glossy
leaves, green above and reflecting the bark colour underneath, all
a-quiver and more like live things poised upon the russet twigs than
delicate pointed leaves! Then, when the autumn comes, how they stand out
in company with cedar bushes and sheep laurel on the hillsides to make
beautiful the winter garden, and we stand in mute admiration when these
white birches reach from a snowbank and pencil their frosty tracery
against a wall of hemlocks.

This is the simple material that has been used with such wonderful
effect. In the gardens hereabout they have flanked their alleys with the
birches, for even when fully grown their habit is more poplar-like than
spreading, and many plants, like lilies, requiring partial shade
flourish under them; while for fences and screens the trees are planted
in small groups, with either stones and ferns, or shrubs set thick
between, and the most beautiful winter fence that Evan says he has ever
seen in all his wanderings amid costly beauty was when, last winter, in
being here to measure for some plans, he came suddenly upon an informal
boundary and screen combined, over fifty feet in length, made of white
birches,--the groups of twos and threes set eight or ten feet apart, the
gaps being filled by Japanese barberries laden with their scarlet fruit.
Even now this same screen is beautiful enough with its shaded greens,
while the barberries in their blooming time, and the crimson leaf glow
of autumn, give it four distinct seasons.

The branches of the white birch being small and thickly set, they may be
trimmed at will, and windows thus opened here and there without the look
of artifice or stiffness.

Fences are always a moot question to the gardener, for if she has a
pleasant neighbour, she does not like to raise an aggressive barrier or
perhaps cut off the view, yet to a certain extent I like being walled in
at least on two sides. A total lack of boundaries is too
impersonal,--the eye travels on and on: there is nothing to rest it by
comparison. Also, where there are no fences or hedges,--and what are
hedges but living fences,--there is nothing to break the ground draught
in winter and early springtime. The ocean is much more beautiful and
full of meaning when brought in contact with a slender bit of coast. The
moon has far more majesty when but distancing the tree-tops than when
rolling apparently at random through an empty sky. A vast estate may
well boast of wide sweeps and open places, but the same effect is not
gained, present fashion to the contrary, by throwing down the barriers
between a dozen homes occupying only half as many acres. Preferable is
the cosey English walled villa of the middle class, even though it be a
bit stuffy and suggestive of earwigs. The question should not be to
fence or not to fence, but rather _how_ to fence usefully and
artistically, and any one who has an old stone wall, such as you have,
moss grown and tumble-down, with the beginnings of wildness already
achieved, has no excuse for failure. We have seen other fences here
where bushes, wire, and vines all take part, but they cannot compete
with an old wall.

With ferns, a topic opens as long and broad and deep as the glen below
us, and of almost as uncertain climbing, for it is not so much what
ferns may be dug up and, as individual plants, continue to grow in new
surroundings, but how much of their haunt may be transplanted with them,
that the fern may keep its characteristics. Many people do not think of
this, nor would they care if reminded. Water lilies, floating among
their pads in the still margin of a stream, with jewelled dragon-flies
darting over, soft clouds above and the odour of wild grapes or swamp
azalea wafting from the banks, are no more to them than half a dozen
such lilies grown in a sunken tub or whitewashed basin in a backyard;
rather are they less desirable because less easily controlled and
encompassed. Such people, and they are not a few, belong to the tribe of
Peter Bell, who saw nothing more in the primrose by the river's brim
than that it was a primrose, and consequently yellow. Doubtless it would
have looked precisely the same to him, or even more yellow, if it had
bloomed in a tin can!

We do not treat our native ferns with sufficient respect. Homage is paid
in literature to the palm, and it is an emblem of honour, but our New
England ferns, many of them equally majestic, are tossed into heaps for
hay and mown down by the ruthless scythe of the farmer every autumn when
he shows his greatest agricultural energy by stripping the waysides of
their beauty prior to the coming of the roadmender with his awful
"turn-piking" process. If, by the way, the automobilists succeed in
stopping this piking practice, we will print a nice little prayer for
them and send it to Saint Peter, so that, though it won't help them in
this world,--that would be dangerous,--it will by and by!

In the woods the farmer allows the ferns to stand, for are they not one
of the usual attributes of a picnic? Stuck in the horses' bridle, they
keep off flies; they serve to deck the tablecloth upon which the food is
spread; gathered in armfuls, they somewhat ease the contact of the
rheumatic with the rocks, upon which they must often sit on such
occasions. They provide the young folks with a motive to seek something
further in the woods, and give the acquisitive ladies who "press things"
much loot to take home, and all without cost.

This may not be respectful treatment, but it is not martyrdom; the fern
is a generous plant, a thing of wiry root-stock and prehistoric
tenacity; it has not forgotten that tree ferns are among its ancestors;
when it is discouraged, it rests and grows again. But imagine the
feelings of a mat of exquisite maidenhair rent from a shady slope with
moss and partridge vine at its feet, and quivering elusive woodland
shade above, on finding itself unceremoniously crowded into a bed,
between cannas or red geraniums! Or fancy the despair of either of the
wide-spreading Osmundas, lovers of stream borders opulent with
leaf-mould, or wood hollows deep with moist richness, on finding
themselves ranged in a row about the porch of a summer cottage, each one
tied firmly to a stake like so many green parasols stuck in the dry loam
point downward!

It is not so much a question of how many species of native ferns can be
domesticated, for given sufficient time and patience all things are
possible, but how many varieties are either decorative, interesting, or
useful away from their native haunts. For any one taking what may be
called a botanical interest in ferns, a semi-artificial rockery, with
one end in wet ground and the other reaching dry-wood conditions, is
extremely interesting. In such a place, by obtaining some of the earth
with each specimen and tagging it carefully, an out-of-door herbarium
may be formed and something added to it every time an excursion is made
into a new region. Otherwise the ferns that are worth the trouble of
transplanting and supplying with soil akin to that from which they
came, are comparatively few. Of decorative species the Osmundas easily
lead; being natives of swampy or at least moist ground, they should have
a like situation, and yet so strong are their roots and crown of leaves
that they will flourish for years after the moisture that has fed them
has been drained and the shading overgrowth cut away, even though
dwarfed in growth and coarsened in texture. Thus people seeing them
growing under these conditions in open fields and roadside banks mistake
their necessities.

The Royal fern (_Osmunda regalis_) positively demands moisture; it will
waive the matter of shade in a great degree, but water it must have.

The Cinnamon fern, that encloses the spongelike, brown, fertile fronds
in the circle of green ones, gains its greatest size of five feet in
roadside runnels or in springy places between boulders in the river
woods; yet so accommodating is it that you can use it at the base of
your knoll if a convenient rock promises both reasonable dampness and
shelter.

The third of the family (_Osmunda Claytonia_) is known as the
Interrupted fern, because in May the fertile black leaflets appear in
the middle of the fronds and interrupt the even greenness. This fern
will thrive in merely moist soil and is very charming early in the
season, but like the other two, out of its haunts, cannot be relied
upon after August.

As a fern for deep soil, where walking room can be allowed it, the
common brake, or bracken (_Pteris aquilina_) is unsurpassed. It will
grow either in sandy woods or moist, and should have a certain amount of
high shade, else its broad fronds, held high above the ground
umbrella-wise, will curl, grow coarse, and lose the fernlike quality
altogether. You can plant this safely in the bit of old orchard that you
are giving over to wild asters, black-eyed Susan, and sundrops, but mind
you, be sure to take both Larry and Barney, together with a long
post-hole spade, when you go out to dig brakes,--they are not things of
shallow superficial roots, I can assure you.

A few years ago Evan, Timothy Saunders, and I went brake-hunting, I
selecting the groups and the menkind digging great solid turfs a foot or
more in depth, in order to be sure the things had native earth enough
along to mother them into comfortable growth. Proudly we loaded the big
box wagon, for we had taken so much black peat (as the soil happened to
be) that not a root hung below and success was certain.

When, on reaching home, in unloading, one turf fell from the cart and
crumbled into fragments, to my dismay I found that the long, tough
stalk ran quite through the clod and we had no roots at all, but that
(if inanimate things can laugh) they were all laughing at us back in the
meadow and probably another foot underground. Yet brakes are well worth
the trouble of deep digging, for if once established, a waste bit, where
little else will flourish, is given a graceful undergrowth that is able
to stand erect even though the breeze plays with the little forest as it
does with a field of grain. Then, too, the brake patch is a treasury to
be drawn from when arranging tall flowers like foxgloves, larkspurs,
hollyhocks, and others that have little foliage of their own.

The fact that the brake does not mature its seeds that lie under the
leaf margin until late summer also insures it a long season of
sightliness, and when ripeness finally draws nigh, it comes in a series
of beautiful mellow shades, varying from straw through deep gold to
russet, such as the beech tree chooses for its autumn cloak.

Another plant there is, a low-growing shrub, having long leaves with
scalloped edges, giving a spicy odour when crushed or after rain, that I
must beg you to plant with these brakes. It is called Sweet-fern, merely
by courtesy, from its fernlike appearance, for it is of the bayberry
family and first cousin to sweet gale and waxberry.

The digging of this also is a process quite as elusive as mining for
brakes; but when once it sets foot in your orchard, and it will enjoy
the drier places, you will have a liberal annex to your bed of sweet
odours, and it may worthily join lemon balm, mignonette, southernwood,
and lavender in the house, though in the garden it would be rather too
pushing a companion.

Next, both decorative and useful, comes the Silvery Spleenwort, that is
content with shade and good soil of any sort, so long as it is not rank
with manure. It has a slender creeping root, but when it once takes
hold, it flourishes mightily and after a year or so will wave
silver-lined fronds three feet long proudly before you, a rival of
Osmunda!

A sister spleenwort is the beautiful Lady fern, whose lacelike fronds
have party-coloured stems, varying from straw through pink and reddish
to brown, giving an unusual touch of life and warmth to one of the cool
green fern tribe. In autumn the entire leaf of this fern, in dying,
oftentimes takes these same hues; it is decorative when growing and
useful to blend with cut flowers. It naturally prefers woods, but will
settle down comfortably in the angle of a house or under a fence, and
will be a standby in your wall rockery.

The ferns that seem really to prefer the open, one taking to dry and two
to moist ground, are the hay-scented fern (_Dicksonia punctilobula_),
the New York fern (_Dryopteris Noveboracencis_), and the Marsh
Shield-fern. Dicksonia has a pretty leaf of fretwork, and will grow
three feet in length, though it is usually much shorter. It is the fern
universal here with us, it makes great swales running out from wood
edges to pastures, and it rivals the bayberry in covering hillsides; it
will grow in dense beds under tall laurels or rhododendrons, border your
wild walk, or make a setting of cheerful light green to the stone wall;
while if cut for house decoration, it keeps in condition for several
days and almost rivals the Maidenhair as a combination with sweet peas
or roses.

The New York fern, when of low stature, is one of the many bits of
growing carpet of rich cool woods. If it is grown in deep shade, the
leaves become too long and spindling for beauty. When in moist ground,
quite in the open, or in reflected shade, the fresh young leaves of a
foot and under add great variety to the grass and are a perfect setting
for table decorations of small flowers. We have these ferns all through
the dell. If they are mown down in June, July sees a fresh crop, and
their spring green is held perpetual until frost.

The Marsh Shield-fern of gentian meadows is the perfect small fern for a
bit of wet ground, and is the green to be used with all wild flowers of
like places. One day last autumn I had a bouquet of grass-of-Parnassus,
ladies' tresses, and gentian massed thickly with these ferns, and the
posey lived for days on the sunny window shelf of the den (for gentians
close their eyes in shade),--a bit of the September marshland brought
indoors.

The two Beech-ferns, the long and the broad, you may grow on the knoll;
give the long the dampest spots, and place the broad where it is quite
dry. As the rootstocks of both these are somewhat frail, I would advise
you to peg them down with hairpins and cover well with earth. By the
way, I always use wire hairpins to hold down creeping rootstocks of
every kind; it keeps them from springing up and drying before the
rootlets have a chance to grasp the soil.

The roots of Maidenhair should always be treated in this way, as they
dry out very quickly. This most distinctive of our New England ferns
will grow between the rocks of your knoll, as well as in deep nooks in
the fence. It seems to love rich side-hill woods and craves a rock
behind its back, and if you are only careful about the soil, you can
have miniature forests of it with little trouble. As for maidenhair, all
its uses are beauty!

Give me a bouquet of perfect wild rosebuds within a deep fringe of
maidenhair to set in a crystal jar where I may watch the deep pink
petals unfold and show the golden stars within; let me breathe their
first breath of perfume, and you may keep all the greenhouse orchids
that are grown.

Though you can have a variety of ferns in other locations, those that
will thrive best on the knoll and keep it ever green and in touch with
laurel and hemlock, are but five,--the Christmas fern, the Marginal
Shield-fern, the common Rock Polypody, the Ebony Spleenwort, and the
Spinulose Wood-fern. Of the first pair it is impossible to have too
many. The Christmas fern, with its glistening leaves of holly green, has
a stout, creeping rootstock, which must be firmly secured, a few stones
being added temporarily to the hairpins to give weight. The Evergreen
Wood-fern and Ebony Spleenwort, having short rootstocks, can be tucked
into sufficiently deep holes between rocks or in the hollows left by
small decayed stumps, while the transplanting of the Rock Polypody is an
act where luck, recklessness, and a pinch of magic must all be combined.

You will find vast mats of these leathery little Polypodys growing with
rock-selaginella on the great boulders of the river woods. As these are
to be split up for masonry, the experiment of transferring the polypody
is no sin, though it savours somewhat of the process of skin-grafting.
Evan and I have tried the experiment successfully, so that it is no
fable. We had a bit of shady bank at home that proved by the mosses that
grew on it that it was moistened from beneath the year through. The
protecting shade was of tall hickories, and a rock ledge some twenty
feet high shielded it from the south and east. We scraped the moss from
a circle of about six feet and loosened the surface of the earth only,
and very carefully. Then we spread some moist leaf-mould on the rough
but flat surface of a partly exposed rock. Going to a near-by bit of
woods that was being despoiled, as in your valley, we chose two great
mats of polypody and moss that had no piercing twigs to break the
fabric, and carefully peeled them from the rocks, as you would bark from
a tree, the matted rootstocks weaving all together. Moistening these
thoroughly, we wrapped them in a horse blanket and hurried home. The
earth and rock already prepared were sprinkled with water and the fern
fabric applied and gently but firmly pressed down, that resting on the
earth being held by the ever useful hairpin!

The rock graft was more difficult, but after many failures by way of
stones that rolled off, a coarse network of cords was put across and
fastened to whatever twigs or roots came in the way. Naturally a period
of constant sprinkling followed, and for that season the rock graft
seemed decidedly homesick, but the next spring resignation had set in,
and two years later the polypodys had completely adopted the new
location and were prepared to appropriate the whole of it.

So you see that there are comparatively only a few ferns, after all,
that are of great value to The Garden, You, and I, and likewise there
are but a few rules for their transplanting, viz.:--

Don't bother about the tops, for new ones will grow, but look to the
roots, and do not let them be exposed to the air or become dry in
travel. Examine the quality of soil from which you have taken the ferns,
and if you have none like it nearer home, take some with you for a
starter! Never dig up more on one day than you can plant during the
next, and above all remember that if a fern is worth tramping the
countryside for, it is worth careful planting, and that the moral
remarks made about the care in setting out of roses apply with double
force to the handling of delicate wild flowers and ferns.

Good luck to your knoll, Mary Penrose, and to your fern fence, if that
fancy pleases you. May the magic of fern seed fill your eyes and let you
see visions, the goodly things of heart's desire, when, all being
accomplished, you pause and look at the work of your hands.

  "And nimble fay and pranksome elf
      Flash vaguely past at every turn,
   Or, weird and wee, sits Puck himself,
      With legs akimbo, on a fern!"




X

FRANKNESS,--GARDENING AND OTHERWISE

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_July 15._--_Midsummer Night._ Since the month came in, vacation time
has been suspended, insomuch that Bart goes to the office every day,
Saturdays excepted; but we have not returned to our indoor bedroom. Once
it seemed the definition of airy coolness, with its three wide windows,
white matting, and muslin draperies, but now--I fully understand the
relative feelings of a bird in a cage and a bird in the open. The air
blows through the bars and the sun shines through them, but it is still
a cage.

In these warm, still nights we take down the slat screens that hang
between the hand-hewn chestnut beams of the old barn, and with the open
rafters of what was a hay-loft above us, we look out of the door-frame
straight up at the stars and sometimes drag our cots out on the wide
bank that tops the wall, overlooking the Opal Farm, and sleep wholly
under the sky.

These two weeks past we have had the Infant with us at night, clad in a
light woollen monkey-suit nighty with feet, her crib being, however,
under cover. Her open-eyed wonder has been a new phase of the vacation.
Knowing no fear, she has begun to develop a feeling of kinship with all
the small animals, not only of the barn but dwellers on Opal Farm as
well, and when she discovered a nest of small mice in an old tool-box
under the eaves and proposed to take them, in their improvised house, to
her very own room at the opposite end, this "room" being a square marked
around her bed by small flower-pots, set upside down, I protested, as a
matter of course, saying that mice were not things to handle, and
besides they would die without their mother.

The Infant, still clutching the box, looked at me in round-eyed wonder:
"I had Dinah and the kittens to play with in the nursery, didn't I,
mother?"

"Certainly!"

"And when Ann-stasia brought them up in her ap'n, Dinah walked behind,
didn't she?"

"Yes, I think so!"

"Ver-r-y well, the mouse mother will walk behind too, and I love mice
better'n cats, for they have nicer hands; 'sides, mother, don't you know
who mice really and truly are, and why they have to hide away? They are
the horses that fairlies drive, and I'm going to have these for the
fairlies in my village!" making a sweep of her arm toward the encampment
of flower-pots; "if you want fairlies to stay close beside your bed, you
must give them horses to drive, 'cause when it gets cold weather cobwebs
gets too sharp for them to ride on and there isn't always fireflies 'n
candle worms to show 'em the way,--'n it's true, 'cause Larry says so!"
she added, probably seeing the look of incredulity on my face.

"Larry knows fairlies and they're really trulies; if you're bad to them,
you'll see the road and it won't be there, and so you'll get into
Hen'sy's bog! Larry did,--and if you make houses for them like mine
(pointing to the flower-pots) and give 'em drinks of milk and flower
wine, they'll bring you _lots_ of childrens! They did to Larry, so I'm
trying to please 'em wif my houses, so's to have some to play wif!"

Larry's harmless folklore (for when he is quite himself, as he is in
these days, he has a certain refinement and an endless fund of
marvellous legends and stories), birds and little beasts for friends,
dolls cut from paper with pansies fastened on for faces, morning-glories
for cups in which to give the fairies drink, what could make a more
blissful childhood for our little maid? That is the everlasting pity of
a city childhood. Creature comforts may be had and human friends, but
where is the vista that reaches under the trees and through the long
meadow-grass where the red-gold lily bells tinkle, up the brook bed to
the great flat mossy rock, beneath which is the door to fairyland, the
spotted turtle being warder. Fairyland, the country of eternal youth and
possibility!

I wouldn't give up the fairies that I once knew and peopled the solemn
woods with down in grandfather's Virginia home for a fortune, and even
now, any day, I can put my ear to the earth, like Tommy-Anne, and hear
the grass grow. It occurred to me yesterday that the Infant, in age,
temperament, and heredity, is suited to be a companion for your Richard.
Could you not bring him down with you before the summer is over? Though,
as the unlike sometimes agree best, Ian and she might be more
compatible, so bring them both and we will turn the trio loose in the
meadows of Opal Farm with a mite of a Shetland pony that _The Man from
Everywhere_ has recently bestowed upon the Infant--crazy, extravagant
man! What we shall do with it in winter I do not know, as we cannot yet
run into the expense of keeping such live stock. But why bother? it is
only midsummer now, grazing is plentiful and seems to suit the needs of
this spunky little beast, and the Infant riding him "across country," as
Bart calls her wanderings about Opal Farm, is a spectacle too pretty to
be denied us. Yes, I know I'm silly, and that you have the twins to
rhapsodize about, but girls are so much more picturesque in the clothes!
What! thought she wore gingham bloomers! Yes, but not all the time, for
Maria will frill her up and run her with ribbons of afternoons!

       *       *       *       *       *

Back to the house and garden! I'm wandering, but then I'm Lady Lazy this
summer, as _The Man from Everywhere_ calls me, and naturally a bit
inconsequent! As I said, Bart is at the office daily, and will be for
another week, but Lady Lazy has not returned to what Maria Maxwell calls
"The Tyranny of the Three M's,"--the mending basket, the market book,
and the money-box! I was willing, quite willing; in fact it is only fair
that Maria should have her time of irresponsibility, for I know that she
has half a dozen invitations to go to pleasant places and meet people,
one being from Lavinia Cortright to visit her shore cottage. I'm always
hoping that Maria may meet the "right man" some summer day, but that she
surely will never do if she stays here.

"I've everything systematized, and it's easier for me to go on than
drop the needles for a fortnight or so and then find, on coming back,
that you have been knitting a mitten when I had started the frame of a
sock," Maria said, laughing; "make flower hay while the crop is to be
had for the gathering, my lady! Another year you may not have such free
hands!"

Then my protests grew weaker and weaker, for the establishment had
thriven marvellously well without my daily interference. The jam closet
shows rows of everything that might be made of strawberries, cherries,
currants, and raspberries, and it suddenly struck me that possibly if
domestic machinery is set going on a consistent basis, whether it is not
a mistake to do too much oiling and tightening of a screw here and
there, unless distinct symptoms of a halt render it absolutely
necessary.

"Very well," I said, with a show of spunk, "give me one single task,
that I may not feel as if I had no part in the homemaking. Something as
ornamental and frivolous as you choose, but that shall occupy me at
least two hours a day!"

Maria paused a moment; we were then standing in front of the fireplace,
where a jar of bayberry filled the place of logs between the andirons.
First, casting her eyes through the doors of dining room, living room,
and den, she fixed them on me with rather a mischievous twinkle, as she
said, "You shall gather and arrange the flowers for the house; and
always have plenty of them, but never a withered or dropsical blossom
among them all. You shall also invent new ways for arranging them, new
combinations, new effects, the only restriction being that you shall not
put vases where the water will drip on books, or make the house look
like the show window of a wholesale florist. I will give you a fresh
mop, and you can have the back porch and table for your workshop, and if
I'm not mistaken, you will find two hours a day little enough for the
work!" she added with very much the air of some one engaging a new
housemaid and presenting her with a broom!

It has never taken me two hours to gather and arrange the flowers, and
though of course we are only beginning to have much of a garden, we've
always had flowers in the house,--quantities of sweet peas and such
things, besides wild flowers. I began to protest, an injured feeling
rising in my throat, that she, Maria Maxwell, music teacher, city bound
for ten years, should think to instruct _me_ of recent outdoor
experience.

"Yes, you've always had flowers, but did you pick the sweet peas or did
Barney? Did you cram them haphazard into the first thing that came handy
(probably that awful bowl decorated in ten discordant colours and
evidently a wedding present, for such atrocities never find any other
medium of circulation)? Or did you separate them nicely, and arrange the
pink and salmon peas with the lavender in that plain-coloured Sevres
vase that is unusually accommodating in the matter of water, then
putting the gay colours in the blue-and-white Delft bowl and the duller
ones in cut glass to give them life? Having plenty, did you change them
every other day, or the moment the water began to look milky, or did you
leave them until the flowers clung together in the first stages of
mould? Meanwhile, the ungathered flowers on the vines were seriously
developing peas and shortening their stems to be better able to bear
their weight. And, Mary Penrose,"--here Maria positively glared at me as
if I had been a primary pupil in the most undesirable school of her
route who was both stone deaf and afflicted with catarrh, "did you wash
out your jars and vases with a mop every time you changed the flowers,
and wipe them on a towel separate from the ones used for the pantry
glass? No, you never did! You tipped the water out over there at the end
of the piazza by the honeysuckles, because you couldn't quite bring
yourself to pouring it down the pantry sink, refilled the vases, and
that was all!"

In spite of a certain sense of annoyance that I felt at the way in which
Maria was giving me a lecture, and somehow when a person has taught for
ten years she (particularly _she_) inevitably acquires a rather
unpleasant way of imparting the truth that makes one wish to deny it, I
stood convicted in my own eyes as well as in Maria's. It had so often
happened that when either Barney had brought in the sweet peas and left
them on the porch table, or Bart had gathered a particularly beautiful
wild bouquet in one of his tramps, I had lingered over a book or some
bit of work upstairs until almost the time for the next meal, and then,
seeing the half-withered look of reproach that flowers wear when they
have been long out of water, I have jammed them helter-skelter into the
first receptacle at hand.

Sometimes a little rough verbal handling stirs up the blood under a
too-complacent cuticle. Maria's preachment did me good, the more
probably because the time was ripe for it, and therefore the past two
weeks have been filled with new pleasures, for another thing that the
month spent in the open has shown me is the wonderful setting the
natural environment and foliage gives to a flower. At first the
completeness appeals insensibly, and unless one is of the temperament
that seeks the cause behind the effect, it might never be realized.

The Japanese have long since arrived at a method of arranging flowers
which is quality and intrinsic value as opposed to miscellaneous
quantity. The way of nature, however, it seems to me, is twofold, for
there are flowers that depend for beauty, and this with nature that
seems only another word for perpetuity, upon the strength of numbers, as
well as those that make a more individual appeal. The composite
flowers--daisies, asters, goldenrod--belong to the class that take
naturally to massing, while the blue flag, meadow and wood lilies,
together with the spiked orchises, are typical of the second.

By the same process of comparison I have decided that jars and vases
having floral decorations themselves are wholly unsuitable for holding
flowers. They should be cherished as bric-a-brac, when they are worthy
specimens of the art of potter and painter, but as receptacles for
flowers they have no use beyond holding sprays of beautiful foliage or
silver-green masses of ferns.

Porcelain, plain in tint and of carefully chosen colours, such as
beef-blood, the old rose, and peach-blow hues, in which so many simple
forms and inexpensive bits of Japanese pottery may be bought, a peculiar
creamy yellow, a dull green, gobelin, and Delft blue and white, sacred
to the jugs and bowls of our grandmothers, all do well. Cut glass is a
fine setting for flowers of strong colour, but kills the paler hues, and
above and beyond all is the dark moss-green glass of substantial texture
that is fashioned in an endless variety of shapes. By chance, gift, and
purchase we have gathered about a dozen pieces of this, ranging from a
cylinder almost the size of an umbrella-stand down through fluted,
hat-shaped dishes, for roses or sweet peas, to some little troughs of
conventional shapes in which pansies or other short-stemmed flowers may
be arranged so as to give the look of an old-fashioned parterre to the
dining table.

I had always found these useful, but never quite realized to the full
that green or brown is the only consistent undercolour for all field and
grass-growing flowers until this summer. But during days that I have
spent browsing in the river woods, while Bart and Barney, and more
recently Larry, have been digging the herbs that we have marked, I have
realized the necessity of a certain combination of earth, bark, and
dead-leaf browns in the receptacles for holding wood flowers and the
vines that in their natural ascent clasp and cling to the trunks and
limbs of trees.

Several years ago mother sent me some pretty flower-holders made of
bamboos of different lengths, intended evidently to hang against
door-jambs or in hallways. The pith was hollowed out here and there, and
the hole plugged from beneath to make little water pockets. These did
admirably for a season, but when the wood dried, it invariably split,
and treacherous dripping followed, most ruinous to furniture.

A few weeks back, when looking at some mossed and gnarled branches in
the woods, an idea occurred to Bart and me at the same moment. Why could
we not use such pieces as these, together with some trunks of your
beloved white birch, to which I, _via_ the screen at Opal Farm, was
becoming insensibly devoted at the very time that you wrote me?

Augur holes could be bored in them at various distances and angles, if
not too acute; the thing was to find glass, in bottle or other forms, to
fit in the openings. This difficulty was solved by _The Man from
Everywhere_ on his reappearance the night before the Fourth, after an
absence of a whole week, laden with every manner of noise and fire
making arrangement for the Infant, though I presently found that Bart
had partly instigated the outfit, and the two overgrown boys revelled in
fire-balloons and rockets under cover of the Infant's enthusiasm, much
as the grandpa goes to the circus as an apparent martyr to little
Tommy's desire! A large package that, from the extreme care of its
handling, I judged must hold something highly explosive, on being opened
divulged many dozens of the slender glass tubes, with a slight lip for
holding cord or wire, such as, filled with roses or orchids, are hung in
the garlands of asparagus vines and smilax in floral decorations of
either houses or florists' windows. These tubes varied in length from
four to six inches, the larger being three inches in diameter.

"Behold your leak-proof interiors!" he cried, holding one up. "Now set
your wits and Bart's tool-box to work and we shall have some speedy
results!"

Dear _Man from Everywhere_, he had bought a gross of the glasses,
thereby reminding me of a generous but eccentric great-uncle of ours who
had a passion for attending auctions, and once, by error, in buying, as
he supposed, twelve yellow earthenware bowls, found himself confronted
by twelve _dozen_. Thus grandmother's storeroom literally had a golden
lining, and my entire childhood was pervaded with these bowls, several
finally falling into my possession for the mixing of mud pies! But
between the durability of yellow bowls and blown-glass tubes there is
little parallel, and already I have found the advantage of having a good
supply in stock.

Our first natural flower-holder is a great success. Having found a
four-pronged silver birch, with a broken top, over in the abandoned
gravel-pit (where, by the way, are a score of others to be had for the
digging, and such easy digging too), Larry sawed it off a bit below the
ground, so as to give it an even base. The diameter of the four uprights
was not quite a foot, all told, and these were sawn of unequal lengths
of four, six, seven, and nine inches, care being taken not to "haggle,"
as Larry calls it, the clean white bark in the process.

Then Bart went to work with augur and round chisel, and bored and
chipped out the holes for the glass tubes, incidentally breaking two
glasses before we had comfortably settled the four, for they must fit
snugly enough not to wiggle and tip, and yet not so tight as to bind and
prevent removal for cleaning purposes. This little stand of natural wood
was no sooner finished and mounted on the camp table than its
possibilities began to crowd around it. Ferns being the nearest at hand,
I crawled over the crumbling bank wall into the Opal Farm meadow and
gathered hay-scented, wood, and lady ferns from along the fence line and
grouped them loosely in the stand. The effect was magical, a bit of its
haunt following the fern indoors.

Next day I gathered in the hemlock woods a basket of the waxy,
spotted-leaved pipsissewa, together with spikes and garlands of club
moss. I had thought these perfect when steadied by bog moss in a flat,
cut-glass dish, but in the birch stump they were entirely at home. If
these midsummer wood flowers harmonize so well, how much more charming
will be the blossoms of early spring, a season when the white birch is
quite the most conspicuous tree in the landscape! Picture dog-tooth
violets, spring beauties, bellwort, Quaker-ladies, and great tufts of
violets, shading from white to deepest blue, in such a setting! Or, of
garden things, poets' narcissus and lilies-of-the-valley!

Other receptacles of a like kind we have in different stages of
progress, made of the wood of sassafras, oak, beech, and hackberry,
together with several irregular stumps of lichen-covered cedar. Two long
limbs with several short side branches Bart has flattened on the back
and arranged with picture-hooks, so that they can be bracketed against
the frame of the living-room door, opposite the flower-greeting table
that I have fashioned after yours. These are to be used for vines, and I
shall try to keep this wide, open portal cheerfully garlanded.

The first week of my flower wardenship was a most strenuous one. I use
the word reluctantly, but having tried half a dozen others, no
equivalent seemed to fit. I had flowers in every room in the house,
bedchambers included, using in this connection the cleanest-breathed and
longest-lived blossoms possible.

Late as was the sowing, the annuals remaining in the seed bed have begun
to yield a glorious crop. The fireplaces were filled with black-eyed
Susans from the fields and hollyhocks from an old self-seeded colony at
Opal Farm, and every available vase, bowl, and pitcher had something in
it. How I laboured! I washed jars, sorted colours, and freshened still
passable arrangements of the day before, and all the while I felt sure
that Maria was watching me, with an amused twinkle in the tail of her
eye!

One day, the middle of last week, the temperature dropped suddenly, and
we fled from camp to the house for twenty-four hours, lighted the logs
in the hall, and actually settled down to a serious game of whist in the
evening, Maria Maxwell, _The Man_, Bart, and I. Yes, I know how you
detest the game, but I--though I am not exactly amused by it--rather
like it, for it gives occupation at once for the hands and thoughts and
a cover for studying the faces and moods of friends without the reproach
of staring.

By the way, _The Man_ has hired half the house from Amos Opie--it was
divided several years ago--and established helter-skelter bachelor
quarters at Opal Farm. Bart has told him, over and over again, how
welcome he is to stay here, under any and all conditions, while he works
in the vicinity, but he says that he needs a lot of room for his traps,
muddy boots, etc., while Opie, a curious Jack-at-all-trades, gives him
his breakfast. I'm wondering if _The Man_ felt that he was intruding
upon Maria by staying here, or if she has any Mrs. Grundy ideas and was
humpy to him, or even suggested that he would better move up the road.
She is quite capable of it!

However, he seems glad enough to drop in to dinner of an evening now,
and the two are so delightfully cordial and unembarrassed in their talk,
neither yielding a jot to the other, in the resolute spinster and
bachelor fashion, that I must conclude that his going was probably a
natural happening.

This evening, while Maria and I were waiting together for the men to
finish toying with their coffee cups and match-boxes and emerge
refreshed from the delightful indolence of the after-dinner smoke, the
odour of the flowers--intensified both by dampness and the
woodsmoke--was very manifest.

"How do you like your employment?" asked Maria.

"I like the decorative and inventive part of it," I said, thinking into
the fire, "but I believe"--and here I hesitated as a chain of peculiar
green flame curled about the log and held my attention. "That it is
quite as possible to overdo the house decoration with flowers as it is
to spoil a nice bit of lawn with too many fantastic flower beds!" Bart
broke in quite unexpectedly, coming behind me and raising my face, one
hand beneath my chin. "Isn't that what you were thinking, my Lady Lazy?"

"Truly it was, only I never meant to let it pop out so suddenly and
rudely," I was forced to confess. "In one way it would seem impossible
to have too many flowers about, and yet in another it is unnatural, for
are not nature's unconscious effects made by using colour as a central
point, a focus that draws the eye from a more sombre and soothing
setting?"

"How could we enjoy a sunset that held the whole circle of the horizon
at once?" chimed in _The Man_, suddenly, as if reading my thoughts. "Or
twelve moons?" added Bart, laughing.

No, Mrs. Evan, I am convinced by so short a trial as two weeks that the
art of arranging flowers for the house is first, your plan of having
some to greet the guest as he enters, a bit of colour or coolness in
each room where we pause to read or work or chat, and a table
garnishing to render aesthetic the aspect and surroundings of the human
animal at his feeding time; otherwise, except at special seasons of
festivity, a surplus of flowers in the house makes for restlessness, not
peace. Two days ago I had thirty-odd vases and jars filled with flowers,
and I felt, as I sat down to sew, as if I was trespassing in a bazaar!
Also, if there are too many jars of various flowers in one room, it is
impossible that each should have its own individuality.

To-day I began my new plan. I put away a part of my jars and vases and
deliberately thought out what flowers I would use before gathering them.

The day being overcast though not threatening, merely the trail, as it
were, of the storm that had passed, and the den being on the north side
of the house and finished in dark woodwork and furniture, I gathered
nasturtiums in three shades for it, the deep crimson, orange-scarlet,
and canary-yellow, but not too many--a blue-and-white jar of the Chinese
"ginger" pattern for one corner of the mantel-shelf, and for the
Japanese well buckets, that are suspended from the central hanging lamp
by cords, a cascade of blossoms of the same colour still attached to
their own fleshy vines and interspersed with the foliage. Strange as it
may seem, this little bit of pottery, though of a peculiar deep pink,
harmonizes wonderfully well with the barbaric nasturtium colours. There
seems to be a kind of magic blended with the form and colour of these
buckets, plain and severe in shape, that swing so gracefully from their
silken cords, for they give grace to every flower that touches them.
When filled with stiff stalks of lilies-of-the-valley or tulips, they
have an equally distinguished air as when hung with the bells of
columbines or garlands of flowering honeysuckles twisted about the cords
climbing quite up to the lamp.

In the hall I placed my tallest green-glass jar upon the greeting table
and filled it with long stalks of red and gold Canada lilies from the
very bottom of Amos Opie's field, where the damp meadow-grass begins to
make way for tussocks and the marshy ground begins.

The field now is as beautiful as a dream; the early grasses have
ripened, and above them, literally by the hundreds,--rank, file,
regiment, and platoon,--stand these lilies, some stalks holding twenty
bells, ranged as regularly as if the will of man had set them there, and
yet poised so gracefully that we know at once that no human touch has
placed them. I wish that you could have stood with me in the doorway of
the camp and looked across that field this morning. Bart declared the
sight to be the first extra dividend upon our payment to Amos Opie for
leaving the grass uncut.

I left the stalks of the lilies full three feet long and used only their
own foliage, together with some broad-leaved grasses, to break the too
abrupt edge of the glass. This is a point that must be remembered in
arranging flowers, the keeping the relative height and habit of the
plant in the mind's eye. These lilies, gathered with short stems and
massed in a crowded bunch, at once lose their individuality and become
mere little freckled yellow gamins of the flower world.

A rather slender jar or vase also gives an added sense of height;
long-stemmed flowers should never be put in a flat receptacle, no matter
how adroitly they may be held in place. Only last month I was called
upon to admire a fine array of long-stemmed roses that were held in a
flat dish by being stuck in wet sand, and even though this was covered
by green moss, the whole thing had a painfully artificial and embalmed
look, impossible to overcome.

For the living room, which is in quiet green tones and
chintz-upholstered wicker furniture, I gathered Shirley poppies. They
are not as large and perfectly developed as those I once saw in your
garden from fall-sown seed, but they are so delicately tinted and the
petals so gracefully winged that it seemed like picking handfuls of
butterflies.

Maria Maxwell has shown me how, by looking at the stamens, I can tell if
the flower is newly opened, for by picking only such they will last two
full days. How lasting are youthful impressions! She remembers all these
things, though she has had no very own garden these ten years and more.
Will the Infant remember creeping into my cot in these summer mornings,
cuddling and being crooned to like a veritable nestling, until her
father gains sufficient consciousness to take his turn and delight her
by the whistled imitation of a few simple bird songs? Yes, I think so,
and I would rather give her this sort of safeguard to keep off harmful
thoughts and influences than any worldly wisdom.

The poppies I arranged in my smallest frosted-white and cut-glass vases
in two rows on the mantel-shelf, before the quaint old oblong mirror,
making it look like a miniature shrine. Celia Thaxter had this way of
using them, if I remember rightly, the reflection in the glass doubling
the beauty and making the frail things seem alive!

For the library, where oak and blue are the prevailing tints, I filled a
silver tankard with a big bunch of blue cornflowers, encircled by the
leaves of "dusty miller," and placed it on the desk.

The dining-room walls are of deep dark red that must be kept cool in
summer. At all seasons I try to have the table decorations low enough
not to oblige us to peer at one another through a green mist, and to-day
I made a wreath of hay-scented ferns and ruby-spotted Japan lilies
(_Speciosum rubrum_, the tag says--they were sent as extras with my
seeds), by combining two half-moon dishes, and in the middle set a
slender, finely cut, flaring vase holding two perfect stems, each
bearing half a dozen lily buds and blossoms. These random bulbs are the
first lilies of my own planting. There are a few stalks of the white
Madonna lilies in the grass of the old garden and a colony of tiger
lilies and an upright red lily with different sort of leaves, all
clustered at the root, following the tumble-down wall, the rockery to
be. I am fascinated by these Japanese lilies and desire more, each stalk
is so sturdy, each flower so beautifully finished and set with jewels
and then powdered with gold, as it were. Pray tell me something about
the rest of the family! Do they come within my range and pocket, think
you? The first cost of a fair-sized bed would be considerable, but if
they are things that by care will endure, it is something to save up
for, _when the rose bed is completed_--take note of that!

When Bart came home this afternoon, he walked through the rooms before
going out and commented on the different flowers, entirely simple in
arrangement, and lingered over them, touching and taking pleasure in
them in a way wholly different from last week, when each room was a
jungle and I was fairly suffering from flower surfeit.

Now I find myself taking note of happy combinations of colour in other
people's gardens and along the highways for further experiments. I seem
to remember looking over a list of flower combinations and suggestions
in your garden book. Will you lend it to me?

By the way, opal effects seem to circle about the place this season--the
sunsets, the farm-house windows, and finally that rainy night when we
were playing whist, when _The Man_, taking a pencil from his pocket,
pulled out a little chamois bag that, being loose at one end, shed a
shower of the unset stones upon the green cloth, where they lay winking
and blinking like so many fiery coals.

"Are you a travelling jeweler's shop?" quizzed Bart.

"No," replied _The Man_, watching the stones where they lay, but not
attempting to pick them up; "the opal is my birth stone, and I've
always had a fancy for picking them up at odd times and carrying them
with me for luck!"

"I thought that they are considered unlucky," said Maria, holding one in
the palm of her hand and watching the light play upon it.

"That is as one reads them," said _The Man_; "to me they are
occasionally contradictory, that is all; otherwise they represent
adaptation to circumstances, and inexpensive beauty, which must always
be a consolation."

Then he gave us each one, "to start a collection," he said. I shall have
mine set as a talisman for the Infant. I like this new interpretation of
the stone, for to divine beauty in simple things is a gift equal to
genius.

Maria, however, insisted upon giving an old-fashioned threepenny bit,
kept as a luck penny in the centre of her purse, in exchange. How can
any woman be so devoid of even the little sentiment of gifts as she is?

A moment later _The Man from Everywhere_ electrified us by saying, in
the most casual manner, "Now that we are on the subject of opals, did I
tell you that, being in some strange manner drawn to the place, I have
made Opie an offer for the Opal Farm?"

"Good enough! but what for?" exclaimed Bart, nearly exposing a very
poor hand.

"How splendid!" I cried, checking an impulse to throw my arms around his
neck so suddenly that I shied my cards across the room--"Then the meadow
need never be cut again!"

"What a preposterous idea! Did he accept the offer?" jerked Maria
Maxwell, with a certain eagerness.

_The Man's_ face, already of a healthy outdoor hue, took a deeper colour
above the outline of his closely cropped black beard, which he declined
to shave, in spite of prevailing custom.

"I'm afraid my popularity as a neighbour is a minor quality, when even
my Lady Lazy makes it evident that her enthusiasm is for meadow weeds
and not myself!"

"When would you live there?" asked practical Bart.

"All the time, when I'm not elsewhere!" said _The Man_. "No, seriously,
I want permanent headquarters, a house to keep my traps in, and it can
easily be somewhat remodelled and made comfortable. I want to own a
resting-place for the soles of my feet when they are tired, and is it
strange that I should pitch my tent near two good friends?"

It was a good deal for _The Man_ to say, and instantly there was
hand-shaking and back-clapping between Bart and himself, and the game
became hopelessly mixed.

As for Maria, she as nearly sniffed audibly at the idea as a well-bred
woman could. It is strange, I had almost fancied during the course of
the past month, and especially this evening, that _The Man's_ glance,
when toward her, held a special approval of a different variety than it
carried to Bart and me! If Maria is going to worry him, she shall go
back to her flat! I've often heard Bart say that men's feelings are very
woundable at forty, while at twenty-five a hurt closes up like water
after a pebble has been dropped in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yes, Maria _has_ been rude to _The Man_, and in my house, too, where she
represents me! Anastasia told me! I suppose I really ought not to have
listened, but it was all over before I realized what she was saying.

"Yes, mem, for all Miss Marie do be fixed out, so tasty and pleasant
like to everybody, and so much chicked up by the country air, she's no
notion o' beaus or of troubling wid the men!"

"What do you mean, Anastasia?" said I, in perfect innocence. "Of course
Miss Maria is not a young girl to go gadding about!"

"It's not gadding I mean, mem, but here on the porch, one foine night,
jest before the last time Mister Blake went off fer good, they was sat
there some toime, so still that, says I to meself, 'When they do foind
spach, it'll be something worth hearing!'

"'Do I annoy you by staying here? Would you prefer I went elsewhere?'
says he, and well I moind the words, for Oi thought an offer was on the
road, and as 'twas the nearest I'd been to wan, small wonder I got
excoited! Then Miss Marie spoke up, smooth as a knife cutting ice
cream,--'To speak frankly,' says she, 'you do not exactly annoy me, but
I'd much rather you went elsewhere!' Och, but it broke me heart, the
sound of it!"

       *       *       *       *       *




LIST OF FLOWER COMBINATIONS FOR THE TABLE FROM BARBARA'S _GARDEN BOKE_


HEAVILY SCENTED FLOWERS, SUCH AS HYACINTHS, LEMON AND AURATUM LILIES,
POLYANTHUS NARCISSUS, MAGNOLIAS, LILACS, AND THE LIKE, SHOULD BE
AVOIDED.

  Snowdrops and pussy-willows.
  Hepaticas and moss.
  Spice-bush and shad-bush sprays.
  Trailing arbutus and sweet, white garden violets.
  Double daffodils and willow sprays.
  Crocus buds and moss.
  Blue garden scillas and wild white saxifrage.
  Black-birch catkins and wind-flowers.
  Plants of the various wild violets, according to season, arranged
      in an earthen pan with a moss or bark covering.
  Old-fashioned myrtle, with its glossy leaves, and single narcissus,
      or English primroses.
  Bleeding-heart and young ferns.
  English border primroses in small rose bowls.
  Lilies-of-the-valley, with plenty of their own leaves, and poets'
      narcissus.
  Tulip-tree flowers and leaves.
  The wild red-and-gold columbine with young white-birch sprays.
  Pinxter flower and the New York or wood fern.
  Jack-in-the-pulpit with its own leaves, in a bark or moss
      covered jar.
  Pink moccasin-flowers with ferns, in bark-covered jar.
  Pansies with ivy or laurel leaves, arranged in narrow dishes to
      form a parterre about a central mirror.
  Iceland poppies with small ferns or grasses.
  May pinks and forget-me-nots.
  Blue larkspurs and deutzia (always put white with blue flowers).
  Peonies with evergreen ferns, in a central jar.
  Sweet-william, arranged in separate colours for parterre effect
      or in a large blue-and-white bowl, with graceful sprays of
      honeysuckle flowers.
  Wild roses with plenty of buds and foliage, in blue-and-white
      bowls.
  Roses in large sprays with branches of the young leaves of copper
      beech--or masses of Chinese honeysuckle.
  Roses with short stems arranged with their own or _rugosa_ foliage
      in blue-and-white dishes that have coarse wire netting fitted
      to the top to keep the flowers in place.
  White field daisies, clover, and flowering grasses, in a large
      bowl or jar.
  Mountain laurel with its own leaves, in central jar and parterre
      dishes.
  Nasturtiums, in cut-glass bowl or vase, with the foliage of
      lemon verbena.
  Sweet peas of five colours with a fringe of maiden-hair ferns,
      the deepest colour in a central jar, with other smaller
      bowls at corners, and small ferns laid around mirror and
      on cloth between.
  Japan lilies, single flowers, in parterre dishes with ivy leaves, and
      sprays in central vase.
  Balsams arranged in effect of set borders.
  Asters in separate colours.
  Spotted-leaved pipsissewa of the woods with fern border, in bark-covered
      dish.
  Red and gold bell meadow lilies, in large jar, with field grasses.
  Gladioli--the flowers separated from the stalks and arranged
      with various leaves for parterre effect, or stalks laid upon the
      cloth with evergreen ferns to separate the places at a
      formal meal.
  Sweet sultan, in separate colours, in rose bowls, with fragrant
      geranium or lemon-verbena foliage.
  Shirly poppies with grasses or green rye, in four slender vases
      about a larger centrepiece.
  Margaret or picotee carnations with mignonette, arranged loosely
      in a cut-glass vase or bowl.
  Green rye, wheat, or oats with the blue garden cornflower--or
      wild blue chickory.
  Wild asters with heavy tasselled marsh-grasses.
  Goldenrods with purple iron weed and vines of wild white
      clematis, arranged about a flat dish of peaches and pears.
  All through autumn place your central mirror on a mat made by
      laying freshly gathered coloured leaves upon the cloth.
  Wallflowers and late pansies.
  White Japanese anemonies and ferns.
  Grass of Parnassus, ladies tresses, and marsh shield ferns.
  Garden chrysanthemums, in blue-and-white jars and bowls, on a
      large mat of brown magnolia leaves.
  Sprays of yellow witch-hazel flowers and leaves of red oak.
  Sprays of coral winterberry, from which leaves have been
      removed, and white-pine tassels.
  Club-mosses, small evergreen ferns, and partridge vine with its
      red berries, in a bark-covered dish of earth.




XI

A SEASIDE GARDEN

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)


_Gray Rocks, July 19._ Your epistle upon the evils of an excess of
flowers in the house found us here with the Cortrights and Bradfords,
and I read it with Lavinia and Sylvia on either side, as the theme had
many notes in it familiar to us all! There are certainly times and
seasons when the impulse is overpowering to lay hold of every flower
that comes in the way and gather it to one's self, to cram every
possible nook and corner with this portable form of beauty and fairly
indulge in a flower orgie. Then sets in a reaction that shows, as in so
many things, the middle path is the best for every day. Also there are
many enthusiastic gardeners, both among those who grow their own flowers
and those who cause them to be grown, who spare neither pains nor money
until the flowers are gathered; then their grip relaxes, and the house
arrangement of the fruit of their labour is left to chance.

In many cases, where a professional gardener is in charge, several
baskets, containing a confused mass of blossoms, are deposited daily in
porch or pantry, often at a time when the mistress is busy, and they are
either overlooked or at the last moment crammed into the first
receptacle that comes to hand, from their very inopportuneness creating
almost a feeling of dislike.

When once lodged, they are frequently left to their fate until they
become fairly noisome, for is there anything more offensive to aesthetic
taste than blackened and decaying flowers soaking in stagnant water?

Was it not Auerbach, in his _Poet and Merchant_, who said, "The lovelier
a thing is in its perfection, the more terrible it becomes through its
corruption"? and certainly this applies to flowers.

Flowers, like all of the best and lasting pleasures, must be taken a
little seriously from the sowing of the seed to the placing in the vase,
that they may become the incense of home, and the most satisfactory way
of choosing them for this use is to make a daily tour about the garden,
or, if a change is desired, through the fields and highways, and, with
the particular nook you wish to fill in mind, gather them yourself.

Even the woman with too wide a selection to gather from personally can
in this way indicate what she wishes.

In the vegetable garden the wise man thinks out his crop and arranges a
variety for the table; no one wishes every vegetable known to the season
every day, and why should not the eye be educated and nourished by an
equal variety?

We are all very much interested in your flower-holders of natural wood,
and I will offer you an idea in exchange, after the truly cooeperative
Garden, You, and I plan. In the flower season, instead of using your
embroidered centrepieces for the table, which become easily stained and
defaced by having flowers laid upon them, make several artistic table
centres of looking-glass, bark, moss, or a combination of all three.

Lavinia Cortright and I, as a beginning, have oval mirrors of about
eighteen inches in length, with invisibly narrow nickel bindings.
Sometimes we use these with merely an edge of flowers or leaves and a
crystal basket or other low arrangement of flowers in the centre. The
glass is only a beginning, other combinations being a birch-bark mat,
several inches wider than the glass, that may be used under it so that a
wide border shows, or the mat by itself as a background for delicate
wood flowers and ferns. A third mat I have made of stout cardboard and
covered with lichens, reindeer moss, and bits of mossy bark, and I never
go to the woods but what I see a score of things that fairly thrust
themselves before me and offer to blend with one of these backgrounds,
and by holding the eye help to render meal-times less "foody," as Sukey
Latham puts it, though none the less nourishing.

Last night when we gathered at dinner, a few moments after our arrival
and our first meeting at this cottage, I at once became aware that
though host and hostess were the same delightful couple, we were not
dining at Meadow's End, their Oaklands cottage, but at Gray Rocks, with
silver sea instead of green grass below the windows. While the sea
surroundings were brought indoors and on the centre of the dinner table
the mirror was edged by a border of sea-sand, glistening pebbles and
little shells were arranged as a background instead of mosses and
lichens, and rich brown seaweeds still moist with the astringent tonic
sea breath edged this frame, and the more delicate rose-coloured and
pale green weeds seemed floating upon the glass, that held a giant
periwinkle shell filled with the pink star-shaped sabbatia, or sea pink,
of the near-by salt marshes. There was no effort, no strain after
effect, but a consistent preparation of the eye for the simple meal of
sea food that followed.

In front of the cottage the rocks slope quickly to the beach, but on
either side there is a stretch of sand pocketed among the rocks, and in
the back a dune stops abruptly at the margin of wide salt meadows,
creek-fed and unctuous, as befits the natural gardens of the sea.

The other cottages lying to the eastward are gay in red-and-white
striped awnings, and porch and window boxes painted red or green are
filled with geraniums, nasturtiums, petunias,--any flowers, in short,
that will thrive in the broiling sun, while some of the owners have
planted buoy-like barrels at the four corners of their enclosures and
filled them with the same assortment of foliage plants with which they
would decorate a village lawn. This use of flowers seemed at once to
draw the coolness from the easterly breeze and intensify the heat that
vibrates from the sand.

Have you ever noticed that the sea in these latitudes has no affinity
for the brightest colours, save as it is a mirror for the fleeting
flames of sunrise and sunset?

The sea-birds are blended tints of rock, sand, sky, and water, save the
dash of coral in bill and foot of a few, just as the coral of the
wild-rose hips blends with the tawny marsh-grasses. Scarlet is a colour
abhorred even by the marshes, until late in autumn the blaze of samphire
consumes them with long spreading tongues of flame. How can people be
so senseless as to come seaward to cool their bodies, and yet so
surround themselves with scarlet that it is never out of range of the
eye?

Lavinia Cortright and the botanical Bradfords, as Evan calls them,
because though equally lovers of flowers, they go further than some for
the reason why that lies hid beneath the colour and perfume, have laid
out and are still developing a sand garden that, while giving the
cottage home the restful air that is a garden's first claim, has still
the distinct identity of the sand and sea!

To begin, with one single exception, they have drawn upon the wild for
this garden, even as you are doing in the restoration of your knoll.
Back of the cottage a dozen yards is a sand ridge covering some fairly
good, though mongrel, loam, for here, as along most of the coasts of
sounds and bays, the sea, year by year, has bitten into the soil and at
the same time strewn it with sand. Considering this as the garden
boundary, a windbreak of good-sized bayberry bushes has been placed
there, not in a stiff line, but in blended groups, enclosing three
sides, these bays being taken from a thicket of them farther toward the
marshes.

An alley from the back porch into this enclosure is bordered on either
side by bushes of beach plum, that, when covered with feathery white
bloom in May, before the leaves appear, gives the sandy shore the only
orchard touch it knows. Of course the flowering period is over when the
usual shore season begins, though nowadays there is no off time--people
go to shore and country when they are moved; yet the beach plum is a
picturesque bush at any time, especially when, in September, it is
loaded with the red purple fruit. In the two spaces on either side the
alley the sand is filled with massed plants that, when a little more
time has been given them for stretching and anchoring their roots, will
straightway weave a flower mat upon the sand.

Down beyond the next point, one day last autumn, Horace and Sylvia found
a plantation of our one New England cactus, the prickly pear (_Opuntia
opuntia_). We have it here and there in our rocky pasture; but in
greater heat and with better underfeeding it seemed a bit of a tropical
plain dropped on the eastern coast. Do you know the thing? The leaves
are shaped like the fans of a lobster's tail and sometimes are
several-jointed, smooth except for occasional tufts of very treacherous
spikes, and of a peculiar semitranslucent green; the half-double flowers
set on the leaf edges are three inches across and of a brilliant
sulphur-yellow, with tasselled stamens; the fruit is fleshy, somewhat
fig-shaped, and of a dark red when ripe--altogether a very decorative
plant, though extremely difficult to handle.

After surveying the plantation on all sides, the tongs used by the
oyster dredges suggested themselves to Horace, and thus grasped, the
prickly pears were safely moved and pegged in their new quarters with
long pieces of bent wire, the giant equivalents of the useful hairpins
that I recommended for pegging down your ferns.

Now the entire plot of several yards square, apparently untroubled by
the removal, is in full bloom, and has been for well-nigh a month, they
say, though the individual blossoms are but things of a day. Close by,
another yellow flower, smaller but more pickable, is just now waving,
the rock rose or frostweed, bearing two sorts of flowers: the
conspicuous yellow ones, somewhat resembling small evening primroses,
while all the ground between is covered with an humble member of the
rock rose family--the tufted beach heather with its intricate branches,
reminding one more of a club-moss than a true flowering plant. Not a
scrap of sand in the enclosure is left uncovered, and the various plants
are set closely, like the grasses and wild flowers of a meadow, the sand
pinweed that we gather, together with sea lavender, for winter bouquets
much resembling a flowering grass.

The rabbit-foot clover takes kindly to the sandy soil, and, as it
flowers from late May well into September, and holds its little furry
tails like autumn pussy-willows until freezing weather, makes a very
interesting sort of bed all by itself, and massed close to it, as if
recognizing the family relationship, is the little creeping bush clover
with its purplish flowers.

Next, set thickly in a mass representing a stout bush, comes the fleshy
beach pea with rosy purple flowers. When it straggles along according to
its sweet will, it has a poor and weedy look, but massed so that the
somewhat difficult colour is concentrated, it is very decorative, and it
serves as a trellis for the trailing wild bean, a sand lover that has a
longer flowering season.

A patch of a light lustrous purple, on closer view, proves to be a mass
of the feathered spikes of blazing star or colic-root, first cousin of
the gay-feather of the West, that sometimes grows six feet high and has
been welcomed to our gardens.

On the opposite side of the beach-plum alley, the Bradfords have made
preparations for autumn glory, such as we always drive down to the marsh
lands from Oaklands not only to see but to gather and take home. Masses
of the fleshy tufted seaside goldenrod, now just beginning to throw up
its stout flowerstalks, flank a bed of wild asters twenty feet across.
Here are gathered all the asters that either love or will tolerate dry
soil, a certain bid for their favour having been made by mixing several
barrels of stiff loam with the top sand, as an encouragement until the
roots find the hospitable mixture below.

The late purple aster (_patens_) with its broad clasping leaves, the
smooth aster (_laevis_) with its violet-blue flowers, are making good
bushes and preparing for the pageant. Here is the stiff white-heath
aster, the familiar Michaelmas daisy, that is so completely covered with
snowy flowers that the foliage is obliterated, and proves its hold upon
the affections by its long string of names,--frostweed, white rosemary,
and farewell summer being among them,--and also the white-wreath aster,
with the flowers ranged garland-wise among the rigid leaves, and the
stiff little savory-leaved aster or sand starwort with pale violet rays.
Forming a broad, irregular border about the asters are stout dwarf
bushes of the common wild rose (_humilis_), that bears its deep pink
flowers in late spring and early summer and then wears large round hips
that change slowly from green to deep glowing red, in time to make a
frame of coral beads for the asters.

Outside the hedge of bays, where a trodden pathway leads to the boat
landing, the weathered rocks, washed with soft tints blended of the
breath of sea mist and sunset rays, break through the sand. In the lee
of these, held in place by a line of stones, is a long, low bed of
large-flowered portulaca, borrowed from inland gardens, and yet so in
keeping with its surroundings as to seem a native flower of sea sands.

The fleshy leaves at a little distance suggest the form of many plants
of brackish marsh and creek edges, and even the glasswort itself. When
the day is gray, the flowers furl close and disappear, as it were, but
when the sun beats full upon the sand, a myriad upraised fleshy little
arms stretch out, each holding a coloured bowl to catch the sunbeams, as
if the heat made molten the sand of quartz and turned it into pottery in
tints of rose, yellow, amber, scarlet, and carnation striped. It was a
bold experiment, this garden in the sand, but already it is making good.

Then, too, what a refreshment to the eyes is it, when the unbroken
expanse of sky and sea before the house tires, to turn them landward
over the piece of flowers toward the cool green marshes ribboned with
the pale pink camphor-scented fleabane, the almost intangible sea
lavender, the great rose mallows and cat-tail flags of the wet ground,
the false indigo that, in the distance, reminds one of the broom of
Scottish hills, the orange-fringed orchis, pink sabbatia, purple
maritime gerardia, milkwort, the groundsel tree, that covers itself with
feathers in autumn, until, far away beyond the upland meadows, the
silver birches stand as outposts to the cool oak woods, in whose shade
the splendid yellow gerardia, or downy false foxglove, nourishes. Truly,
while the land garden excels in length of season and profusion, the
gardens of the sea appeal to the lighter fancies and add the charmed
spice of variety to out-of-door life.

One of the most interesting features of this cottage and its
surroundings is the further transplanting of Martin Cortright from his
city haunts. At Meadow's End, though he works in the garden in a
dilettante sort of way with Lavinia, takes long walks with father, and
occasionally ventures out for a day's fishing with either or both of my
men, he is still the bookworm who dives into his library upon every
opportunity and has never yet adapted his spine comfortably to the
curves of a hammock! In short he seems to love flowers historically--more
for the sake of those in the past who have loved and written of them
than for their own sake.

But here, even as I began to write to you, Mary Penrose, entrenched in a
nook among the steep rocks between the cottage and the sea, a figure
coming up the sand bar, that runs northward and at low water shows a
smooth stretch a mile in length, caught my eye. Laboriously but
persistently it came along; next I saw by the legs that it was a man, a
moment later that he was lugging a large basket and that a potato fork
protruded from under one arm, and finally that it was none other than
Martin Cortright, who had been hoeing diligently in the sand and mud for
a couple of hours, that his guests might have the most delectable of all
suppers,--steamed clams, fresh from the water, the condition alone under
which they may be eaten _sans peur et sans reproche_!




XII

THE TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_Woodridge, August 8._ Back again in our camp, we thought to pause
awhile, rest on our oars, and drift comfortably with the gentle summer
tide of things. We have transplanted all the ferns and wild herbs for
which we have room, and as a matter of course trees and shrubs must wait
until they have shed their leaves in October. That is, all the trees
that _do_ shed. The exceptions are the evergreens, of which the river
woods contain any number in the shape of hemlocks, spruces, and young
white pines, the offspring, I take it, of a plantation back of the
Windom farm, for we have not found them anywhere else.

The best authorities upon the subject of evergreens say that trees of
small size should be transplanted either in April, before they have
begun to put on their dressy spring plumes, or, if the season be not too
hot and dry, or the distance considerable, in August, after this growth
has matured, time thus being given for them to become settled in the
ground before winter.

We weighed the matter well. The _pros_ in favour of spring planting lay
in the fact that rain is very likely to be plentiful in April, and given
but half a chance, everything grows best in spring; the _cons_ being
that the spring rush is usually overpowering, that in a late season the
frost would not be fairly out of the knoll and ground by the fence,
where we need a windbreak, before garden planting time, and that during
the winter clearing that will take place in the river valley, leaf fires
may be started by the workmen that will run up the banks and menace our
treasure-trove of evergreens.

The _pros_ for August consisted mainly of the pith of a proverb and a
bit of mad Ophelia's sanity: "There is no time like the present" and "We
know what we are, but know not what we may be!"

At present we have a good horse, Larry, and plenty of time, the _con_
being, suppose we have a dry, hot autumn. The fact that we have a new
water-barrel on wheels and several long-necked water-pots is only a
partial solution of the difficulty, for the nearest well is an
old-fashioned arrangement with a sweep, located above the bank wall at
Opal Farm. This well is an extremely picturesque object in the
landscape, but as a water-producer as inadequate as the shaving-mug with
which the nervous gentleman, disturbed at his morning task, rushed out
to aid in extinguishing a fire!

Various predictions as to the weather for the month have been lavished
upon us, the first week having produced but one passing shower. Amos
Opie foresees a muggy, rainless period. Larry declares for much rain, as
it rained at new moon and again at first quarter; but, as he says, as if
to release himself from responsibility, "That's the way we read it in
Oireland, but maybe, as this is t'other side of the warld, it's all the
other way round wid rain!" Barney was noncommittal, but then his
temperament is of the kind that usually regrets whatever is.

For three or four days we remained undecided, and then _The Man from
Everywhere_ brought about a swift decision for August transplanting, by
the information that the general clearing of the woodlands would begin
November first, the time for fulfilling the contract having been
shortened by six months at the final settlement.

We covet about fifty specimen pines and hemlocks for the knoll and fully
two hundred little hemlocks for the windbreaks, so we at once began the
work and are giving two days a week to the digging and transporting and
the other four to watering. That is, Bart and Larry are doing this; I am
looking on, making suggestions as to which side of a tree should be in
front, nipping off broken twigs, and doing other equally light and
pleasant trifles.

Our system of transplanting is this: we have any number of old burlap
feed bags, which, having become frayed and past their usefulness, we
bought at the village store for a song. These Larry filled with the
soft, elastic moss that florists use, of which there is any quantity in
the low backwater meadows of the river. A good-sized tree (and we are
not moving any of more than four or five feet in height; larger ones, it
seems, are better moved in early winter with a ball of frozen earth) has
a bag to itself, the roots, with some earth, being enveloped in the
moss, the bag as securely bound about them as possible with heavy cord,
and the whole thing left to soak at the river edge while the next one is
being wrapped. Of the small hemlocks for the windbreak,--and we are
using none over two or three feet for this purpose, as we want to pinch
them in and make them stocky,--the roots of three or four will often go
into a bag.

When enough for a day's planting is thus collected, we go home, stack
them in the shade, and the next morning the resetting begins! The bags
are not opened until they are by the hole in which the trees are to be
placed, which, by the way, is always made and used after the directions
you gave us for rose planting; and I'm coming to agree with you that the
success in gardening lies more than half in the putting under ground,
and that the proper spreading and securing of roots in earth thoroughly
loosened to allow new roots to feel and find their way is one of the
secrets of what is usually termed "luck"!

This may sound like a very easy way of acquiring trees, but it sometimes
takes an hour to loosen a sturdy pine of four feet. Of course a
relentless hand that stops at nothing, with a grub-axe and spade, could
do it in fifteen minutes, but the roots would be cut or bruised and the
pulling and tugging be so violent that not a bit of earth would cleave,
and thus the fatal drying process set in almost before the digging was
completed.

Larry first loosens the soil all about the tree with a crowbar,
dislodging any binding surface stones in the meantime; then the roots
are followed to the end and secured entire when possible, a bit of
detective work more difficult than it sounds in a bank where forest
trees of old growth have knit roots with saplings for mutual protection.

Setting-out day sees a procession of three water-carriers going Indian
file up one side of the knoll and down the other. Bart declares that by
the time his vacation is over he will be sufficiently trained to become
captain of the local fire company, which consists of an antique engine,
of about the capacity of one water-barrel, and a bucket brigade.

This profuse use of water, upon the principle of imitation, has brought
about another demand for it on the premises. The state of particularly
clay-and-leaf-mouldy perspiration in which Bart finds himself these days
cries aloud for a shower-bath, nor is he or his boots and clothing in a
suitable condition for tramping through the house and turning the family
bath-tub into a trough wherein one would think flower-pots had been
washed.

With the aid of Amos Opie an oil-barrel has been trussed up like a
miniature windmill tank in the end of the camp barn, one end of which
rests on the ground, and being cellarless has an earth floor. Around the
supports of this tank is fastened an unbleached cotton curtain, and when
standing within and pulling a cord attached to an improvised spray, the
contents of the barrel descend upon Bart's person with hygienic
thoroughness, the only drawback being that twelve pails of water have to
be carried up the short ladder that leads from floor to barrel top each
time the shower is used. Bart, however, seems to enjoy the process
immensely, and Larry, by the way in which he lingers about the place and
grins, evidently has a secret desire to experiment with it himself.

Larry has been a great comfort up to now, but we both have an undefined
idea that one of his periods of "rest" is approaching. He works with
feverish haste, alternating with times of sitting and looking at the
ground, that I fear bodes no good. He also seems to take a diabolic
pleasure in tormenting Amos Opie as regards the general make-up and
pedigree of his beloved hound David.

David has human intelligence in a setting that it would be difficult to
classify for a dog-show; a melancholy bloodhound strain certainly
percolates thoroughly through him, and his long ears, dewlaps, and front
legs, tending to bow, separate him from the fox "'ounds" of Larry's
experience. To Amos Opie David is the only type of hound worthy of the
name; consequently there has been no little language upon the subject.
That is, Larry has done the talking, punctuated by contemptuous "huhs"
and sniffs from Amos, until day before yesterday. On this day David went
on a hunting trip extending from five o'clock in the afternoon until the
next morning, during which his voice, blending with two immature cries,
told that he was ranging miles of country in company with a pair of
thoroughbred fox-hound pups, owned by the postmaster, the training of
which Amos Opie was superintending, and owing to an attack of rheumatism
had delegated to David, whose reliability for this purpose could not be
overestimated according to his master's way of thinking. For a place in
some ways so near to civilization, the hills beyond the river woods
abound in fox holes, and David has conducted some good runs on his own
account, it seems; but this time alack! alack! he came limping slowly
home, footsore and bedraggled, followed by his pupils and bearing a huge
dead cat of the half-wild tribe that, born in a barn and having no
owner, takes to a prowling life in the woods.

I cannot quite appreciate the enormity of the offence, but doubtless Dr.
Russell and your husband can, as they live in a fox-hunting country. It
seems that a rabbit would have been bad enough, something however, to
be condoned,--but not a cat! Instantly Amos fixed upon Larry as the
responsible cause of the calamity,--Larry, who is so soaked in a species
of folk-lore, blended of tradition, imagination, and high spirits that,
after hearing him talk, it is easy to believe that he deals in magic by
the aid of a black cat, and unfortunately the cat brought in by David
was of this colour!

Then Amos spoke, for David's honour was as his own, and Larry heard a
pronounced Yankee's opinion, not only of all the inhabitants of the
Emerald Isle, but of one in particular! After freeing his mind, he
threatened to free his house of Larry as a lodger, this being
particularly unfortunate considering the near approach of one of that
gentleman's times of retirement.

Last night I thought the sky had again cleared, for Amos discovered that
the postmaster did not suspect the cat episode, and as Larry had no
friends in the village through which it might leak out, the old man
seemed much relieved; also, Larry apparently is not a harbourer of
grievances. Within an hour, however, a second episode has further
strained the relationship of lodger and host, and it has snapped.

Though still quite stiff in the joints, Amos came over this morning to
do some little tinkering in the barn camp, especially in strengthening
the stays of the shower-bath tank, when, as he was on his knees
fastening a brace to a post, in some inexplicable manner the string was
pulled and the contents of the entire barrel of cold well-water were
released, the first sprinkle so astonishing and bewildering poor Amos
that he remained where he was, and so received a complete drenching.

Bart and Larry were up in the woods getting the day's load of hemlocks,
and I, hearing the spluttering and groans, went to Amos's rescue as well
as I could, and together with Maria Maxwell got him to the kitchen,
where hot tea and dry clothes should have completely revived him in
spite of age. As, however, to-day, it seems, is the anniversary of a
famous illness he acquired back in '64, on his return from the Civil
War, the peculiarities of which he has not yet ceased proclaiming, he is
evidently determined to celebrate it forthwith, so he has taken to his
bed, groaning with a stitch in his side. The doctor has been telephoned,
and Maria Maxwell, as usual bursting with energy, which on this occasion
takes a form between that of a dutiful daughter and a genuine country
neighbour, has gone over to Opal Farm to tidy up a bit until the doctor
gives his decision and some native woman, agreeable to Amos's taste, can
be found to look after the interesting yet aggravating crank.

But this is not all. Amos declines to allow Larry to lodge in the house
for another night, attributing the ducking to him, in spite of the fact
that he was at least six miles away. In this both Bart and I think Amos
right, for Larry's eye had a most inquiring expression on his return,
and I detected him slipping into the old barn at the first opportunity
to see if the tank was empty, while Bart says that he has been talking
to himself in a gleeful mood all the morning, and so he has decided
that, as Larry has worked long enough to justify it, he will buy him a
prepaid passage home to his daughter and see him off personally by
to-morrow's steamer. As Amos will have none of Larry, to send the man
into village lodgings would probably hasten his downfall. I did hope to
keep him until autumn, for he has taught me not a little gardening in a
genial and irresponsible sort of way, and the rose garden is laid out in
a manner that would do credit to a trained man, Larry having the rare
combination of seeing a straight line and yet being able to turn a
graceful curve. But even if Amos had been willing to allow him to sleep
over one of his attacks, it would have been a dubious example for
Barney, and in spite of the comfort he has been I now fully realize the
limitations of so many of his race, at once witty, warm-hearted,
soothing, and impossible; it is difficult not to believe what they say,
even when you know they are lying, and this condition is equally
demoralizing both to master and man.

_August 11._ Anastasia wept behind her apron when Larry left, but Barney
assumed a cheerfulness and interest in his work that he has never shown
before. Bart says that in spite of a discrepancy of twenty-odd years he
thinks that Larry, by his fund of stories and really wonderful jig
dancing, was diverting Anastasia's thoughts, and the comfortable savings
attached, from Barney, who, though doubtless a sober man and far more
durable in many ways, is much less interesting an object for the daily
contemplation of an emotional Irishwoman.

While Bart was in town yesterday seeing Larry started on his journey,
Maria and I, with the Infant tucked between in the buggy, went for an
outing under the gentle guidance of Romeo, who through constant practice
has become the most expert standing horse in the county. I'm only afraid
that his owners on their return may not appreciate this accomplishment.
Being on what Maria calls "a hunt for antiques," we drove in the
direction of Newham village, which you know is away from railroads and
has any number of old-time farms. We were not looking for
spinning-wheels and andirons, but old-fashioned roses and peonies,
especially the early double deep crimson variety that looks like a great
Jack rose. We located a number of these in June and promised to return
for our plunder in due season. Last year I bought some peony roots in
August, and they throve so well, blooming this spring, that I think it
is the best time for moving them.

In one of the houses where we bought pink-and-white peonies the woman
said she had a bed, as big as the barn-door, of "June" lilies, and that,
as they were going to build a hen-house next autumn on the spot where
they grew, she was going to lift some into one of her raised mounds (an
awful construction, being a cross between a gigantic dirt pie and a
grave), and said that I might have all the spare lily bulbs that I
wanted if I would give her what she termed a "hatching" of gladiolus
bulbs. Just at present the lilies have entirely disappeared, and nothing
but bare earth is visible, but I think from the description that they
must be the lovely Madonna lilies of grandmother's Virginia garden that
made a procession from the tea-house quite down to the rose garden,
like a bevy of slender young girls in confirmation array. If so, they do
not take kindly to handling, and I have an indistinct remembrance of
some rather unusual time of year when it must be done if necessary.

Please let me know about this, for I can be of little use in the moving
of the evergreens and I want something to potter about in the garden.
There are two places for a lily bed, but I am uncertain which is best
until I hear from you. Either will have to be thoroughly renovated in
the matter of soil, so that I am anxious to start upon the right basis.
One of these spots is in full sun, with a slope toward the orchard; in
the other the sun is cut off after one o'clock, though there are no
overhanging branches; there is also a third place, a squashy spot down
in the bend of the old wall.

On our return, toward evening, we met _The Man from Everywhere_ driving
down from the reservoir ground toward Opal Farm, a pink-cheeked young
fellow of about twenty sharing the road wagon with him. As he has again
been away for a few days, we drew up to exchange greetings and _The Man_
said, rather aside, "I'm almost sorry that Larry fell from the skies to
help out your gardening, for here is a young German who has come from a
distance, with a note from a man I know well, applying for work at the
quarry; but there will be nothing suitable for him there for several
months, for he's rather above the average. He would have done very well
for you, as, though he speaks little English, I make out that his father
was an under-forester in the fatherland. As it is, I'm taking him to the
farm with me for the night and will try to think of how I may help him
on in the morning."

Instantly both Maria and I began to tell of Larry's defection in
different keys, the young man meanwhile keeping up a deferential and
most astonishing bowing and smiling.

Having secured the seal of Bart's approval, Meyer has been engaged, and
after to-day we must accustom our ears to a change from Larry's rich
brogue to the juicy explosiveness of German; and worse yet, I must rack
my brains for the mostly forgotten dialect of the schoolroom language
that is learned with such pain and so quickly forgotten.

I'm wondering very much about _The Man's_ sudden return to Opal Farm and
if it will interfere with Maria Maxwell's daily care of Amos Opie; for,
as it turns out, he is really ill, the chill resulting from Larry's
prank having been the final straw, and no suitable woman having been
found, who has volunteered to tend the old man in the emergency, but
Maria! That is, to the extent of taking him food and giving him
medicines, for though in pain he is able to sit in an easy-chair. Maria
certainly is capable, but so stupid about _The Man_. However, as the
farm-house is now arranged as two dwellings, with the connecting door
opening in the back hall and usually kept locked on Amos's side, she
cannot possibly feel that she is putting herself in _The Man's_ way!




XIII

LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)


_Oaklands, August 18._ As a suitable text for this chronicle, as well as
an unanswerable argument for its carrying out, combined with a sort of
premium, I'm sending you to-day, freight paid, a barrel of
lily-of-the-valley roots, all vigorous and with many next year's
flowering pips attached.

No,--I hear your decorous protest,--I have not robbed myself, neither am
I giving up the growing of this most exquisite of spring flowers, whose
fragrance penetrates the innermost fastnesses of the memory, yet is
never obtrusive. Simply my long border was full to overflowing and last
season some of the lily bells were growing smaller. When this happens,
as it does every half a dozen years, I dig two eight-inch trenches down
the bed's entire length, and taking out the matted roots, fill the gap
with rich soil, adding the plants thus dispossessed to my purse of
garden wampum, which this time falls into your lap entire. Of the
treatment of the little flower, that is erroneously supposed to feast
only upon leaf-mould in the deep shade, you shall hear later.

By all means begin your lily bed now, for the one season at which the
Madonna lily resents removal the least is during the August resting
time. Then, if you lift her gently while she sleeps, do not let the cool
earth breath that surrounds her dry away, and bed her suitably, she will
awaken and in a month put forth a leafy crown of promise to be fulfilled
next June. Madonna does not like the shifting and lifting that falls to
the lot of so many garden bulbs owing to the modern requirements that
make a single flower bed often a thing of three seasonal changes. Many
bulbs, many moods and whims. Hyacinths and early tulips blossom their
best the first spring after their autumn planting (always supposing that
the bob-tailed meadow-mice, who travel in the mole tunnels, thereby
giving them a bad reputation, have not feasted on the tender heart buds
in the interval).

The auratum lily of the gorgeous gold-banded and ruby-studded flower
exults smilingly for a season or two and then degenerates sadly.

Madonna, if she be healthy on her coming, and is given healthy soil free
from hot taint of manure, will live with you for years and love you and
give you every season increasing yield of silver-white-crowned stalks,
at the very time that you need them to blend with your royal blue
delphiniums. But this will be only if you obey the warning of "hands and
spade off."

The three species of the well-known recurved Japan lily--_speciosum
roseum_, _s. rubrum_, and _s. album_--have the same love of permanence;
likewise the lily-of-the-valley and all the tribe of border narcissi and
daffodils; so if you wish to keep them at their best, you must not only
give them bits of ground all of their own, but study their individual
needs and idiosyncrasies.

Lilies as a comprehensive term,--the Biblical grass of the field,--as
far as concerns a novice or the Garden, You, and I, may be made to cover
the typical lilies themselves, tulips, narcissi (which are of the
amaryllis flock), and lilies-of-the-valley, a tribe by itself. You will
wish to include all of them in your garden, but you must limit yourself
to the least whimsical varieties on account of your purse, the labor
entailed, and the climate.

Of the pieces of ground that you describe, take that in partial shade
for your Madonna lilies and their kin, and that in the open sun for your
lilies-of-the-valley, while I would keep an earth border free from
silver birches, on the sunny side of your tumble-down stone-wall
rockery, for late tulips and narcissi; and grape hyacinths, scillas,
trilliums, the various Solomon's seals, bellworts, etc., can be
introduced in earth pockets between the rocks if, in case of the
deeper-rooted kinds, connection be had with the earth below.

It is much more satisfactory to plant spring bulbs in this way,--in
groups, or irregular lines and masses, where they may bloom according to
their own sweet will, and when they vanish for the summer rest, scatter
a little portulaca or sweet alyssum seed upon the soil to prevent too
great bareness,--than to set them in formal beds, from which they must
either be removed when their blooming time is past, or else one runs the
risk of spoiling them by planting deep-rooted plants among them.

The piece of sunny ground in the angled dip of the old wall, which you
call "decidedly squashy," interests me greatly, for it seems the very
place for Iris of the Japanese type,--lilies that are not lilies in the
exact sense, except by virtue of being built on the rule of three and
having grasslike or parallel-veined leaves. But these closely allied
plant families and their differences are a complex subject that we need
not discuss, the whole matter being something akin to one of the dear
old Punch stories that adorn Evan's patriotic scrap-book.

A railway porter, puzzled as in what class of freight an immense
tortoise shall be placed, as dogs are the only recognized standard,
pauses, gazing at it as he scratches his head, and mutters, "Cats is
dogs and rabbits is dogs, but this 'ere hanimal's a hinsect!" The Iris
may be, in this respect, a "hinsect," but we will reckon it in with the
lilies.

The culture of this Japan Iris is very simple and well worth while, for
the species comes into bloom in late June and early July, when the
German and other kinds are through. I should dig the wet soil from the
spot of which you speak, for all muck is not good for this Iris, and
after mixing it with some good loam and well-rotted cow manure replace
it and plant the clumps of Iris two feet apart, for they will spread
wonderfully. In late autumn they should have a top dressing of manure
and a covering of corn stalks, but, mind, water must not stand on your
Iris bed in winter; treating them as hardy plants does not warrant their
being plunged into water ice. It is almost impossible, however, to give
them too much water in June and July, when the great flowers of rainbow
hues, spreading to a size that covers two open hands, cry for drink to
sustain the exhaustion of their marvellous growth. So if your "squashy
spot" is made so by spring rains, all is well; if not, it must be
drained in some easy way, like running a length of clay pipe beneath, so
that the overplus of water will flow off when the Iris growth cannot
absorb it.

Ah me! the very mention of this flower calls up endless visions of
beauty. Iris--the flower of mythology, history, and one might almost say
science as well, since its outline points to the north on the face of
the mariner's compass; the flower that in the dawn of recorded beauty
antedates the rose, the fragments of the scattered rainbow of creation
that rests upon the garden, not for a single hour or day or week, but
for a long season. The early bulbous _Iris histriodes_ begins the season
in March, and the Persian Iris follows in April. In May comes the sturdy
German Iris of old gardens, of few species but every one worthy, and to
be relied upon in mass of bloom and sturdy leafage to rival even the
peony in decorative effect. Next the meadows are ribboned by our own
blue flags; and the English Iris follows and in June and July meets the
sumptuous Iris of Japan at its blooming season, for there seems to be
no country so poor as to be without an Iris.

There are joyous flowers of gold and royal blue, the Flower de Luce
(Flower of Louis) of regal France, and sombre flowers draped in deep
green and black and dusky purple, "The widow" (_Iris tuberosa_) and the
Chalcedonian Iris (_Iris Susiana_), taking its name from the Persian
Susa. _Iris Florentina_ by its powdered root yields the delicate violet
perfume orris, a corruption doubtless of Iris.

Many forms of root as well as blossom has the Iris, tuberous, bulbous,
fibrous, and if the rose may have a garden to itself, why may not the
Iris in combination with its sister lilies have one also? And when my
eyes rest upon a bed of these flowers or upon a single blossom, I long
to be a poet.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now to begin: will your shady place yield you a bed four feet in width
by at least twenty in length? If so, set Barney to work with pick and
spade. The top, I take it, is old turf not good enough to use for
edging, so after removing this have it broken into bits and put in a
heap by itself. When the earth beneath is loosened, examine it
carefully. If it is good old mellow loam without the pale yellow colour
that denotes the sterile, undigested soil unworked by roots or
earthworms, have it taken out to eighteen inches in depth and shovelled
to one side. When the bad soil is reached, which will be soon, have it
removed so that the pit will be three feet below the level.

Next, let Barney collect any old broken bits of flower-pots, cobbles, or
small stones of any kind, and fill up the hole for a foot, and let the
broken turf come on top of this. If possible, beg or buy of Amos Opie a
couple of good loads of the soil from the meadow bottom where the red
bell-lilies grow, and mix this with the good loam, together with a
scattering of bone, before replacing it. The bed should not only be
full, but well rounded. Grade it nicely with a rake and wait a week or
until rain has settled it before planting. When setting these lilies,
let there be six inches of soil above the bulb, and sprinkle the hole
into which it goes with fresh-water sand mixed with powdered sulphur.

This bed will be quite large enough for a beginning and will allow you
four rows of twenty bulbs in a row, with room for them to spread
naturally into a close mass, if so desired. Or better yet, do not put
them in stiff rows, but in groups, alternating the early-flowering with
the late varieties. A row of German Iris at the back of this bed will
give solidity and the sturdy foliage make an excellent windbreak in the
blooming season. If your friendly woman in the back country will give
you two dozen of the Madonna lily bulbs, group them in fours, leaving a
short stake in the middle of each group that you may know its exact
location, for the other lilies you cannot obtain before October, unless
you chance to find them in the garden of some near-by florist or friend.
These are--

  _Lilium speciosum album_--white recurved.
  _Lilium speciosum rubrum_--spotted with ruby-red.
  _Lilium speciosum roseum_--spotted with rose-pink.

All three flower in August and September, _rubrum_ being the latest, and
barring accidents increase in size and beauty with each year.

In spite of the fact of their fickleness, I would buy a dozen or two of
the auratum lilies, for even if they last but for a single year, they
are so splendid that we can almost afford to treat them as a fleeting
spectacle. As the _speciosum_ lilies (I wish some one would give them a
more gracious name--we call them curved-shell lilies here among
ourselves) do not finish flowering sometimes until late in September,
the bulbs are not ripe in time to be sold through the stores, until
there is danger of the ground being frozen at night.

[Illustration: SPECIOSUM LILIES IN THE SHADE.]

On the other hand, if purchased in spring, unless the bulbs have been
wintered with the greatest care in damp, not wet, peat moss, or sand,
they become so withered that their vitality is seriously impaired. There
are several dealers who make a specialty of thus wintering lily
bulbs,[A] and if you buy from one of these, I advise spring planting.

If, however, for any reason you wish to finish your bed this fall, after
planting and covering each bulb, press a four or five inch flower-pot
lightly into the soil above it. This will act as a partial watershed to
keep the drip of rain or snow water from settling in the crown of the
bulb and decaying the bud. Or if you have plenty of old boards about the
place, they may be put on the bed and slightly raised in the centre,
like a pitched roof, so as to form a more complete watershed, and the
winter covering of leaves, salt, hay, or litter, free of manure, can be
built upon this. Crocuses, snowdrops, and scillas make a charming border
for a lily bed and may be also put between the lilies themselves to lend
colour early in the season.

To cover your bed thoroughly, so that it will keep out cold and damp and
not shut it in, is a _must be_ of successful lily culture. Have you ever
tried to grow our hardiest native lilies like the red-wood, Turk's cap,
and Canada bell-lily in an open border where the porous earth, filled by
ice crystal, was raised by the frost to the consistency of bread sponge?
I did this not many years ago and the poor dears looked pinched and
woebegone and wholly unlike their sturdy sisters of meadow and upland
wood edges. Afterward, in trying to dig some of these lilies from their
native soil, I discovered why they were uncomfortable in the open
borders; the Garden, You, and I would have to work mighty hard to find a
winter blanket for the lily bed to match the turf of wild grasses
sometimes half a century old.

Many other beautiful and possible lilies there are besides these four,
but these are to be taken as first steps in lily lore, as it were; for
to make anything like a general collection of this flower is a matter of
more serious expense and difficulty than to collect roses, owing to the
frailness of the material and the different climatic conditions under
which the rarer species, especially those from India and the sea
islands, originated; but given anything Japanese and a certain
cosmopolitan intelligence seems bred in it that carries a reasonable
hope of success under new conditions.

We have half a dozen species of beautiful native lilies, but like some
of our most exquisite ferns they depend much for their attractiveness
upon the setting their natural haunts offer, and I do not like to see
them caged, as it were, within strict garden boundaries.

The red wood-lily should be met among the great brakes of a sandy wood
edge, where white leafless wands of its cousin, star-grass, or colic
root, wave above it, and the tall late meadow-rue and white angelica
fringe the background.

The Canada bell-lily needs the setting of meadow grasses to veil its
long, stiff stalks, while the Turk's-cap lily seems the most at home of
all in garden surroundings, but it only gains its greatest size in the
deep meadows, where, without being wet, there is a certain moisture
beneath the deep old turf, and this turf itself not only keeps out
frost, but moderates the sun's rays in their transit to the ground.

Two lilies there are that, escaping from gardens, in many places have
become half wild--the brick-red, black-spotted tiger lily with recurved
flowerets, after the shape of the Japanese _roseum_, _rubrum_, and
_album_, being also a native of Japan and China, and the tawny orange
day lily, that is found in masses about old cellars and waysides, with
its tubular flowers, held on leafless stems, springing from a matted
bed of leaves. This day lily (_hemerocallis fulva_) is sister to the
familiar and showy lemon lily of old gardens (_hemerocallis flava_). If
you have plenty of room by your wall, I should lodge a few good bunches
by it when you find some in a location where digging is possible. It is
a decorative flower, but hardly worthy of good garden soil. The same may
be said of the tiger lily, on account of the very inharmonious shade of
red it wears; yet if you have a half-wild nook, somewhere that a dozen
bulbs of it may be tucked in company with a bunch of the common tall
white phlox that flowers at the same time, you will have a bit of colour
that will care for itself.

The lemon lily should have a place in the hardy border well toward the
front row and be given enough room to spread into a comfortable circle
after the manner of the white plantain lily (_Funkia subcordata_). This
last lily, another of Japan's contributions to the hardy garden, blooms
from August until frost and unlike most of the lily tribe is pleased if
well-rotted manure is deeply dug into its resting-place.

As with humanity the high and lowly born are subject to the same
diseases, so is it with the lily tribe, and because you choose the
sturdiest and consequently least expensive species for your garden, do
not think that you may relax your vigilance.

There is a form of fungous mould that attacks the bulbs of lilies
without rhyme or reason and is the insidious tuberculosis of the race.
_Botrytis cinerea_ is its name and it seizes upon stalk and leaves in
the form of spots that are at first yellow and then deepen in colour,
until finally, having sapped the vitality of the plant, it succumbs.

Cold, damp, insufficient protection in winter, all serve to render the
lily liable to its attacks, but the general opinion among the wise is
that the universal overstimulation of lilies by fertilizers during late
years, especially of the white lilies used for church and other
decorative purposes, has undermined the racial constitution and made it
prone to attacks of the enemy. Therefore, if you please, Mary Penrose,
sweet soil, sulphur, sand, and good winter covering, if you would not
have your lily bed a consumptives' hospital!

Some lilies are also susceptible to sunstroke. When growing in the full
light and heat of the sun, and the buds are ready to open, suddenly the
flowers, leaves, and entire stalk will wither, as when in spring a tulip
collapses and we find that a meadow-mouse has nipped it in the core.
But with the lily the blight comes from above, and the only remedy is to
plant in half shade.

On the other hand the whims of the flower require that this be done
carefully, for if the scorching sun is an evil, a soaking, sopping rain,
coming at the height of the blooming season and dripping from
overhanging boughs, is equally so. The gold-and-copper pollen turns to
rusty tears that mar the petals of satin ivory or inlaid enamel, and a
sickly transparency that bodes death comes to the crisp, translucent
flower!

"What a pother for a bed of flowers!" I hear you say, "draining,
subsoiling, sulphuring, sanding, covering, humouring, and then sunstroke
or consumption at the end!" So be it, but when success does come, it is
something worth while, for to be successful with these lilies is "aiming
the star" in garden experience.

The plantain lilies and hemerocallis seem free from all of these whims
and diseases, but it is when we come to the lily-of-the-valley that we
have the compensation for our tribulations with the royal lilies of pure
blood.

The lily-of-the-valley asks deep, very rich soil in the open sun; if a
wall or hedge protects it from the north, so much the better. I do not
know why people preach dense shade for this flower; possibly because
they prefer leaves to flowers, or else that they are of the sheeplike
followers of tradition instead of practical gardeners of personal
experience. One thing grows to perfection in the garden of this
commuter's wife, and that is lilies-of-the-valley, and shade knows them
not between eight in the morning and five at night, and we pick and pick
steadily for two weeks, for as the main bed gives out, there are strips
here and there in cooler locations that retard the early growth, but
never any overhanging branches.

In starting a wholly new bed, as you are doing, it is best to separate
the tangled roots into small bunches, seeing to it that a few buds or
"pips" remain with each, and plant in long rows a foot apart, three rows
to a four-foot bed. Be sure to bury a well-tarred plank a foot in width
edgewise at the outer side of the bed, unless you wish, in a couple of
years' time, to have this enterprising flower walk out and about the
surrounding garden and take it for its own. Be sure to press the roots
in thoroughly and cover with three inches of soil.

In December cover the bed with rotten _cow_ manure for several inches
and rake off the coarser part in April, taking care not to break the
pointed "pips" that will be starting, and you will have a forest of
cool green leaves and such flowers as it takes much money to buy. Not
the first season, of course, but after that--forever, if you thin out
and fertilize properly.

In the back part of your lily-of-the-valley bed plant two or three rows
of the lovely poets' narcissus (_poeticus_). It opens its white flowers
of the "pheasant's eye" cup at the same time as the lilies bloom, it
grows sufficiently tall to make a good upward gradation, and it likes to
be let severely alone. But do not forget in covering in the fall to put
leaves over the narcissi instead of manure. Of other daffodils and
narcissi that I have found very satisfactory, besides the good mixtures
offered by reliable houses at only a dollar or a dollar and a quarter a
hundred (the poets' narcissi only costing eighty cents a hundred for
good bulbs), are Trumpet Major, Incomparabilis, the old-fashioned
"daffy," and the monster yellow trumpet narcissus, Van Sion.

The polyanthus narcissi, carrying their many flowers in heads at the top
of the stalk, are what is termed half hardy and they are more frequently
seen in florists' windows than in gardens. I have found them hardy if
planted in a sheltered spot, covered with slanted boards and leaves,
which should not be removed before April, as the spring rain and
winds, I am convinced, do more to kill the species than winter cold. The
flowers are heavily fragrant, like gardenias, and are almost too sweet
for the house; but they, together with violets, give the garden the
opulence of odour before the lilacs are open, or the heliotropes that
are to be perfumers-in-chief in summer have graduated from thumb pots in
the forcing houses.

[Illustration: THE POET'S NARCISSUS.]

Unless one has a large garden and a gardener who can plant and tend
parterres of spring colour, I do not set much value upon outdoor
hyacinths; they must be lifted each year and often replaced, as the
large bulbs soon divide into several smaller ones with the flowers
proportionately diminished. To me their mission is, to be grown in pots,
shallow pans, or glasses on the window ledge, for winter and spring
comforters, and I use the early tulips much in the same way, except for
a cheerful line of them, planted about the foundation of the house, that
when in bloom seems literally to lift home upon the spring wings of
resurrection!

All my tulip enthusiasm is centred in the late varieties, and chief
among these come the fascinating and fantastic "parrots."

When next I have my garden savings-bank well filled, I am going to make
a collection of these tulips and guard them in a bed underlaid with
stout-meshed wire netting, so that no mole may leave a tunnel for the
wicked tulip-eating meadow-mouse.

It is these late May-flowering tulips of long stalks, like wands of tall
perennials, that you can gather in your arms and arrange in your largest
jars with a sense at once combined of luxury and artistic joy.

Better begin as I did by buying them in mixture; the species you must
choose are the bizarre, bybloems, parrots, breeders, Darwin tulips, and
the rose and white, together with a general mixture of late singles.
Five dollars will buy you fifty of each of the seven kinds, three
hundred and fifty bulbs all told and enough for a fine display. The
Darwin tulips yield beautiful shades of violet, carmine, scarlet, and
brown; the bizarres, many curious effects in stripes and flakes; the
rose and white, delicate frettings and margins of pink on a white
ground; but the parrots have petals fringed, twisted, beaked, poised
curiously upon the stalks, splashed with reds, yellows, and green, and
to come suddenly upon a mass of them in the garden is to think for a
brief moment that a group of unknown birds blown from the tropics in a
forced migration have alighted for rest upon the bending tulip stalks.


[A] F.H. Horsford of Charlotte, Vt., is very reliable in this matter.




XIV

FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_Woodridge, August 26._ The heliotrope is in the perfection of bloom and
seems to draw perfume from the intense heat of the August days only to
release it again as the sun sets, while as long as daylight lasts
butterflies of all sizes, shapes, and colours are fluttering about the
flowers until the bed is like the transformation scene of a veritable
dance of fairies!

Possibly you did not know that I have a heliotrope bed planted at the
very last moment. I had never before seen a great mass of heliotrope
growing all by itself until I visited your garden, and ever since I have
wondered why more people have not discovered it. I think that I wrote
you anent _hens_ that the ancient fowl-house of the place had been at
the point where there was a gap in the old wall below the knoll, and
that the wind swept up through it from the river, across the Opal Farm
meadows, and into the windows of the dining room? The most impossible
place for a fowl-house, but exactly the location, as _The Man from
Everywhere_ suggested, for a bed of sweet odours.

I expected to do nothing with it this season until one day Larry, the
departed, in a desire to use some of the domestic guano with which the
rough cellar of the old building was filled, carted away part of it, and
supplying its place with loam, dug over and straightened out the
irregular space, which is quite six feet wide by thirty long.

The same day, on going to a near-by florist's for celery plants, I found
that he had a quantity of little heliotropes in excess of his needs,
that had remained unpotted in the sand of the cutting house, where they
had spindled into sickly-looking weeds. In a moment of the horticultural
gambling that will seize one, I offered him a dollar for the lot, which
he accepted readily, for it was the last of June and the poor things
would probably have been thrown out in a day or two.

I took them home and spent a whole morning in separating and cutting off
the spindling tops to an even length of six inches. Literally there
seemed to be no end to the plants, and when I counted them I found that
I had nearly a hundred and fifty heliotropes, which, after rejecting
the absolutely hopeless, gave me six rows for the bed.

For several weeks my speculation in heliotropes was a subject of much
mirth between Bart and myself, and the place was anything but a bed of
sweet odours! The poor things lost the few leaves they had possessed and
really looked as if they had been haunted by the ghosts of all the
departed chickens that had gone from the fowl-house to the block. Then
we had some wet weather, followed by growing summer heat, and I did not
visit the bed for perhaps a week or more, when I rubbed my eyes and
pinched myself; for it was completely covered with a mass of vigorous
green, riotous in its profusion, here and there showing flower buds, and
ever since it is one of the places to which I go to feast my eyes and
nose when in need of garden encouragement! Another year I shall plant
the heliotrope in one of the short cross-walk borders of the old garden,
where we may also see it from the dining room, and use the larger bed
for the more hardy sweet things, as I shall probably never be able to
buy so many heliotrope plants again for so little money.

Now also I have a definite plan for a large border of fragrant flowers
and leaves. I have been on a journey, and, having spent three whole
days from home, I am able for once to tell you something instead of
endlessly stringing questions together.

We also have been to the Cortrights' at Gray Rocks, and through a whiff
of salt air, a touch of friendly hands, much conversation, and a drive
to Coningsby (a village back from the shore peopled by the descendants
of seafarers who, having a little property, have turned mildly to
farming), we have received fresh inspiration.

You did not overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside
garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several
surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy
soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about which the
brick-red monarch butterflies were hovering in great flocks. Neither did
you tell me of the thistles that flank the bayberry hedge. I never
realized what a thing of beauty a thistle might be when encouraged and
allowed room to develop. Some of the plants of the common deep purple
thistle, that one associates with the stunted growths of dusty
roadsides, stood full five feet high, each bush as clear cut and erect
as a candelabrum of fine metal work, while another group was composed of
a pale yellow species with a tinge of pink in the centre set in very
handsome silvery leaves. I had never before seen these yellow thistles,
but Lavinia Cortright says that they are very plentiful in the dry
ground back of the marshes, where the sand has been carried in drifts
both by wind and tide.

The table and house decorations the day that we arrived were of thistles
blended with the deep yellow blossoms of the downy false foxglove or
Gerardia and the yellow false indigo that looks at a short distance like
a dwarf bush pea.

We drove to Coningsby, as I supposed to see some gay little gardens,
fantastic to the verge of awfulness, that had caught Aunt Lavinia's eye.
In one the earth for the chief bed was contained in a surf-boat that had
become unseaworthy from age, and not only was it filled to the brim, but
vines of every description trailed over the sides.

A neighbour opposite, probably a garden rival of the owner of the boat
but lacking aquatic furniture, had utilized a single-seated cutter
which, painted blue of the unmerciful shade that fights with everything
it approaches, was set on an especially green bit of side lawn,
surrounded by a heavy row of conch shells, and the box into which the
seat had been turned, as well as the bottom of the sleigh itself, was
filled with a jumble of magenta petunias and flame-coloured nasturtiums.

After we had passed down a village street a quarter of a mile long,
bordered on either side by floral combinations of this description, the
sight began to pall, and I wondered how it was possible that any flowers
well watered and cared for could produce such a feeling of positive
aversion as well as eye-strained fatigue; also, if this was all that the
Cortrights had driven us many miles to see, when it was so much more
interesting to lounge on either of the porches of their own cottage, the
one commanding the sea and the other the sand garden, the low dunes, and
the marsh meadows.

"It is only half a mile farther on," said Aunt Lavinia, quick to feel
that we were becoming bored, without our having apparently given any
sign to that effect.

"It! What is _it_?" asked Bart, while I, without shame it is confessed,
having a ravenous appetite, through outdoor living, hoped that _it_ was
some quaint and neat little inn that "refreshed travellers," as it was
expressed in old-time wording.

"How singular!" ejaculated Aunt Lavinia; "I thought I told you last
night when we were in the garden--well, it must have been in a dream
instead. _It_ is the garden of Mrs. Marchant, wholly of fragrant things;
it is on the little cross-road, beyond that strip of woods up there,"
and she waved toward a slight rise in the land that was regarded as a
hill of considerable importance in this flat country.

"It does not contain merely a single bed of sweet odours like Barbara's
and mine, but is a garden an acre in extent, where everything admitted
has fragrance, either in flower or leaf. We chanced upon it quite by
accident, Martin and I, when driving ourselves down from Oaklands,
across country, as it were, to Gray Rocks, by keeping to shady lanes,
byways, and pent roads, where it was often necessary to take down bars
and sometimes verge on trespassing by going through farmyards in order
to continue our way.

"After traversing a wood road of unusual beauty, where everything broken
and unsightly had been carefully removed that ferns and wild shrubs
might have full chance of life, we came suddenly upon a white picket
gate covered by an arched trellis, beyond which in the vista could be
seen a modest house of the real colonial time, set in the midst of a
garden.

"At once we realized the fact that the lane was also a part of the
garden in that it was evidently the daily walk of some one who loved
nature, and we looked about for a way of retracing our steps. At the
same moment two female figures approached the gate from the other side.
At the distance at which we were I could only see that one was tall and
slender, was dressed all in pure white, and crowned by a mass of hair to
match, while the other woman was short and stocky, and the way in which
she opened the gate and held it back told that whatever her age might be
she was an attendant, though probably an intimate one.

"In another moment they discovered us, and as Martin alighted from the
vehicle to apologize for our intrusion the tall figure immediately
retreated to the garden, so quickly and without apparent motion that we
were both startled, for the way of moving is peculiar to those whose
feet do not really tread the earth after the manner of their fellows;
and before we had quite recovered ourselves the stout woman had advanced
and we saw by the pleasant smile her round face wore that she was not
aggrieved at the intrusion but seemed pleased to meet human beings in
that out-of-the-way place rather than rabbits, many of which had
scampered away as we came down the lane.

"Martin explained our dilemma and asked if we might gain the highway
without retracing our steps. The woman hesitated a moment, and then
said, 'If you come through the gate and turn sharp to the right, you can
go out across the apple orchard by taking down a single set of bars,
only you'll have to lead your horse, sir, for the trees are set thick
and are heavy laden. I'd let you cross the bit of grass to the drive by
the back gate yonder but that it would grieve Mrs. Marchant to see the
turf so much as pressed with a wheel; she'd feel and know it somehow,
even if she didn't see it.'

"'Mrs. Marchant! Not Mrs. Chester Marchant?' cried Martin, while the
far-away echo of something recalled by the name troubled the ears of my
memory.

"'Yes, sir, the very same! Did you know Dr. Marchant, sir? The minute I
laid eyes on you two I thought you were of her kind!' replied the woman,
pointing backward over her shoulder and settling herself against the
shaft and side of Brown Tom, the horse, as if expecting and making ready
for a comfortable chat.

"As she stood thus I could take a full look at her without
intrusiveness. Apparently well over sixty years old, and her face lines
telling of many troubles, yet she had not a gray hair in her head and
her poise was of an independent landowner rather than an occupier of
another's home. I also saw at a glance that whatever her present
position might be, she had not been born in service, but was probably a
native of local importance, who, for some reason perfectly satisfactory
to herself, was 'accommodating.'

"'Dr. Marchant, Dr. Russell, and I were college mates,' said Martin,
briefly, 'and after he and his son died so suddenly I was told that his
widow was mentally ill and that none could see her, and later that she
had died, or else the wording was so that I inferred as much,' and the
very recollection seemed to set Martin dreaming. And I did not wonder,
for there had never been a more brilliant and devoted couple than Abbie
and Chester Marchant, and I still remember the shock of it when word
came that both father and son had been killed by the same runaway
accident, though it was nearly twenty years ago.

"'She was ill, sir, was Mrs. Marchant; too ill to see anybody. For a
long time she wouldn't believe that the accident had happened, and when
she really sensed it, she was as good as dead for nigh five years. One
day some of her people came to me--'twas the year after my own husband
died--and asked if I would take a lady and her nurse here to live with
me for the summer. They told me of her sickness and how she was always
talking of some cottage in a garden of sweet-smelling flowers where she
had lived one happy summer with her husband and her boy, and they placed
the house as mine.

"'Her folks said the doctors thought if she could get back here for a
time that it might help her. Then I recollected that ten years before,
when I went up to Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just
as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't
look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my
grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all
sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks
came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't
sold so much in shops in those days as they are now, and so this place
came to be called the Herb Farm. After that it was sold off, little by
little, until the garden, wood lane, and orchard is about all that's
left.

"'I was lonesome and liked the idea of company, and besides I was none
too well fixed; yet I dreaded a mournful widow that wasn't all there
anyway, according to what they said, but I thought I'd try. Well, sir,
she come, and that first week I thought I'd never stand it, she talked
and wrung her hands so continual. But one day what do you think
happened? I chanced to pick a nosegay, not so much fine flowers perhaps
as good-smelling leaves and twigs, and put it in a little pitcher in her
room.

"'It was like witchcraft the way it worked; the smell of those things
seemed to creep over her like some drugs might and she changed. She
stopped moaning and went out into the garden and touched all the posies
with her fingers, as if she was shaking hands, and all of a sudden it
seemed, by her talk, as if her dead were back with her again; and on
every other point she's been as clear and ladylike as possible ever
since, and from that day she cast off her black clothes as if wearing
'em was all through a mistake.

"'The doctors say it's something to do with the 'sociation of smells,
for that season they spent in my cottage was the only vacation Dr.
Marchant had taken in years, and they say it was the happiest time in
her life, fussing about among my old-fashioned posies with him; and
somehow in her mind he's got fixed there among those posies, and every
year she plants more and more of them, and what friends of hers she
ever speaks of she remembers by some flowers they wore or liked.

"'Well, as it turned out, her trustees have bought my place out and
fixed it over, and here we live together, I may say, both fairly
content!

"'Come in and see her, won't you? It'll do no harm. Cortright, did you
say your name was?' and before we could retreat, throwing Brown Tom's
loose check-rein across the pickets of the gate, she led us to where the
tall woman, dressed in pure white, stood under the trees, a look of
perfectly calm expectancy in the wonderful dark eyes that made such a
contrast to her coils of snow-white hair.

"'Cortright! Martin Cortright, is it not?' she said immediately, as her
companion spoke the surname. 'And your wife? I had not heard that you
were married, but I remember you well, Lavinia Dorman, and your city
garden, and the musk-rose bush that ailed because of having too little
sun. Chester will be so sorry to miss you; he is seldom at home in the
mornings, for he takes long walks with our son. He is having the first
entire half year's vacation he has allowed himself since our marriage.
But you will always find him in the garden in the afternoon; he is so
fond of fragrant flowers, and he is making new studies of herbs and
such things, for he believes that in spite of some great discoveries it
will be proven that the old simples are the most enduring medicines.'

"As she spoke she was leading the way, with that peculiar undulating
progress, like a cloud blown over the earth's surface, that I had
noticed at first. Then we came out from under the shade of the trees
into the garden enclosure and I saw borders and beds, but chiefly
borders, stretching and curving everywhere, screening all the fences,
approaching the house, and when almost there retreating in graceful
lines into the shelter of the trees. The growth had the luxuriance of a
jungle, and yet there was nothing weedy or awry about it, and as the
breeze blew toward us the combination of many odours, both pungent and
sweet, was almost overpowering.

"'You very seldom wore a buttonhole flower, but when you did it was a
safrano bud or else a white jasmine,' Mrs. Marchant said, wheeling
suddenly and looking at Martin with a gaze that did not stop where he
stood, but went through and beyond him; 'it was Dr. Russell who always
wore a pink! See! I have both here!' and going up to a tea-rose bush,
grown to the size of a shrub and lightly fastened to the side of the
house, she gathered a few shell-like buds and a moment later pulled
down a spray of the jasmine vine that festooned a window, as we see it
in England but never here, and carefully cut off a cluster of its white
stars by aid of a pair of the long, slender flower-picking scissors that
hung from her belt by a ribbon, twisted the stems together, and placed
them in Martin's buttonhole almost without touching it.

"Having done this, she seemed to forget us and drifted away among the
flowers, touching some gently as she passed, snipping a dead leaf here
and arranging a misplaced branch there.

"We left almost immediately, but have been there many times since, and
though as a whole the garden is too heavily fragrant, I thought that it
might suggest possibilities to you."

As Aunt Lavinia paused we were turning from the main road into the
narrow but beautifully kept lane upon which the Herb Farm, as it was
still called, was located, by one of those strange freaks that sometimes
induces people to build in a strangely inaccessible spot, though quite
near civilization. I know that you must have come upon many such places
in your wanderings.

Of course my curiosity was piqued, and I felt, besides, as if I was
about to step into the page of some strange psychological romance, nor
was I disappointed.

The first thing that I saw when we entered was a great strip of
heliotrope that rivalled my own, and opposite it an equal mass of
silvery lavender crowned by its own flowers, of the colour that we so
frequently use as a term, but seldom correctly. There were no flagged or
gravel walks, but closely shorn grass paths, the width of a lawn-mower,
that followed the outline of the borders and made grateful footing.

Bounding the heliotrope and lavender on one side was a large bed of what
I at first thought were Margaret carnations, of every colour combination
known to the flower, but a closer view showed that while those in the
centre were Margarets, those of the wide border were of a heavier
quality both in build of plant, texture of leaf, and flower, which was
like a compact greenhouse carnation, the edges of the petals being very
smooth and round, while in addition to many rich, solid colours there
were flowers of white-and-yellow ground, edged and striped and flaked
with colour, and the fragrance delicious and reminiscent of the clove
pinks of May.

Mrs. Puffin, the companion, could tell us little about them except that
the seed from which they were raised came from England and that, as
she put it, they were fussy, troublesome things, as those sown one
season had to be lifted and wintered in the cold pit and get just so
much air every day, and be planted out in the border again in April.
Aunt Lavinia recognized them as the same border carnations over which
she had raved when she first saw them in the trim gardens of Hampton
Court. Can either you or Evan tell me more of them and why we do not see
them here? Before long I shall go garden mad, I fear; for after grooming
the place into a generally decorative and floriferous condition of
trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, etc., will come the hunger for specialties
that if completely satisfied will necessitate not only a rosary, a lily
and wild garden, a garden--rather than simply a bed--of sweet odours,
and lastly a garden wholly for the family of pinks or carnations,
whichever is the senior title. I never thought of these last except as a
garden incident until I saw their possibilities in Mrs. Marchant's space
of fragrant leaves and flowers.

[Illustration: A BED OF JAPAN PINKS.]

The surrounding fences were entirely concealed by lilacs and syringas,
interspersed with gigantic bushes of the fragrant, brown-flowered
strawberry shrub; the four gates, two toward the road, one to the
barn-yard, and one entering the wood lane, were arched high and covered
by vines of Wisteria, while similar arches seemed to bring certain beds
together that would have looked scattered and meaningless without them.
In fact next to the presence of fragrant things, the artistic use of
vines as draperies appealed to me most.

The border following the fence was divided, back of the house, by a
vine-covered arbour, on the one side of which the medicinal herbs and
simples were massed; on the other what might be classed as decorative or
garden flowers, though some of the simples, such as tansy with its
clusters of golden buttons, must be counted decorative.

The plants were never set in straight lines, but in irregular groups
that blended comfortably together. Mrs. Marchant was not feeling well,
Mrs. Puffin said, and could not come out, greatly to my disappointment;
but the latter was only too glad to do the honours, and the plant names
slipped from her tongue with the ease of long familiarity.

This patch of low growth with small heads of purple flowers was
broad-leaved English thyme; that next, summer savory, used in cooking,
she said. Then followed common sage and its scarlet-flowered cousin
that we know as salvia; next came rue and rosemary, Ophelia's flower of
remembrance, with stiff leaves. Little known or grown, or rather
capricious and tender here, I take it, for I find plants of it offered
for sale in only one catalogue. Marigolds were here also, why I do not
know, as I should think they belonged with the more showy flowers; then
inconspicuous pennyroyal and several kinds of mints--spearmint,
peppermint, and some great plants of velvet-leaved catnip.

Borage I saw for the first time, also coriander of the aromatic seeds,
and a companion of dill of vinegar fame; and strangely enough, in
rotation of Bible quotation, cumin and rue came next.

Caraway and a feathery mass of fennel took me back to grandmother's
Virginia garden; balm and arnica, especially when I bruised a leaf of
the latter between my fingers, recalled the bottle from which I soothe
the Infant's childish bumps, the odour of it being also strongly
reminiscent of my own childhood.

Angelica spoke of the sweet candied stalks, but when we reached a spot
of basil, Martin Cortright's tongue was loosed and he began to recite
from Keats; and all at once I seemed to see Isabella sitting among the
shadows holding between her knees the flower-pot from which the
strangely nourished plant of basil grew as she watered it with her
tears.

A hedge of tall sunflowers, from whose seeds, Mrs. Puffin said, a
soothing and nourishing cough syrup may be made, antedating cod-liver
oil, replaced the lilacs on this side, and with them blended boneset and
horehound; while in a springy spot back toward the barn-yard the long
leaves of sweet flag or calamus introduced a different class of foliage.

On the garden side the border was broken every ten feet or so with great
shrubs of our lemon verbena, called lemon balm by Mrs. Puffin. It seemed
impossible that such large, heavily wooded plants could be lifted for
winter protection in the cellar, yet such Mrs. Puffin assured us was the
case. So I shall grow mine to this size if possible, for what one can do
may be accomplished by another,--that is the tonic of seeing other
gardens than one's own. Between the lemon verbenas were fragrant-leaved
geraniums of many flavours--rose, nutmeg, lemon, and one with a sharp
peppermint odour, also a skeleton-leaved variety; while a low-growing
plant with oval leaves and half-trailing habit and odd odour, Mrs.
Puffin called apple geranium, though it does not seem to favour the
family. Do you know it?

Bee balm in a blaze of scarlet made glowing colour amid so much green,
and strangely enough the bluish lavender of the taller-growing sister,
wild bergamot, seems to harmonize with it; while farther down the line
grew another member of this brave family of horsemints with almost pink,
irregular flowers of great beauty.

Southernwood formed fernlike masses here and there; dwarf tansy made the
edging, together with the low, yellow-flowered musk, which Aunt Lavinia,
now quite up in such things, declared to be a "musk-scented mimulus!"
whatever that may be! Stocks, sweet sultan, and tall wands of evening
primrose graded this border up to another shrubbery.

Of mignonette the garden boasts a half dozen species, running from one
not more than six inches in height with cinnamon-red flowers to a tall
variety with pointed flower spikes, something of the shape of the white
flowers of the clethra bush or wands of Culver's root that grow along
the fence at Opal Farm. It is not so fragrant as the common mignonette,
but would be most graceful to arrange with roses or sweet peas. Aunt
Lavinia says that she thinks that it is sold under the name of Miles
spiral mignonette.

Close to the road, where the fence angle allows for a deep bed and the
lilacs grade from the tall white of the height of trees down to the
compact bushes of newer French varieties, lies the violet bed, now a
mass of green leaves only, but by these Aunt Lavinia's eye read them out
and found here the English sweet wild violet, as well as the deep purple
double garden variety, the tiny white scented that comes with
pussy-willows, the great single pansy violet of California, and the
violets grown from the Russian steppes that carpeted the ground under
your "mother tree."

From this bed the lilies-of-the-valley start and follow the entire
length of the front fence, as you preach on the sunny side, the fence
itself being hidden by a drapery of straw-coloured and pink Chinese
honeysuckle that we called at home June honeysuckle, though this is
covered with flower sprays in late August, and must be therefore a sort
of monthly-minded hybrid, after the fashion of the hybrid tea-rose.

If I were to tell of the tea-roses grown here, they would fill a
chronicle by itself, though only a few of the older kinds, such as
safrano, bon silene, and perle, are favourites. Mrs. Puffin says that
some of them, the great shrubs, are wintered out-of-doors, and others
are lifted, like the lemon balms, and kept in the dry, light cellar in
tubs.

But oh! Mrs. Evan, you must go and see Mrs. Marchant's lilies! They are
growing as freely as weeds among the uncut grass, and blooming as
profusely as the bell-lilies in Opal Farm meadows! And all the spring
bulbs are also grown in this grass that lies between the shorn grass
paths, and in autumn when the tops are dead and gone it is carefully
burned over and the turf is all the winter covering they have.

Does the grass look ragged and unsightly? No, because I think that it is
cut lightly with a scythe after the spring bulbs are gone and that the
patient woman, whose life the garden is, keeps the tallest seeded
grasses hand trimmed from between the lily stalks!

Ah, but how that garden lingers with me, and the single glimpse I caught
of the deep dark eyes of its mistress as they looked out of a vine-clad
window toward the sky!

I have made a list of the plants that are possible for my own permanent
bed of fragrant flowers and leaves, that I may enjoy them, and that the
Infant may have fragrant memories to surround all her youth and bind her
still more closely to the things of outdoor life.

I chanced upon a verse of Bourdillon's the other day. Do you know it?

  "Ah! full of purest influence
     On human mind and mood,
   Of holiest joy to human sense
     Are river, field, and wood;
   And better must all childhood be
   That knows a garden and a tree!"




XV

THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)


_Oaklands, September 1._ So you have been away and in going discovered
the possibilities of growing certain pinks and carnations out-of-doors
that, in America at least, are usually considered the winter specialties
of a cool greenhouse!

We too have been afield somewhat, having but now returned from a driving
trip of ten days, nicely timed as to gardens and resting-places until
the last night, when, making a false turn, ten o'clock found us we did
not know where and with no prospect of getting our bearings.

We had ample provisions for supper with us, including two bottles of
ginger ale; no one knew that we were lost but ourselves and no one was
expecting us anywhere, as we travel quite _con amore_ on these little
near-by journeys of ours. The August moon was big and hot and late in
rising; there was a rick of old hay in a clean-looking field by the
roadside that had evidently been used as winter fodder for young
cattle, for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, leaving a
protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very substantial, but sufficient
shelter for a still night. Then and there we decided to play gypsy and
camp out, literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the horse, watered
him at a convenient roadside puddle, and tethered him at the rear of the
stack, where he could nibble the hay, but not us! Then spreading the
horse-blanket on some loose hay for a bed, with the well-tufted seat of
the buggy for a pillow, and utilizing the lap robe for a cover against
dew, we fell heavily asleep, though I had all the time a half-conscious
feeling as if little creatures were scrambling about in the hay beneath
the blanket and occasionally brushing my face or ears with a batlike
wing, tiny paws, or whisking tail. When I awoke, and of course
immediately stirred up Evan, the moon was low on the opposite side of
the stack, the stars were hidden, and there was a dull red glow among
the heavy clouds of the eastern horizon like the reflection of a distant
fire, while an owl hooted close by from a tree and then flew with a
lurch across the meadow, evidently to the destruction of some small
creature, for a squeal accompanied the swoop. A mysterious thing, this
flight of the owl: the wings did not flap, there was no sound, merely
the consciousness of displaced air.

We were not, as it afterward proved, ten miles from home, and yet, as
far as trace of humanity was concerned, we might have been the only
created man and woman.

Do you remember the old gypsy song?--Ben Jonson's, I think--

  "The owl is abroad, the bat, the toad,
   And so is the cat-a-mountain;
   The ant and the mole both sit in a hole,
   And frog peeps out o' the fountain;
     The dogs they bay and the timbrels play
   And the spindle now is turning;
   The moon it is red, and the stars are fled
     But all the sky is a-burning."

But we were still more remote, for of beaters of timbrels and turners of
spindles were there none!

       *       *       *       *       *

Your last chronicle interested us all. In the first place father
remembers Mrs. Marchant perfectly, for he and the doctor used to
exchange visits constantly during that long-ago summer when they lived
on the old Herb Farm at Coningsby. Father had heard that she was
hopelessly deranged, but nothing further, and the fact that she is
living within driving distance in the midst of her garden of fragrance
is a striking illustration both of the littleness of the earth and the
social remoteness of its inhabitants.

Father says that Mrs. Marchant was always a very intellectual woman, and
he remembers that in the old days she had almost a passion for fragrant
flowers, and once wrote an essay upon the psychology of perfumes that
attracted some attention in the medical journal in which it was
published by her husband. That the perfume of flowers should now have
drawn the shattered fragments of her mind together for their comfort and
given her the foretaste of immortality, by the sign of the consciousness
of personal presence and peace, is beautiful indeed.

Your declaration that henceforth one garden is not enough for your
ambition, but that you crave several, amuses me greatly. For a mere
novice I must say that you are making strides in seven-league
horticultural boots, wherein you have arrived at the heart of the
matter, viz.:--one may grow many beautiful and satisfactory flowers in a
mixed garden such as falls to the lot of the average woman sufficiently
lucky to own a garden at all, but to develop the best possibilities of
any one family, like the rose, carnation, or lily, that is a bit
whimsical about food and lodging, each one must have a garden of its
own, so to speak, which, for the amateur, may be made to read as a
special bed in a special location, and not necessarily a vast area.

This need is always recognized in the English garden books, and the
chapter headings, The Rose Garden,--Hardy Garden,--Wall Garden,--Lily
Garden,--Alpine Garden, etc., lead one at first sight to think that it
is a great estate alone that can be so treated; but it is merely a
horticultural protest, born of long experience, against mixing races to
their mutual hurt, and this precaution, together with the climate, makes
of all England a gardener's paradise!

What you say of the expansiveness of the list of fragrant flowers and
leaves is also true, for taken in the literal sense there are really few
plants without an individual odour of some sort in bark, leaf, or flower
usually sufficient to identify them. In a recent book giving what
purports to be a list of fragrant flowers and leaves, the chrysanthemum
is included, as it gives out an aromatic perfume from its leaves! This
is true, but so also does the garden marigold, and yet we should not
include either among fragrant leaves in the real sense.

Hence to make the right selection of plants for the bed of sweet odours
it is best, as in the case of choosing annuals, to adhere to a few tried
and true worthies.

But at your rhapsody on the bed of carnations, I am also tempted to
launch forth in praise of all pinks in general and the annual flowering
garden carnation, early Marguerite, and picotee varieties in particular,
especially when I think what results might be had from the same bits of
ground that are often left to be overrun with straggling and unworthy
annuals. For to have pinks to cut for the house, pinks for colour masses
out-of-doors, and pinks to give away, is but a matter of understanding,
a little patience, and the possession of a cold pit (which is but a
deeper sort of frame like that used for a hotbed and sunken in the
ground) against a sunny wall, for the safe wintering of a few of the
tenderer species.

In touching upon this numerous family, second only to the rose in
importance, the embarrassment is, where to begin. Is a carnation a pink,
or a pink a carnation? I have often been asked. You may settle that as
you please, since the family name of all, even the bearded
Sweet-William, is _Dianthus_, the decisive title of Linnaeus, a word from
the Greek meaning "flower of Jove," while the highly scented species
and varieties of the more or less pungent clove breath remain under the
old subtitle--_Caryophyllus_.

To go minutely into the differences and distinctions of the race would
require a book all to itself, for in 1597, more than three hundred years
ago, Gerarde wrote: "There are, under the name of _Caryophyllus_,
comprehended diuers and sundrie sorts of plants, of such variable
colours and also severall shapes that a great and large volume would not
suffice to write of euery one in particular." And when we realize that
the pink was probably the first flower upon which, early in the
eighteenth century, experiments in hybridization were tried, the
intricacy will be fully understood.

For the Garden, You, and I, three superficial groups only are necessary:
the truly hardy perennial pinks, that when once established remain for
years; the half-hardy perennials that flower the second year after
planting, and require protection; and the biennials that will flower the
first year and may be treated as annuals.

The Margaret carnations, though biennials, are best treated as annuals,
for they may be had in flower in three to four months after the sowing
of the seed, and the English perennial border carnations, bizarres, and
picotees will live for several years, but in this climate must be
wintered in a _dry wooden_ cold pit, after the manner of the perennial
varieties of wallflowers, tender roses, and the like.

I emphasize the words _dry wooden_ in connection with a cold pit from my
experience in seeking to make mine permanent by replacing the planks,
with which it was built and which often decayed, by stone work, with
most disastrous results, causing me to lose a fine lot of plants by
mildew.

The truly hardy pinks (_dianthus plumarius_), the fringed and
clove-scented species both double and single of old-time gardens, that
bloom in late spring and early summer, are called variously May and
grass pinks. Her Majesty is a fine double white variety of this class,
and if, in the case of double varieties, you wish to avoid the risk of
getting single flowers, you would better start your stock with a few
plants and subdivide. For myself, every three or four years, I sow the
seed of these pinks in spring in the hardy seed bed, and transplant to
their permanent bed early in September, covering the plants lightly in
winter with evergreen boughs or corn stalks. Leaf litter or any sort of
covering that packs and holds water is deadly to pinks, so prone is the
crown to decay.

In the catalogues you will find these listed under the names of
Pheasant's Eye, Double Scotch pinks (_Scotius_), and Perpetual Pink
(_semperflorens_). With this class belongs the Sweet-William (_dianthus
barbatus_), which should be sown and treated in a like manner. It is
also a hardy perennial, but I find it best to renew it every few years,
as the flowers of young plants are larger, and in spite of care, the
most beautiful hybrids will often decay at the ground. There is no
garden flower, excepting the Dahlia, that gives us such a wealth of
velvet bloom, and if you mean to make a specialty of pinks, I should
advise you to buy a collection of Sweet-Williams in the separate
colours, which range from white to deepest crimson with varied markings.

Directions for sowing the biennial Chinese and Japanese pinks were given
in the chronicle concerning the hardy seed bed. These pinks are not
really fragrant, though most of them have a pleasant apple odour that,
together with their wonderful range of colour, makes them particularly
suitable for table decoration.

In addition to the mixed colours recommended for the general seed bed,
the following Japanese varieties are of special beauty, among the single
pinks: Queen of Holland, pure white; Eastern Queen, enormous rose-pink
flowers, Crimson Belle, dark red. Among the double, Fireball, an intense
scarlet; the Diadem pink, Salmon Queen, and the lovely Oriental Beauty
with diversely marked petals of a crepy texture.

The double varieties of course are more solid and lasting, if they do
not insist upon swelling so mightily that they burst the calyx and so
have a dishevelled and one sided look; but for intrinsic beauty of
colour and marking the single Chinese and Japanese pinks, particularly
the latter, reign supreme. They have a quality of holding one akin to
that of the human eye and possess much of the power of individual
expression that belongs to pansies and single violets.

By careful management and close clipping of withered flowers, a bed of
these pinks may be had in bloom from June until December, the first
flowers coming from the autumn-sown plants, which may be replaced in
August by those sown in the seed bed in late May, which by this time
will be well budded.

"August is a kittle time for transplanting border things," I hear you
say. To be sure; but with your water-barrel, the long-necked water-pots,
and a judicious use of inverted flower-pots between ten A.M.
and four P.M., there is no such word as fail in this as in many
other cases.

[Illustration: SINGLE AND DOUBLE PINKS.]

Upon the second and third classes you must depend for pinks of the
taller growth ranging from one to two feet in height and flourishing
long-stemmed clusters of deliciously clove-scented flowers. The hardy
Margarets might be wintered in the pit, if it were worth the while, but
they are so easily raised from seed, and so prone literally to bloom
themselves to death in the three months between midsummer and hard
frost, that I prefer to sow them each year in late March and April and
plant them out in May, as soon as their real leaves appear, and pull
them up at the general autumnal garden clearance. Upon the highly
scented perpetual and picotee pinks or carnations (make your own choice
of terms) you must depend for fragrance between the going of the May
pinks and the coming of the Margarets; not that they of necessity cease
blooming when their more easily perfected sisters begin; quite the
contrary, for the necessity of lifting them in the winter gives them a
spring set-back that they do not have in England, where they are the
universal hardy pink, alike of the gardens of great estates and the
brick-edged cottage border.

These are the carnations of Mrs. Marchant's garden that filled you with
such admiration, and also awoke the spirit of emulation. Lavinia
Cortright was correct in associating them with the lavish bloom of the
gardens of Hampton Court, for if anything could make me permanently
unpatriotic (which is impossible), it would be the roses and picotee
pinks of the dear old stupid (human middle-class, and cold
bedroom-wise), but florally adorable mother country!

The method by which you may possess yourself of these crowning flowers
of the garden, for _coro_nations is one of the words from which
_car_nation is supposed but to be derived, is as follows:--

Be sure of your seed. Not long ago it was necessary to import it direct,
but not now. You may buy from the oldest of American seed houses fifty
varieties of carnations and picotees, in separate packets, for three
dollars, or twenty-five sorts for one dollar and seventy-five cents, or
twelve (enough for a novice) for one dollar, the same being undoubtedly
English or Holland grown, while a good English house asks five
shillings, or a dollar and a quarter, for a single packet of mixed
varieties!

Moral--it is not necessary that "made in England" should be stamped upon
flower seeds to prove them of English origin!

If you can spare hotbed room, the seeds may be sown in April, like the
early Margarets, and transplanted into some inconspicuous part of the
vegetable garden, where the soil is deep and firm and there is a free
circulation of air (not between tall peas and sweet corn), as for the
first summer these pinks have no ornamental value, other than the
pleasurable spectacle made by a healthy plant of any kind, by virtue of
its future promise. Before frost or not later than the second week in
October the pinks should be put in long, narrow boxes or pots
sufficiently large to hold all the roots comfortably, but with little
space to spare, watered, and partly shaded, until they have recovered
themselves, when they should be set in the lightest part of the cold
pit. During the winter months they should have only enough water to keep
the earth from going to dust, and as much light and air as possible
without absolutely freezing hard, after the manner of treating lemon
verbenas, geraniums, and wall-flowers.

By the middle of April they may be planted in the bed where they are to
bloom, and all the further care they need will be judicious watering and
the careful staking of the flower stalks if they are weak and the buds
top-heavy,--and by the way, as to the staking of flowers in general, a
word with you later on.

In the greenhouse, pinks are liable to many ailments, and several of
these follow them out-of-doors, three having given me some trouble, the
most fatal being of a fungoid order, due usually to unhealthy root
conditions or an excess of moisture.

_Rust_ is one of these, its Latin name being too long for the simple
vocabulary of The Garden, You, and I. It first shows itself in a brown
spot that seems to have worked out from the inner part of the leaf.
Sometimes it can be conquered by snipping the infected leaves, but if it
seizes an entire bed, the necessary evil of spraying with Bordeaux
mixture must be resorted to, as in the case of fungus-spotted
hollyhocks.

_Thrip_, the little transparent, whitish fly, will sometimes bother
border carnations in the same way as it does roses. If the flowers are
only in bud, I sprinkle them with my brass rose-atomizer and powder
slightly with helebore. But if the flowers are open, sprinkling and
shaking alone may be resorted to. For the several kinds of underground
worms that trouble pinks, of which the wireworm is the chief, I have
found a liberal use of unslaked lime and bone-dust in the preparation of
the soil before planting the best preventive.

Other ailments have appeared only occasionally. Sometimes an apparently
healthy, full-grown plant will suddenly wither away, or else swell up
close to the ground and finally burst so that the sap leaks out and it
dies like a punctured or girdled tree. The first trouble may come from
the too close contact of fresh manure, which should be kept away from
the main roots of carnations, as from contact with lily bulbs.

As to the swelling called _gout_, there is no cure, so do not temporize.
Pull up the plant at once and disinfect the spot with unslaked lime and
sulphur.

Thus, Mary Penrose, may you have either pinks in your garden or a garden
of pinks, whichever way you may care to develop your idea. "A deal of
trouble?" Y-e-s; but then only think of the flowers that crown the work,
and you might spend an equal amount of time in pricking cloth with a
steel splinter and embroidering something, in the often taken-in-vain
name of decorative art, that in the end is only an elaborated
rag--without even the bone and the hank of hair!




XVI

THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE

VINES AND SHRUBS

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_Woodridge, September 10._ Your chronicle of the Pink Family found me by
myself in camp, dreaming away as vigorously as if it was a necessary and
practical occupation. After all, are we sure that it is not, in a way,
both of these? This season my dreams of night have been so long that
they have lingered into the things of day and _vice versa_, and yet
neither the one nor the other have whispered of idleness, but the
endless hope of work.

Bart's third instalment of vacation ends to-morrow, though we shall
continue to sleep out of doors so long as good weather lasts; the
remaining ten days we are saving until October, when the final
transplanting of trees and shrubs is to be made; and in addition to
those for the knoll we have marked some shapely dogwoods, hornbeams, and
tulip trees for grouping in other parts of the home acres. There are
also to be had for the digging good bushes of the early pink and clammy
white azalea, mountain-laurel, several of the blueberry tribe, that have
white flowers in summer and glorious crimson foliage in autumn,
white-flowered elder, button-bush, groundsel tree, witchhazel, bayberry,
the shining-leaved sumach, the white meadow-sweet, and pink steeplebush,
besides a number of cornels and viburnums suitable for shrubberies. As I
glance over the list of what the river and quarry woods have yielded us,
it is like reading from the catalogue of a general dealer in hardy
plants, and yet I suppose hundreds of people have as much almost at
their doors, if they did but know it.

The commercial side of a matter of this kind is not the one upon which
to dwell the most, except upon the principle of the old black woman who
said, "Chillun, count yer marcies arter every spell o' pain!" and
to-day, in assaying our mercies and the various advantages of our garden
vacation, I computed that the trees, shrubs, ferns, herbaceous wild
flowers, and vines (yes, we have included vines, of which I must tell
you), if bought of the most reasonable of dealers, would have cost us at
least three hundred dollars, without express or freight charges.

The reason for my being by myself at this particular moment is that
Bart, mounted on solemn Romeo, has taken the Infant, astride her
diminutive pony, by a long leader, for a long-promised ride up the river
road, the same being the _finale_ of the celebration of his birthday,
that began shortly after daylight. The Infant, in order to be early
enough to give him the first of his thirty-three kisses, came the night
before, and though she has camped out with us at intervals all summer,
the novelty has not worn off. She has a happy family of pets that,
without being caged or in any way coerced or confined, linger about the
old barn, seem to watch for her coming, and expect their daily rations,
even though they do not care to be handled.

Punch and Judy, the gray squirrels of the dovecote, perch upon her
shoulders and pry into the pockets of her overalls for nuts or kernels
of corn, all the while keeping a bright eye upon Reddy, the setter pup,
who, though he lies ever so sedately, nose between paws, they well know
is not to be trusted. While as for birds, all the season we have had
chipping-sparrows, catbirds, robins, and even a wood-thrush, leader of
the twilight orchestra, all of whom the little witch has tempted in turn
by a bark saucer spread with leaves and various grains and small
fruits, from strawberries to mulberries, for which she has had a daily
hunt through the Opal Farm land the season through.

Toward the English sparrow she positively declines to harden her heart,
in spite of my having repeated the story of its encroachments and
crimes. She listens and merely shakes her head, saying, "We 'vited them
to come, didn't we, mother? When we 'vites people, we always feed 'em;
'sides, they're the only ones'll let me put them in my pocket," which is
perfectly true, for having learned this warm abiding-place of much oats
and cracked corn, they follow her in a flock, and a few confiding
spirits allow themselves to be handled.

At the birthday dinner party, arranged by the Infant, a number of these
guests were present. We must have looked a motley crew, in whose company
Old King Cole himself would have been embarrassed, for Bart wore a
wreath of pink asters, while a gigantic sunflower made my head-dress,
and the cake, made and garnished with red and white peppermints, an
American and an Irish flag, by Anastasia, was mounted firmly upon a
miscellaneous mass of flowers, with a superstructure of small yellow
tomatoes, parsley, young carrots, and beets, the colour of these
vegetables having caught the Infant's eye.

The pony, Ginger, had a basket of second-crop clover flowers provided
for him; Reddy some corned-beef hash, his favourite dish, coaxed from
Anastasia; while for Punch, Judy, and as many of their children as would
venture down from the rafters, the Infant had compounded a wonderful
salad of mixed nuts and corn. As the Infant ordained that "the childrens
shan't tum in 'til d'sert," we had the substantial part of our meal in
peace; but the candles were no sooner blown out and the cake cut than
Ginger left his clover to nibble the young carrots, the squirrels got
into the nut dish bodily and began sorting over the nuts to find those
they liked best, with such vigour that the others flew in our faces, and
Reddy fell off the box upon which the Infant had balanced him with
difficulty, nearly carrying the table-cloth with him, while at this
moment, the feast becoming decidedly crumby, we were surrounded by the
entire flock of English sparrows!

       *       *       *       *       *

Now this is not at all what I started to tell you; quite the contrary.
Please forgive this domestic excursion into the land of maternal pride
and happenings. What I meant to write of was my conviction, that came
through sitting on the hay rafters and looking down upon the garden,
that as a beautiful painting is improved by proper framing, so should
the garden be enclosed at different points by frames, to focus the eye
upon some central object.

Though the greater part of the garden is as yet only planned and merely
enough set out in each part to fix special boundaries, as in the case of
the rose bed, I realize that as a whole it is too open and lacks
perspective. You see it all at once; there are no breaks. No matter in
what corner scarlet salvia and vermilion nasturtiums may be planted,
they are sure to get in range with the pink verbenas and magenta phlox
in a teeth-on-edge way.

From other viewpoints the result is no better. Looking from the piazza
that skirts two sides of the house, where we usually spend much time,
three portions of the garden are in sight at once, and all on different
planes, without proper separating frames; the rose garden is near at
hand, the old borders leading to the sundial being at right angles with
it. At the right, the lower end of the knoll and the gap with its bed of
heliotrope are prominent, while between, at a third distance, is the
proposed location of the white-birch screen, the old wall rockery, etc.
The rockery and rose garden are in their proper relation, but the other
portions should be given perspective by framing, and the result of my
day-dreams is that this, according to nature, should be done by the
grouping of shrubs and the drapery of vines.

I now for the first time fully understand the uses of the pergola in
landscape gardening, the open sides of which form a series of
vine-draped frames. I had always before thought it a stiff and
artificial sort of arrangement, as well as the tall clipped yews, laurel
trees in tubs, and marble vases and columns that are parts of the usual
framework of the more formal gardens. And while these things would be
decidedly out of place in gardens of our class, and at best could only
be indulged in via white-painted wooden imitations, the woman who is her
own gardener may exercise endless skill in bringing about equally good
results with the rustic material at hand and by following wild nature,
who, after all, is the first model.

[Illustration: THE SILVER MAPLE BY THE LANE GATE.]

I think I hear Evan laughing at my preachment concerning his special
art, but the comprehension of it has all come through looking at the
natural landscape effects that have happened at Opal Farm owing to the
fact that the hand of man has there been stayed these many years. On
either side of the rough bars leading between our boundary wall and the
meadow stands a dead cedar tree, from which the dry, moss-covered
branches have been broken by the loads of hay that used to be gathered
up at random and carted out this way. Wild birds doubtless used these
branches as perches of vantage from which they might view the country,
both during feeding excursions and in migration, and thus have sown the
seed of their provender, for lo and behold, around the old trees have
grown vines of wild grapes, with flowers that perfume the entire meadow
in June. Here the woody, spiral-climbing waxwork holds aloft its
clusters of berries that look like bunches of miniature lemons until on
being ripe they open and show the coral fruit; Virginia creeper of the
five-pointed fingers, clinging tendrils, glorious autumn colour, and
spreading clusters of purple blackberries, and wild white clematis, the
"traveller's joy" of moist roadside copses, all blending together and
stretching out hands, until this season being undisturbed, they have
clasped to form a natural arch of surpassing beauty.

Having a great pile of cedar poles, in excess of the needs of all our
other projects, my present problem is to place a series of simple arches
constructed on this natural idea, that shall frame the different garden
vistas from the best vantage-point. Rustic pillars, after the plan of
Evan's that you sent me for the corners of the rose garden, will give
the necessary formal touch, while groups of shrubs can be so placed as
not only to screen colours that should not be seen in combination, but
to make reasons for turns that would otherwise seem arbitrary.

Aunt Lavinia has promised me any number of Chinese honeysuckle vines
from the little nursery bed of rooted cuttings that is Martin
Cortright's special province, for she writes me that they began with
this before having seed beds for either hardy plants or annuals, as they
wished to have hedges of flowering shrubs in lieu of fences, and some
fine old bushes on the place furnished ample cuttings of the
old-fashioned varieties, which they have supplemented.

Aunt Lavinia also says that the purple Wisteria grows easily from the
beanlike seed and blossoms in three years, and that she has a dozen of
these two-year-old seedlings that she will send me as soon as I have
place for them. Remembering your habit of giving every old tree a vine
to comfort its old age, and in particular the silver maple by the lane
gate of your garden, with its woodpecker hole and swinging garniture
of Wisteria bloom, I have promised a similar cloak to a gnarled bird
cherry that stands midway in the fence rockery, and yet another to an
attenuated poplar, so stripped of branches as to be little more than a
pole and still keeping a certain dignity.

[Illustration: A CURTAIN TO THE SIDE PORCH.]

The honeysuckles I shall keep for panelling the piazza, they are such
clean vines and easily controlled; while on the two-story portion under
the guest-room windows some Virginia creepers can be added to make a
curtain to the side porch.

As for other vines, we have many resources. Festooned across the front
stoop at Opal Farm is an old and gigantic vine of the scarlet-and-orange
trumpet creeper, that has overrun the shed, climbed the side of the
house, and followed round the rough edges of the eaves, while all
through the grass of the front yard are seedling plants of the vine
that, in spring, are blended with tufts of the white star of Bethlehem
and yellow daffies.

In the river woods, brush and swamp lots, near by, we have found and
marked for our own the mountain fringe with its feathery foliage and
white flowers shaded with purple pink, that suggest both the bleeding
heart of gardens and the woodland Dutchman's breeches. It grows in great
strings fourteen or fifteen feet in length and seems as trainable as
smilax or the asparagus vine. Here are also woody trailers of moonseed,
with its minute white flowers in the axils of leaves that might pass at
first glance for one of the many varieties of wild grapes; the hyacinth
bean, with its deliciously fragrant chocolate flowers tinged with
violet, that is so kind in covering the unsightly underbrush of damp
places. And here, first, last, and always, come the wild grapes, showing
so many types of leaf and fruit, from the early ripening summer grape of
the high-climbing habit, having the most typical leaf and thin-skinned,
purple berries, that have fathered so many cultivated varieties; the
frost grape, with its coarsely-toothed, rather heart-shaped, pointed
leaf and small black berries, that are uneatable until after frost (and
rather horrid even then); to the riverside grape of the glossy leaf,
fragrant blossoms and fruit.

One thing must be remembered concerning wild grapes: they should be
planted, if in the open sunlight, where they will be conspicuous up to
late summer only, as soon after this time the leaves begin to grow
rusty, while those in moist and partly-shady places hold their own. I
think this contrast was borne in upon me by watching a mass of
grape-vines upon a tumble-down wall that we pass on our way to the
river woods. In August the leaves began to brown and curl at the edges,
while similar vines in the cool lane shade were still green and growing.
So you see, Mrs. Evan, that, in addition to our other treasure-trove, we
are prepared to start a free vinery as well, and as our lucky star seems
to be both of morning and evening and hangs a long while in the sky,
Meyer, Larry's successor, we find, has enough of a labourer's skill at
post setting and a carpenter's eye and hand at making an angled arch
(this isn't the right term, but you know what I mean), so that we have
not had to pause in our improvements owing to Amos Opie's rheumatic
illness.

Not that I think the old man _very_ ill, and I believe he could get
about more if he wished, for when I went down to see him this morning,
he seemed to have something on his mind, and with but little urging he
told me his dilemma. Both _The Man from Everywhere_ and Maria Maxwell
have made him good offers for his farm, _The Man's_ being the first! Now
he had fully determined to sell to _The Man_, when Maria's kindness
during his illness not only turned him in her favour, but gave him an
attachment for the place, so that now he doesn't really wish to sell at
all! It is this mental perturbation, in his very slow nature, that is,
I believe, keeping him an invalid!

_What_ Maria wants of the farm neither Bart nor I can imagine. She has a
little property, a few thousand dollars, enough probably to buy the farm
and put it in livable repair, but this money we thought she was saving
for the so-called rainy day (which is much more apt to be a very dry
period) of spinsterhood! Of course she has some definite plan, but
whether it is bees or boarders, jam or a kindergarten, we do not know,
but we may be very sure that she is not jumping at random. Only I'm a
little afraid, much as I should like her for a next-door neighbour,
that, with her practical head, she would insist upon making hay of the
lily meadow!

"Straying away again from the horticultural to the domestic things," I
hear you say. Yes; but now that the days are shortening a bit, it seems
natural to think more about people again. If I only knew whether Maria
means to give up her teaching this winter, I would ask her to stay with
us and begin to train the Infant's mind in the way it should think, for
my head and hands will be full and my heart overflowing, I imagine. Ah!
this happy, blessed summer! Yes, I know that you know, though I have
never told you. That's what it means to have real friends. But to the
shrubs.

Will you do me one more favour before even the suspicion of frost
touches my enthusiasm, that I may have everything in order in my _Garden
Boke_ against a planting season when Time may again hold his remorseless
sway. This list of eighteen or more shrubs is made from those I know and
like, with selections from that Aunt Lavinia sent me. Is it
comprehensive, think you? Of course we cannot go into novelties in this
direction, any more than we may with the roses.

There is the little pale pink, Daphne Mezereum, that flowers before its
leaves come in April. I saw it at Aunt Lavinia's and Mrs. Marchant had a
great circle of the bushes. Then Forsythias, with yellow flowers, the
red and pink varieties of Japanese quince, double-flowering almond and
plum, the white spireas (they all have strange new names in the
catalogue), the earliest being what mother used to call bridal-wreath
(_prunifolia_), with its long wands covered with double flowers, like
tiny white daisies, the St. Peter's wreath (_Van Houttei_) with the
clustered flowers like small white wild roses, two pink species,
Billardii and Anthony Waterer, beautiful if gathered before the flowers
open, as the colour fades quickly, and a little dwarf bush, Fortune's
white spirea, that I have seen at the florist's. Next the old-fashioned
purple lilac, that seems to hold its own against all newcomers for
garden use, the white tree lilac, the fragrant white mock orange or
syringa (_Coronarius_), the Japanese barberry of yellow flowers and
coral berries, the three deutzias, two being the tall _crenata_ and
_scabra_ and the third the charming low-growing _gracilis_, the
old-fashioned snowball or Guelder rose (_viburnum opulus sterilis_), the
weigelias, rose-pink and white, the white summer-flowering hydrangea
(_paniculata grandiflora_), and the brown-flowered, sweet-scented
strawberry shrub (_calycanthus floridus_).

"Truly a small slice from the loaf the catalogues offer," you say. Yes;
but you must remember that our wild nursery has a long chain to add to
these.

In looking over the list of shrubs, it seems to me that the majority of
them, like the early wild flowers, are white, but then it is almost as
impossible to have too many white flowers as too many green leaves.

_September 15._ I was prevented from finishing this until to-day, when I
have a new domestic event to relate. Maria, no longer a music mistress,
has leased the Opal Farm, it seems, and will remain with me this winter
pending the repairing of the house, which Amos Opie himself is to
superintend. I wish I could fathom the ins and outs of the matter, which
are not at present clear, but probably I shall know in time. Meanwhile,
I have Maria for a winter companion, and a mystery to solve and puzzle
about; is not this truly feminine bliss?




XVII

THE INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER


Chronicled by the rays of light and sound waves upon the walls of the
house at Opal Farm.


PEOPLE INVOLVED

  _The Man from Everywhere_, keeping bachelor's hall in the
  eastern half of the farm home.

  _Amos Opie_, living in the western half of the house, the separating
  door being locked on his side.

  _Maria Maxwell_, who, upon hearing Opie is again ill, has
  dropped in to give him hot soup and medicine.

Amos Opie was more than usually uncomfortable this particular September
evening. It may have been either a rather sudden change in the weather
or the fact that now that he was sufficiently well to get about the
kitchen and sit in the well-house porch, of a sunny morning, Maria
Maxwell had given up the habit of running over several times a day to
give him his medicine and be sure that the kettle boiled and his tea was
freshly drawn, instead of being what she called "stewed bitterness" that
had stood on the leaves all day.

Whichever it was, he felt wretched in body and mind, and began to think
himself neglected and was consequently aggrieved. He hesitated a few
minutes before he opened the door leading to _The Man's_ part of the
house, took a few steps into the square hall, and called "Mr. Blake" in
a quavering voice; but no answer came, as the bachelor had not yet
returned from the reservoir.

Going back, he settled heavily into the rocking-chair and groaned,--it
was not from real pain, simply he had relaxed his grip and was making
himself miserable,--then he began to talk to himself.

"_She_ doesn't come in so often now _he's_ come home, and _he_ fights
shy o' the place, thinkin' mebbe _she's_ around, and they both wants to
buy. _He's_ offered me thirty-five hundred cash, and _she's_ offered me
thirty hundred cash, which is all the place's worth, for it'll take
another ten hundred to straighten out the house, with new winder frames,
floorin' 'nd plaster 'nd shingles, beams and sills all bein'
sound,--when the truth is I don't wish ter sell nohow, yet can't afford
to hold! I don't see light noway 'nd I'm feelin' another turn comin'
when I was nigh ready ter git about agin to Miss'ss Penrose flower
poles. O lordy! lordy! I wish I had some more o' that settling medicine
Maria Maxwell brought me" (people very seldom spoke of that young woman
except by her complete name). "If I had my wind, I'd yell over to her to
come up! Yes, I vow I would!"

David, the hound, who had been lying asleep before the stove, in which
the fire had died away, got up, stretched himself, and, going to his
master, after gazing in his face for several minutes, licked his hands
thoroughly and solemnly, in a way totally different from the careless
and irresponsible licks of a joyous dog; then raising his head gave a
long-drawn bay that finally broke from its melancholy music and
degenerated into a howl.

Amos must have dozed in his chair, for it seemed only a moment when a
knock sounded on the side door and, without waiting for a reply, Maria
Maxwell entered, a cape thrown about her shoulders, a lantern in one
hand, and in the other a covered pitcher from which steam was curling.

"I heard David howling and I went to our gate to look; I saw that there
wasn't a light in the farm-house and so knew that something was the
matter. No fire in the stove and the room quite chilly! Where is that
neighbour of yours in the other half of the house? Couldn't he have
brought you in a few sticks?"

"He isn't ter hum just now," replied Amos, in tones that were
unnecessarily feeble, while at the same time an idea entered his brain
that almost made him chuckle; but the sound which was quenched in his
throat only came to Maria as an uncomfortable struggle for breath that
hastened her exit to the woodpile by the side fence for the material to
revive the fire. In going round the house, her arms laden with logs, she
bumped into the figure of _The Man_ leading his bicycle across the
grass, which deadened his footfall, as the lantern she carried blinded
her to all objects not within its direct rays.

"Maria Maxwell! Is Opie ill again? You must not carry such a heavy
load!" he exclaimed all in one breath, as he very quickly transferred
the logs to his own arms, and was making the fire in the open stove
almost before she had regained the porch, so that when she had lighted a
lamp and drawn the turkey-red curtains, the reflections of the flames
began to dance on the wall and cheerfulness suddenly replaced gloom.

Still Amos sat in an attitude of dejection. Thanking _The Man_ for his
aid, but taking no further notice of him, Maria began to heat the broth
which was contained in the pitcher, asking Amos at the same time if he
did not think that he would feel better in bed.

"I dunno's place has much to do with it," he grumbled; "this can't go on
no longer, it's doing for me, that it is!"

Maria, thinking that he referred to bodily illness, hastened the
preparations for bed, and _The Man_, feeling helpless as all men do when
something active is being done in which they have no part, rose to go,
and, with his hand on the latch of the porch door, said in a low voice:
"If I might help you in any way, I should be very glad; I do not quite
like leaving you alone with this old fellow,--you may need help in
getting him to bed. Tell me frankly, would you like me to stay?"

"Frankly I would rather you would not," said Maria, yet in so cordial a
tone that no offence could be gathered from it in any way.

So the door opened and closed again and Maria began the rather laborious
task of coaxing the old man to bed. When once there, the medicine given,
and the soup taken, which she could not but notice that he swallowed
greedily, she seated herself before the fire, resolving that, if Amos
did not feel better by nine o'clock, she would have Barney come over for
the night, as of course she must return to be near the Infant.

As she sat there she pictured for the hundredth time how she would
invest her little capital and rearrange her life, if Amos consented to
sell her the farm,--how best to restore the home without elaborating the
care of it, and take one or two people to live with her who had been ill
or needed rest in cheerful surroundings. Not always the same two, for
that is paralyzing after a time when the freshness of energetic
influence wears off; but her experience among her friends told her that
in a city's social life there was an endless supply of overwrought
nerves and bodies.

The having a home was the motive, the guests the necessity. Then she
closed her eyes again and saw the upper portion of the rich meadow land
that had lain fallow so long turned into a flower farm wherein she would
raise blossoms for a well-known city dealer who had, owing to his
artistic skill, a market for his wares and decorative skill in all the
cities of the eastern coast. She had consulted him and he approved her
plan.

The meadow was so sheltered that it would easily have a two weeks' lead
over the surrounding country, and the desirability of her crop should
lie in its perfection rather than rarity. Single violets in frames,
lilies-of-the-valley for Easter and spring weddings, sweet peas, in
separate colours, peonies, Iris, Gladioli, asters, and Dahlias: three
acres in all. Upon these was her hope built, for with a market waiting,
what lay between her and success but work?

Yes, work and the farm. Then came the vision of human companionship,
such as her cousin Bartram and Mary Penrose shared. Could flowers and a
home make up for it? After all, what is home?

Her thoughts tangled and snapped abruptly, but of one thing she was
sure. She could no longer endure teaching singing to assorted tone-deaf
children, many of whom could no more keep on the key than a cow on the
tight rope; and when she found a talented child and gave it appreciative
attention, she was oftentimes officially accused of favouritism by some
disgruntled parent with a political pull, for that was what contact with
the public schools of a large city had taught her to expect.

A log snapped--she looked at the clock. It was exactly nine! Going to
the window, she pulled back the curtain; the old moon, that has a
fashion of working northward at this time, was rising from a location
wholly new to her.

She looked at Amos; he was very still, evidently asleep, yet
unnaturally so, for the regular breathing of unconsciousness was not
there and the firelight shadows made him look pinched and strange.
Suddenly she felt alone and panic stricken; she forgot the tests so well
known to her of pulse taking, and all the countryside tales of strokes
and seizures came back to her. She did not hesitate a moment; a man was
in the same house and she felt entirely outside of the strength of her
own will.

Going to the separating door, she found it locked, on which side she
could not be sure; but seeing a long key hanging by the clock she tried
it, on general principles. It turned hard, and the lock finally yielded
with a percussive snap. Stepping into the hall, she saw a light in the
front of the house, toward which she hurried. _The Man_ was seated by a
table that was strewn with books, papers, and draughting instruments; he
was not working, but in his turn gazing at the flames from a smouldering
hearth fire, though his coat was off and the window open, for it was not
cold but merely chilly.

Hearing her step, he started, turned, and, as he saw her upon the
threshold, made a grab for his coat and swung it into place. It is
strange, this instinct in civilized man of not appearing coatless
before a woman he respects.

"Amos Opie is very ill, I'm afraid," she said gravely, without the least
self-consciousness or thought of intrusion.

"Shall I go for the doctor?" said _The Man_, reaching for his hat and at
the same time opening the long cupboard by the chimney, from which he
took a leather-covered flask.

"No, not yet; please come and look at him. Yes, I want you very much!"
This in answer to a questioning look in his eyes.

Standing together by the bed, they saw the old man's eyelids quiver and
then open narrowly. _The Man_ poured whiskey from his flask into a
glass, added water, and held it to Amos's lips, where it was quickly and
completely absorbed!

Next he put a finger on Amos's pulse and after a minute closed his watch
with a snap, but without comment.

"You feel better now, Opie?" he questioned presently in a tone that, to
the old man at least, was significant.

"What gave you this turn? Is there anything on your mind? You might as
well tell now, as you will have to sooner or later, and Miss Maxwell
must go home presently. You'll have to put up with me for the rest of
the night and a man isn't as cheerful a companion as a woman--is he,
Amos?"

"No, yer right there, Mr. Blake, and it's the idee o' loneliness that's
upsettin' me! Come down ter facts, Mr. Blake, it's the offers I've had
fer the farm--yourn and hern--and my wishin' ter favour both and yet not
give it up myself, and the whole's too much fer me!"

"Hers! Has Miss Maxwell made a bid for the farm? What do you want it
for?" he said, turning quickly to Maria, who coloured and then replied
quietly--"To live in! which is exactly what you said when I asked you a
similar question a couple of months ago!"

"The p'int is," continued Amos, quickly growing more wide awake, and
addressing the ceiling as a neutral and impartial listener, "that Mr.
Blake has offered me five hundred more than Maria Maxwell, and though I
want ter favour her (in buyin', property goes to the highest bidder;
it's only contract work that's fetched by the lowest, and I never did
work by contract--it's too darned frettin'), I can't throw away good
money, and neither of 'em yet knows that whichsomever of 'em buys it
has got ter give me a life right ter live in the summer kitchen and
fetch my drinkin' water from the well in the porch! A lone widder man's
a sight helplesser 'n a widder, but yet he don't get no sympathy!"

_The Man from Everywhere_ began to laugh, and catching Maria's eye she
joined him heartily. "How do you mean to manage?" he asked in a way that
barred all thought of intrusion.

"I'm going to have a flower farm and take in two invalids--no, not
cranks or lunatics, but merely tired people," she added, a little catch
coming in her voice.

"Then you had better begin with me, for I'm precious tired of taking
care of myself, and here is Amos also applying, so I do not see but what
your establishment is already complete!"

Then, as he saw by her face that the subject was not one for jest, he
said, in his hearty way that Mary Penrose likes, "Why not let me buy the
place, as mine was the first offer, put it in order, and then lease it
to you for three years, with the privilege of buying if you find that
your scheme succeeds? If the house is too small to allow two lone men a
room each, I can add a lean-to to match Opie's summer kitchen, for you
know sometimes a woman finds it comfortable to have a man in the house!"

Maria did not answer at first, but was looking at the one uncurtained
window, where the firelight again made opals of the panes. Then turning,
she said, "I will think over your offer, Mr. Blake, if everything may be
upon a strictly business basis. But how about Amos? He seems better, and
I ought to be going. I do not know why I should have been so foolish,
but for a moment he did not seem to breathe, and I thought it was a
stroke."

"I'm comin' too all in good time, now my mind's relieved," replied the
old man, with a chuckle, "and I think I'll weather to-night fer the sake
o' fixin' that deed termorrow, Mr. Blake, if you'll kindly give me jest
a thimbleful more o' that old liquor o' yourn--I kin manage it fust rate
without the water, thank 'ee!"

_The Man_ followed Maria to the door and out into the night. He did not
ask her if he might go with her--he simply walked by her side for once
unquestioned.

Maria spoke first, and rather more quickly and nervously than usual: "I
suppose you think that my scheme in wishing the farm is a madcap one,
but I'm sure I could not see why you should wish to own it!"

"Yes and no! I can well understand why you should desire a broader,
freer life than your vocation allows, but--well, as for reading women's
motives, I have given that up long since; it often leads to trouble
though I have never lost my interest in them.

"I think Amos Opie will revive, now that his mind is settled" (if it had
been sufficiently light, Maria would have seen an expression upon _The
Man's_ face indicative of his belief that the recent attack of illness
was not quite motiveless, even though he forgave the ruse). "In a few
days, when the deeds are drawn, will you not, as my prospective tenant,
come and look over the house by daylight and tell me what changes would
best suit your purpose, so that I may make some plans? I imagine that
Amos revived will be able to do much of the work himself with a good
assistant.

"When would you like the lease to begin? In May? It is a pity that you
could not be here in the interval to overlook it all, for the pasture
should be ploughed at once for next year's gardening."

"May will be late; best put it at the first of March. As to overseeing,
I shall not be far away. I'm thinking of accepting cousin Mary's offer
to stay with her and teach the Infant and a couple of other children
this winter, which may be well for superintending the work, as I suppose
you are off again with the swallows, as usual."

"Oh, no, you forget the reservoir and the tunnelling of Three Brothers
for the aqueduct to Bridgeton!"

"Then let it be March first!" said Maria, after hesitating a moment,
during which she stood looking back at Opal Farm lying at peace in the
moonlight; "only, in making the improvements, please do them as if for
any one else, and remember that it is to be a strictly business affair!"

"And why should you think that I would deal otherwise by you?" _The Man_
said quickly, stepping close, where he could see the expression of her
face.

Maria, feeling herself cornered, did not answer immediately, and half
turned her face away,--only for a moment, however. Facing him, she said,
"Because men of your stamp are always good to women,--always doing them
kindnesses both big and little (ask Mary Penrose),--and sometimes
kindness hurts!"

"Well, then, the lease and all pertaining to it shall be strictly in the
line of business until you yourself ask for a modification,--but be
careful, I may be a hard landlord!" Then, dropping his guard, he said
suddenly, "Why is it that you and I--man and woman--temperamentally
alike, both interested in the same things, and of an age to know what in
life is worth while, should stand so aloof? Is there no more human basis
upon which I can persuade you to come to Opal Farm when it is mine? Give
me a month, three months,--lessen the distance you always keep between
us, and give me leave to convince you! Why will you insist upon
deliberately keeping up a barrier raised in the beginning when I was too
stupidly at home in your cousin's house to see that I might embarrass
you? Frankly, do you dislike me?"

Maria began two different sentences, stumbled, and stopped short; then
drawing herself up and looking _The Man_ straight in the face, she said,
"I have kept a barrier between us, and deliberately, as you say, but--"
here she faltered--"it was because I found you too interesting; the
barrier was to protect my own peace of mind more than to rebuff you."

"Then I may try to convince you that my plan is best?"

"Yes," said Maria, with a glint of her mischievous smile, "if you have
plenty of time to spare."

"And you will give me no more encouragement than this? No good wish or
omen?"

"Yes," said Maria again, "I wish that you may succeed--" here she
slipped her hand in the belt of her gown and drew out a little chamois
bag attached to her watch, "and for an omen, here is the opal you gave
me--you give it a happy interpretation and one is very apt to lose an
unset stone, you know!"

But as neither walls nor leaves have tongues, Mary Penrose never learned
the real ins and outs of this matter.




XVIII

THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose)


_Oaklands, September 29._ Michaelmas. The birthdays of our commuters are
not far apart. This being Evan's festival, we have eaten the annual
goose in his honour, together with several highly indigestible
old-country dishes of Martha Corkle's construction, for she comes down
from the cottage to preside over this annual feast. Now the boys have
challenged Evan to a "golf walk" over the Bluffs and back again, the
rough-and-ready course extending that distance, and I, being "o'er weel
dined," have curled up in the garden-overlook window of my room to write
to you.

It has been a good gardener's year, and I am sorry that the fall
anemones and the blooming of the earliest chrysanthemums insist upon
telling me that it is nearly over,--that is, as far as the reign of
complete garden colour is concerned. And amid our vagrant summer
wanderings among gardens of high or low degree, no one point has been so
recurrent or interesting as the distribution of colour, and especially
the dominance of white flowers in any landscape or garden in which they
appear.

In your last letter you speak of the preponderance of white among the
flowering shrubs as well as the early blossoms of spring. That this is
the case is one of the strong points in the decorative value of shrubs,
and in listing seeds for the hardy or summer beds or sorting the bushes
for the rosary, great care should be taken to have a liberal sprinkling
of white, for the white in the flower kingdom is what the diamond is in
the mineral world, necessary as a setting for all other colours, as well
as for its own intrinsic worth.

Look at a well-cut sapphire of flawless tint. It is beautiful surely,
but in some way its depth of colour needs illumination. Surround it with
evenly matched diamonds and at once life enters into it.

Fill a tall jar with spires of larkspur of the purest blue known to
garden flowers. Unless the sun shines fully on them they seem to swallow
light; mingle with them some stalks of white foxgloves, Canterbury
bells, or surround them with Madonna lilies, a fringe of spirea, or the
slender _Deutzia gracilis_, more frequently seen in florists' windows
than in the garden, and a new meaning is given the blue flower; the
black shadows disappear from its depth and sky reflections replace them.

The blue-fringed gentian, growing deep among the dark grasses of low
meadows, may be passed over without enthusiasm as a dull purplish flower
by one to whom its possibilities are unknown; but come upon it
backgrounded by Michaelmas daisies or standing alone in a meadow thick
strewn with the white stars of grass of Parnassus or wands of crystal
ladies' tresses, and all at once it becomes,--

  "Blue, blue, as if the sky let fall
  A flower from its cerulean wall!"

The same white setting enhances the brighter colours, though in a less
degree than blue, which is, next to magenta, one of the most difficult
colours to place in the garden. In view of this fact it is not strange
that it is a comparatively unusual hue in the flower world and a very
rare one among our neighbourly eastern birds, the only three that wear
it conspicuously being the bluebird, indigo bird, and the bluejay.

It is this useful quality as a setting that gives value to many white
flowers lacking intrinsic beauty, like sweet alyssum, candy-tuft, the
yarrows, and the double feverfew. In buying seeds of flowers in mixed
varieties, such as asters, verbenas, Sweet-William, pansies, or any
flower in short that has a white variety, it is always safe to buy a
single packet of the latter, because I have often noticed that the usual
mixtures, for some reason, are generally shy not only of the white but
often of the very lightest tints as well.

In selecting asters the average woman gardener may not be prepared to
buy the eight or ten different types that please her fancy in as many
separate colours; a mixture of each must suffice, but a packet of white
of each type should be added if the best results are to be achieved.

The same applies to sweet peas when planted in mixture; at least six
ounces of either pure white or very light, and therefore quasi-neutral
tints harmonizing with all darker colours, should be added. For it is in
the lighter tints of this flower that its butterfly characteristics are
developed. Keats had not the heavy deep-hued or striped varieties in
mind when he wrote of

  "... Sweet Peas on tiptoe for a flight,
   With wings of gentle flush: o'er delicate white,
   And taper fingers catching at all things
   To bind them all about with tiny rings."

If you examine carefully the "flats" of pansies growing from mixed seed
and sold in the market-places or at local florists', you will notice
that in eight out of ten the majority of plants are of the darker
colours.

There are white varieties of almost every garden flower that blooms
between the last frost of spring and winter ice. The snowdrop of course
is white and the tiny little single English violet of brief though
unsurpassing fragrance; we have white crocuses, white hyacinths,
narcissus, lilies-of-the-valley, Iris, white rock phlox, or moss-pink,
Madonna and Japan lilies, gladiolus, white campanulas of many species,
besides the well-known Canterbury bells, white hollyhocks, larkspurs,
sweet Sultan, poppies, phloxes, and white annual as well as hardy
chrysanthemums.

Almost all the bedding plants, like the geranium, begonia, ageratum,
lobelia, etc., have white species. There are white pinks of all types,
white roses, and wherever crimson rambler is seen Madame Plantier should
be his bride; white stocks, hollyhocks, verbenas, zinnias, Japanese
anemones, Arabis or rock cress, and white fraxinella; white Lupins,
nicotiana, evening primroses, pentstemons, portulaca, primulas, vincas,
and even a whitish nasturtium, though its flame-coloured partner salvia
declines to have her ardour so modified.

Among vines we have the white wisteria, several white clematis, the
moon-flower, and other Ipomeas, many climbing and trailing roses, the
English polygonum, the star cucumber, etc., so that there is no lack of
this harmonizing and modifying colour (that is not a colour after all)
if we will but use it intelligently.

Aside from the setting of flower to flower, white has another and wider
function. As applied to the broader landscape it is not only a maker of
perspective, but it often indicates a picture and fairly pulls it from
obscurity, giving the same lifelike roundness that the single white dot
lends in portraiture to the correctly tinted but still lifeless eye.

Take for instance a wide field without groups of trees to divide and let
it be covered only with grass, no matter how green and luxuriant, and
there is a monotonous flatness, that disappears the moment the field is
blooming with daisies or snowy wild asters.

Follow the meandering line of a brook through April meadows. Where does
the eye pause with the greatest sense of pleasure and restfulness? On
the gold of the marsh marigolds edging the water? or on the silver-white
plumes of shad-bush that wave and beckon across the marshes, as they
stray from moist ground toward the light woods? Could any gay colour
whatsoever compete with the snow of May apple orchards?--the fact that
the snow is often rose tinged only serving to accentuate the contrasting
white.

In the landscape all light tints that at a distance have the value of
white are equally to the purpose, and can be used for hedges,
boundaries, or what may be called punctuation points. German or English
Iris and peonies are two very useful plants for this purpose, flowering
in May and June and for the rest of the season holding their
substantial, well-set-up foliage. These two plants, if they receive even
ordinary good treatment, may also be relied upon for masses of uniform
bloom held well above the leaves; and while pure white peonies are a
trifle monotonous and glaring unless blended with the blush, rose,
salmon, and cream tints, there are any number of white iris both tall
and dwarf with either self-toned flowers, or pencilled, feathered, or
bordered with a variety of delicate tints, and others equally valuable
of pale shades of lilac or yellow, the recurved falls being of a
different tint.

Thus does Nature paint her pictures and give us hints to follow, and yet
a certain art phase proclaims Nature's colour combinations crude and
rudimentary forsooth!

[Illustration: AN IRIS HEDGE.]

Nature is never crude except through an unsuccessful human attempt to
reproduce the uncopyable. Give one of these critics all the colour
combinations of the evening sky and let him manipulate them with wires
and what a scorched omelet he would make of the most simple and natural
sunset!

While Nature does not locate the different colours on the palette to
please the eye of man, but to carry out the various steps in the great
plan of perpetuation, yet on that score it is all done with a sense of
colour value, else why are the blossoms of deep woods, as well as the
night-blooming flowers that must lure the moth and insect seekers
through the gloom, white or light-coloured?

In speaking of white or pale flowers there is one low shrub with
evergreen leaves and bluish-white flowers that I saw blooming in masses
for the first time not far from Boston in early May. There was a slight
hollow where the sun lay, that was well protected from the wind. This
sloped gently upward toward some birches that margined a pond. The
birches themselves were as yet but in tassel, the near-by grass was
green in spots only, and yet here in the midst of the chill, reluctant
promise of early spring was firmness of leaf and clustered flowers of
almost hothouse texture and fragrance. Not a single spray or a dozen,
but hundreds of them, covered the bushes.

This shrub is _Daphne cneorum_, a sturdier evergreen cousin of _Daphne
mezereum_, that brave-hearted shrub that often by the south wall of my
garden hangs its little pink flower clusters upon bare twigs as early as
the tenth of March. Put it on your list of desirables, for aside from
any other situation it will do admirably to edge laurels or
rhododendrons and so bring early colour of the rosy family hue to
brighten their dark glossy leaves, for the sight and the scent thereof
made me resolve to cover a certain nook with it, where the sun lodges
first every spring. I am planting mine this autumn, which is necessary
with things of such early spring vitality.

Another garden point akin to colour value in that it makes or mars has,
I may say, run itself into my vision quite sharply and painfully this
summer, and many a time have I rubbed my eyes and looked again in wonder
that such things could be. This is the spoiling of a well-thought-out
garden by the obtrusive staking of its plants. Of course there are many
tall and bushy flowers--hollyhocks, golden glow, cosmos--that have not
sufficient strength of stem to stand alone when the weight of soaking
rain is added to their flowers and the wind comes whirling to challenge
them to a dizzy dance, which they cannot refuse, and it inevitably turns
their heavy heads and leaves them prone.

[Illustration: DAPHNE CNEORUM.]

Besides these there are the lower, slender, but top-heavy lilies,
gladioli, carnations, and the like, that must not be allowed to soil
their pretty faces in the mud. A little thinking must be done and stakes
suitable to the height and girth of each plant chosen. If the purse
allows, green-painted stakes of sizes varying from eighteen inches for
carnations to six feet for Dahlias are the most convenient; but lacking
these, the natural bamboos, that may be bought in bundles by the
hundred, in canes of eight feet or more, and afterward cut in lengths to
suit, are very useful, being light, tough, and inconspicuous.

In supporting a plant, remember that the object is as nearly as possible
to supplement its natural stem. Therefore cut the stake a little shorter
than the top of the foliage and drive it firmly at the back of the
plant, fastening the main stem to the stake by loosely woven florist's
string.

If, on the other hand, the plant to be supported is a maze of side
branches, like the cosmos, or individual bushes blended so as to form a
hedge, a row of stout poles, also a little lower than the bushes, should
be set firmly behind them, the twine being woven carefully in and out
among the larger branches, and then tightened carefully, so that the
whole plant is gradually drawn back and yet the binding string is
concealed.

If it is possible to locate cosmos, hollyhocks, and Dahlias (especially
Dahlias) in the same place for several successive years, a flanking
trellis fence of light posts, with a single top and bottom rail and
poultry wire of a three inch mesh between, will be found a good
investment. Against this the plants may be tethered in several places,
and thus not only separate branches can be supported naturally, but
individual flowers as well, in the case of the large exhibition Dahlias.

[Illustration: A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE!]

Practicable as is the proper carrying out of the matter, in a score of
otherwise admirable gardens we have seen the results of weeks and months
of preparation either throttled and bound martyrlike to a stake or
twisted and tethered, until the natural, habit of growth was wholly
changed. In some cases the plants were so meshed in twine and choked
that it seemed as if a spiteful fairy had woven a "cat's cradle" over
them or that they had followed out the old proverb and, having been
given enough rope, literally hanged themselves. In other gardens green
stakes were set at intervals (I noticed it in the case of gladioli and
carnations especially) and strings carried from one stake to the other,
leaving each plant in the centre of a twine square, like chessmen
imprisoned on the board. But the most terrible example of all was where
either the owner or the gardener, for they were not one and the same,
had purchased a quantity of half-inch pine strips at a lumber yard and
proceeded to scatter them about his beds at random, regardless of height
or suitability, very much as if some neighbouring Fourth of July
celebration had showered the place with rocket sticks.

If your young German has time in the intervals of tree-planting and
trellis-making, get him to trim some of the cedars of a diameter of two
or three inches and stack them away for Dahlia poles. Next season you
will become a victim of these gorgeous velvet flowers, I foresee,
especially as I have fully a barrel of the "potatoes" of some very
handsome varieties to bestow upon you. Make the most of Meyer, for he
will probably grow melancholy as soon as cool weather sets in and he
thinks of winter evenings and a sweetheart he has left in the
fatherland!

We have had several Germans and they all had _lieber schatz_, for
jealousy or the scorn of whom they had left home, were for the same
reason loath to stay away from it, and at the same time, owing to
contending emotions, were unable to work so that they might return.

Are you not thinking about returning to your indoor bed and board again?
With warm weather I fly out of the door as a second nature, but with a
smart promise of frost I turn about again and everything--furniture,
pictures, books, and the dear people themselves--seems refreshingly new
and wholly lovable!

If you are thinking of making out a book list of your needs as an answer
to your mother's or your "in-law's" query, "What do you want for
Christmas?" write at the beginning--Bailey's _Cyclopaedia of American
Horticulture_, in red ink. Lavinia and Martin Cortright gave it to us
last Christmas, the clearly printed first edition on substantial paper
in four thick volumes, mind you, and it is the referee and court of
appeals of the Garden, You, and I in general and myself in particular.
Not only will it tell you everything that you wish or ought to know, but
do it completely and truthfully. In short it is the perfect antidote to
_Garden Goozle_!




XIX

PANDORA'S CHEST

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)


_Woodridge, October 10_. Nearly a month of pen silence on my part,
during which I have felt many times as if I must go from one to another
of our chosen trees in the river woods and shake the leaves down so that
the transplanting might proceed forthwith, lest the early winter that
Amos Opie predicts both by a goose bone and certain symptoms of his own
shall overtake us. Be this as it may, the leaves thus far prefer their
airy quarters to huddling upon the damp ground.

However, there is another reason for haste more urgent than the fear of
frost--the melancholy vein that you predicted we should find in Meyer is
fast developing, and as we wish to have him leave us in a perfectly
natural way, we think it best that his stay shall not be prolonged. At
first he seemed not only absorbed by his work and to enjoy the garden
and especially the river woods, but the trees and water rushing by.

A week ago a change came over him; he became morose and silent, and
yesterday when I was admiring, half aloud, the reflection of a beautiful
scarlet oak mirrored in the still backwater of the river, he paused in
the kneeling position in which he was loosening the grasp of a white
flowering dogwood, and first throwing out his arms and then beating his
chest with them, exclaimed--"Other good have trees and water than for
the eye to see; they can surely hang and drown the man the heart of whom
holds much sorrow, and that man is I!"

Of course I knew that it was something a little out of the ordinary
state of affairs that had sent a man of his capability to tramp about as
a vagrant sort of labourer, but I had no previous idea that melancholy
had taken such a grip upon him. Much do I prefer Larry, with periods of
hilarity ending in peaceful "shlape." Certain peoples have their
peculiar racial characteristics, but after all, love of an occasional
drink seems a more natural proposition than a tendency to suicide, while
as to the relative value of the labour itself, that is always an
individual not a racial matter.

I too am feeling the domestic lure of cooler weather. All the day I wish
to be in the open, but when the earlier twilight closes in, the house,
with its lamps, hearth fires, and voices, weaves a new spell about me,
though having once opened wide the door of outdoors it can never be
closed.

Do you remember the _Masque of Pandora_, and the mysterious chest?

                     "_Pandora_
                   Hast thou never
  Lifted the lid?

                      _Epimetheus_
                   The oracle forbids.
  Safely concealed there from all mortal eyes
  Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods.
  Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee
  Till they themselves reveal it."

Bart was reading it aloud to me last night. Prose read aloud always
frets me, because one's mind travels so much faster than the spoken
words and arrives at the conclusion, even if not always the right one,
long before the printed climax is reached; but with good poetry it is
different--the thoughts are so crystallized that the sound of a
melodious voice liberates them more swiftly.

Verily Pandora's Chest has been opened this season here in the garden;
the gods were evidently not unwilling and turned the lock for me, though
perhaps I have thrown back the cover too rashly, for out has flown,
instead of dire disaster, ambition in a flock of winged ideals, hopes,
and wishes masquerading cleverly as necessities, that will keep me alert
in trying to overtake and capture them all my life long.

Last night, once again comfortably settled in the den, we took inventory
of the season's doings, and unlike most ventures, find there is nothing
to write upon the nether page that records loss. Of the money set aside
for the improvement of the knoll half yet remains, allowing for the
finishing of the tree transplanting. Into this remainder we are
preparing to tuck the filling for the rose bed, a goodly store of lily
bulbs, some flowering shrubs, an openwork wire fence to be a
vine-covered screen betwixt us and the road, instead of the broken
rattling pickets, a new harness for Romeo to wear when he returns home,
as a thank offering for his comfortable services (really the bridle of
the old one is quite scratched to bits upon the various trees and rough
fence rails to which he has been tethered), and last of all, what do you
think? Three guesses may be easily wasted without hitting the mark, for
instead of, as we expected, tearing down the old barn, our summer camp,
we are going to remodel it to be a permanent outdoor shelter. It is to
have a wide chimney and fireplace at one end, before which our beds may
be drawn campfire fashion if it is too cool, and adjustable shutters so
that it may be either merely a roof or a fairly substantial cabin and at
all possible seasons a study and playroom for us all. Then too we shall
overlook "Maria Maxwell's Experiment," as Bart calls her scheme of
running the Opal Farm. We were heartily glad to know that she had leased
and not bought it, but we were much surprised to learn, first through
the village paper, and not the man and woman concerned, that "Mr. Ross
Blake, the engineer in charge of the construction of the new reservoir,
believing in the future of the real-estate boom in Woodridge (we didn't
know there was one), has recently purchased the Amos Opie farm as an
investment, the deed being to-day recorded in the town house. He has
already leased it for a young ladies' seminary, pending its remodelling,
for which he himself is drawing the plans."

Dear _Man from Everywhere!_ much as I like Maria, I think he would be
the more restful neighbour of the two. What a complete couple they might
have made, but that is a bit of drift thought that I have put out of my
head, for if any two people ever had a chance this summer to fall in
love if they had the capacity, it was Maria and _The Man_, and the
strange part of it is that as far as may be known neither is nourishing
the sentiment of a melancholy past and no other present man or woman
stands between; perhaps it is some uncanny Opal spell that stays them.
Yet even as it is, in this farm restoration both are unconsciously
preparing to take a peep into Pandora's Chest full of the unknown, so
let us hope the gods are willing.


_Hallowe'en._ The Infant and Anastasia, her memories revived by Larry's
voluble and personally adapted folk-lore, are preparing all sorts of
traps and feasts for good luck and fairies, while Lady Lazy is content
to look at the log fire and plan for putting the garden to sleep.
Yesterday I finished taking up my collection of peonies, Iris, and hardy
chrysanthemums that had been "promised" at various farm gardens beyond
the river woods, and duly cleared off my indebtednesses for the same
with a varied assortment of articles ranging from gladioli bulbs, which
seem to multiply by cube root here, to a pair of curling tongs, an
article long coveted by a simple-minded woman of more than middle age,
for the resuscitation of her Sunday front locks, and which though
willing to acquire by barter she, as a deacon's wife, had a prejudice
against buying openly over the counter.

Meyer has gone, having relapsed into comparative cheerfulness a few days
before his departure on the receipt of a bulky letter which, in spite of
the wear and tear of travel, remained heavily scented, coupled with
Bart's assurance that he could remain in America another four weeks and
still be at a certain Baltic town of an unpronounceable name in time for
Christmas.

In spite of heavy frosts my pansies are a daily cheer, but it is really
of no use for even the flowers of very hardy plants to struggle on
against nature's decree of a winter sleeping time; the wild animals all
come more or less under its spell, and the dogs, the nearest creatures
of all to man, as soon as snow covers the ground and they have their
experience of ice-cut feet, drowse as near the fire as possible and in
case of a stove almost under it. I wonder if nature did not intend that
we also should have at least a half-drowsy brooding time, instead of
making the cold season so often a period of stress and strain and short
days stretched into long nights. If so, we have taken the responsibility
of acting for ourselves, of flying in nature's face in this as in many
other ways.

Does it ever seem to you strange that our contrariness began within the
year of our legendary creation, when Eve came to misery not by gazing in
a bonnet shop, but when innocently wandering in her garden, the most
beautiful of earth? By which we women gardeners should all take warning,
for though the Tree of Life may be found in every garden,

  "Yet sin and sorrow's pedigree
   Spring from a garden and a tree."

_December 10._ Snow a month earlier than last year, but we rejoice in
it, for it will keep the winds from the roots of the trees not yet
wholly settled and comfortable in their new homes. The young hemlocks
are bewitching in their wreaths and garlands, and one or two older trees
give warmth to the woods beyond the Opal Farm and sweep the low,
snow-covered meadow, that looks like a crystal lake, with their feathery
branches. The cedars were beautiful in the May woods and so are they
now, where I see them through the gap standing sentinels against the
white of the brush lot. It seems to me that we cannot have too many
evergreens any more than we can have too much cheerfulness.

[Illustration: THE LOW, SNOW-COVERED MEADOW THAT LOOKS LIKE A CRYSTAL LAKE.
Copyright, 1902, H. Hendrickson]

There are no paths in the garden now, a hint that our feet must travel
elsewhere for a time, and I confess that Lady Lazy has not yet
redeemed herself, and at present likes her feet to fall upon soft rugs.
The Infant's gray squirrels, Punch and Judy, and the persistent sparrows
have found their way to the house, taking their daily rations from the
roof of the shed. Punch, stuffed to repletion, has a _cache_ under the
old syringa bushes, the sparrows seeming to escort him in his travels to
and fro, but whether for companionship or in hope of gain, who can say?

The plans for the remodelling of Opal Farm-house are really very
attractive and yet it will be delightfully simple to care for. Maria and
_The Man_ have agreed better about them than over anything I have ever
heard them discuss; but then, as it is purely a business arrangement, I
suppose that Maria feels free from her usual pernickety restraint.

We surmise that either she has much more laid by than we supposed or she
is waxing extravagant, for she has had the opal, that _The Man_ gave her
once in exchange for an old coin, surrounded with very good diamonds and
set as a ring! Really I never before noticed what fine strong white
hands she has.

I shall ask Father Penrose for the _Cyclopaedia_--it has a substantial
sound that may soften his suspicion that we are not practical and were
not properly grieved over the loss of the hens!




XX

EPILOGUE

(DICTATED)


_Woodridge, January 3._ In the face of circumstances that prevent my
holding the pen in my own hand, I am resolved that the first chronicle
of the New Year shall be mine,--for by me it has sent The Garden, You,
and I a new member and our own garden a new tree, an oak we hope.

The Infant is exultant at the evident and direct result of her dealings
with the fairies, and keeps a plate of astonishing goodies by the
nursery hearth fire; these, if the fairies do not feast upon personally,
are appreciated by their horses, the mice.

His name is John Bartram Penrose, a good one to conjure with gardenwise,
though he is no kin to the original. He has fresh-air lungs, and if he
does not wax strong of limb and develop into a naturalist of some sort,
he cannot blame his parents or their garden vacation.

MARY PENROSE,

her [Illustration: ROSE MOTIF.] mark.

[Illustration: PUNCH ... HAS A CACHE UNDER THE OLD SYRINGA
BUSHES.]



FOR THE HARDY SEED BED

====================+=========+========+=======+=======+====================
NAME                |TENDER   |        |       |       |
                    |OR HARDY | COLOUR |HEIGHT |SEASON |REMARKS
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Aquilegia-COLUMBINE | H.P.*   |        | 3 ft. |June   |Columbines are among
                    |         |        |       |       |the most graceful
Chrysantha          |         |Golden  |       |       |and easily raised
                    |         |yellow  |       |       |of hardy plants.
Coerulea            |         |Rich    |       |       |They will thrive in
                    |         |Blue    |       |       |open borders, but do
Glandulosa vera     |         |Blue and|       |       |better in partial
                    |         |white   |       |       |shade, after the
                    |         |        |       |       |habit of our local
                    |         |        |       |       |species, the "Red
                    |         |        |       |       |Bells" of hillsides
                    |         |        |       |       |and rocky wood.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
CANTERBURY-BELL     | H.B.**  |        | 2 ft. |June   |Old-fashioned plants
Campanula media     |         |Blue,   |       |       |of decorative value.
                    |         |white,  |       |       |As with all
                    |         |pink    |       |       |biennials, the plant
                    |         |        |       |       |dies soon after
                    |         |        |       |       |maturing seed; a new
                    |         |        |       |       |sowing should be
                    |         |        |       |       |made each spring and
                    |         |        |       |       |seedlings
                    |         |        |       |       |transplanted as soon
                    |         |        |       |       |as the old plant
                    |         |        |       |       |dies; this secures
                    |         |        |       |       |strong growth before
                    |         |        |       |       |winter.
CHIMNEY BELL-FLOWER | H.P.    |Blue    |3-4 ft.|Aug.   |Desirable because of
                    |         |        |       |to     |of its late blooming
Campanula           |         |        |       |Oct.   |combined with its
 pyramadalis         |         |        |       |       |striking appearance.
                    |         |        |       |       |Should be planted in
                    |         |        |       |       |connection with the
                    |         |        |       |       |tall white hardy
                    |         |        |       |       |phlox.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Coreopsis           | H.P.    |Yellow  |1-2 ft.|Summer |A sturdy plant
 lanceolata         |         |        |       |       |either for massing
                    |         |        |       |       |or as a border to
                    |         |        |       |       |sunny shrubberies.
                    |         |        |       |       |Flowers carried on
                    |         |        |       |       |long stems suitable
                    |         |        |       |       |for cutting.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
CANDYTUFT--Iberis   | H.P.    |        |1 ft.  |Summer |When transplanted
                    |         |        |       |       |from seed bed,
Sempervirens        |         |White   |       |       |plants should be
                    |         |        |       |       |set eight inches
                    |         |        |       |       |apart to make the
                    |         |        |       |       |best effect, given
                    |         |        |       |       |room, they make fine
                    |         |        |       |       |compact bushes. The
                    |         |        |       |       |foliage is
                    |         |        |       |       |evergreen.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Delphinium--        | H.P.    |Blue,   |3-7 ft.|June,  |Our most satisfactory
 LARKSPUR           |Flowering|all     |       |July,  |blue flower, but
                    |first    |shades  |       |and    |like all of this
                    |year              |       |Oct.   |colour should have
                    |         |        |       |       |a setting of white.
                    |         |        |       |       |If plants are cut
                    |         |        |       |       |down to the ground
                    |         |        |       |       |as soon as the
                    |         |        |       |       |blossoms fade, they
                    |         |        |       |       |will give a second
                    |         |        |       |       |crop in October.
D. Grandiflorum     |         |White   |1-2 ft.|Summer |These flowers have
 Chinensis          |         |and blue|       |       |a peculiar
                    |         |        |       |       |brilliancy, and if
SIBERIAN LARKSPUR   |         |        |       |       |set in a bed edged
                    |         |        |       |       |by sweet alyssum,
                    |         |        |       |       |are very
                    |         |        |       |       |satisfactory.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Dianthus            | H.P.    |        |1 ft.  |May    |There is nothing
 plumarius          |         |        |       |and    |more suggestive of
SCOTCH CLOVE PINK   |         |Various |       |June   |the old time gardens
Her Majesty         |         |White   |       |  "    |of sweet flowers
Lord Lyon           |         |Pink    |       |  "    |than these fringed
                    |         |        |       |       |pinks. If once
                    |         |        |       |       |established in a
                    |         |        |       |       |well-drained spot,
                    |         |        |       |       |and not harassed,
                    |         |        |       |       |they will sow
                    |         |        |       |       |themselves and last
                    |         |        |       |       |for years. Her
                    |         |        |       |       |Majesty and Lord
                    |         |        |       |       |Lyon are new
                    |         |        |       |       |varieties, and as
                    |         |        |       |       |double as
                    |         |        |       |       |carnations.
Dianthus            | H.P.    |Var.    |6 in.- |Summer |Excellent for either
 Chinensis          |         |        | 1 ft. |       |bedding or edging.
CHINA PINK          |first    |        |       |       |Have an apple
                    | year    |        |       |       |fragrance.
Dianthus            | H.P.    |Var.    |9 in.- |Summer |These summer pinks
 Heddewigii         |         |        | 1 ft. |       |are not grown in
JAPAN PINK          |first    |        |       |       |masses as freely as
                    | year    |        |       |       |as they deserve.
                    |         |        |       |       |They bloom with all
                    |         |        |       |       |the profusion of
                    |         |        |       |       |annuals without
                    |         |        |       |       |their frailty. For a
                    |         |        |       |       |succession the seed
                    |         |        |       |       |should be sown every
                    |         |        |       |       |year, as the old
                    |         |        |       |       |plants bloom
                    |         |        |       |       |earliest and the new
                    |         |        |       |       |follow them.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Dianthus barbatus   | H.P.    |Var.    | 1 ft. |June   |An old-time
SWEET-WILLIAM       |         |        |       |       |favourite with
                    |         |        |       |       |slightly fragrant
                    |         |        |       |       |blossoms that will
                    |         |        |       |       |keep a week in water
                    |         |        |       |       |when cut. A bed when
                    |         |        |       |       |once established
                    |         |        |       |       |will last a long
                    |         |        |       |       |time if a few of the
                    |         |        |       |       |finest heads of
                    |         |        |       |       |flowers are allowed
                    |         |        |       |       |to go to seed, as
                    |         |        |       |       |with many perennials
                    |         |        |       |       |the younger plants
                    |         |        |       |       |bloom more
                    |         |        |       |       |vigorously than the
                    |         |        |       |       |old.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Digitalis--FOXGLOVE | H.P.    |        |3 ft.  |June   |A dignified as well
 Variety            |         |White,  |       |       |as a poetic flower
   gloxinoides      |         |pink,   |       |       |if given its
                    |         |purple, |       |       |natural, half-wild
                    |         |light   |       |       |surroundings. It
                    |         |yellow  |       |       |will thrive best
                    |         |        |       |       |in partial shade if
                    |         |        |       |       |the soil be good.
                    |         |        |       |       |While if the stalks
                    |         |        |       |       |of seeds are saved
                    |         |        |       |       |and the contents
                    |         |        |       |       |scattered along wild
                    |         |        |       |       |walks or at the edge
                    |         |        |       |       |of woods, surprising
                    |         |        |       |       |results will follow.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
FEVERFEW            | H.P.    |        |1-3 ft.|Summer |A very useful,
Chrysanthemum       |first    |White   |       |       |double-flowered
 parthenium,        | year    |        |       |       |white composite,
 double             |         |        |       |       |resembling a small
                    |         |        |       |       |chrysanthemum. It
                    |         |        |       |       |should be used
                    |         |        |       |       |freely as a setting
                    |         |        |       |       |for blue, pink, or
                    |         |        |       |       |magenta flowers.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
FORGET-ME-NOT       | H.P.    |        |1 ft.  |Spring |Well-known flowers
Myosotis alpestris  |         |Blue    |       |and    |that do best in
 Victoria           |         |        |       |autumn |moist borders or
                    |         |        |       |       |places where they
                    |         |        |       |       |can be watered
                    |         |        |       |       |freely. If cut down
                    |         |        |       |       |after first
                    |         |        |       |       |flowering, will
                    |         |        |       |       |bloom again in
                    |         |        |       |       |autumn.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Gaillardia          | H.P.    |Yellow  |1 ft.  |Until  |Brilliant and hardy
 cristata           | first   |and     |       |frost  |plants for edging
BLANKET FLOWER      | year    |red     |       |       |shrubbery or in
                    |         |        |       |       |separate beds.
                    |         |        |       |       |Sprawl too much for
                    |         |        |       |       |the mixed border.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
HOLLYHOCKS          | H.P.    |        |       |Summer |Of late years these
 Double and single  |         |All     |4-7 ft.|       |decorative plants
                    |         |colors  |       |       |have suffered from a
New Hybrid Hollyhock|         |All     |4 ft.  |       |blight that turns
 flowers first year |         |colors  |       |       |the leaves yellow
  from seed         |         |        |       |       |and soon spreads to
                    |         |        |       |       |the stalks. Use
                    |         |        |       |       |great care that the
                    |         |        |       |       |soil be new and
                    |         |        |       |       |well drained,
                    |         |        |       |       |sprinkle powdered
                    |         |        |       |       |sulphur and unslaked
                    |         |        |       |       |lime on surface and
                    |         |        |       |       |dig it in shortly
                    |         |        |       |       |before setting out
                    |         |        |       |       |the seedlings.
                    |         |        |       |       |Also spray young
                    |         |        |       |       |plants well with
                    |         |        |       |       |diluted Bordeaux
                    |         |        |       |       |mixture at intervals
                    |         |        |       |       |before the flowers
                    |         |        |       |       |show colour.
                    |         |        |       |       |A large bed should
                    |         |        |       |       |be given to this
                    |         |        |       |       |flower, with either
                    |         |        |       |       |a wall or hedge as a
                    |         |        |       |       |background, and they
                    |         |        |       |       |should be allowed to
                    |         |        |       |       |seed themselves from
                    |         |        |       |       |the best flowers.
                    |         |        |       |       |Thus a natural and
                    |         |        |       |       |artistic effect is
                    |         |        |       |       |produced unlike the
                    |         |        |       |       |stiff lines of
                    |         |        |       |       |tightly staked
                    |         |        |       |       |plants.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
HONESTY             | H.B.    |        |       |       |The old English
Lunaria biennis     |         |White   |2 ft.  |June   |flower of colonial
                    |         | to     |       |       |gardens. Should be
                    |         | lilac  |       |       |massed. The silvery
                    |         |        |       |       |moons of its seed
                    |         |        |       |       |vessels make unusual
                    |         |        |       |       |winter bouquets.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
LUPINS              | H.P.    |        |       |       |Good for planting
Lupinus polyphyllus |         |Rich    |3 ft.  |June   |before the white
                    |         | blue   |       |       |flowering June
                    |         |        |       |       |shrubs. Flowers borne
                    |         |        |       |       |erect upon long
                    |         |        |       |       |spikes. Very
                    |         |        |       |       |difficult to
                    |         |        |       |       |transplant unless
                    |         |        |       |       |the long root is
                    |         |        |       |       |kept intact.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
HORSEMINT           | H.P.    |        |2-3 ft.|Summer |Sturdy and somewhat
Monada didyma-Bee   |         |Deep red|       |       |coarse plants, their
balm or Oswego tea  |         |        |       |       |square stems telling
Monada fistulosa    |         |        |       |       |the kinship with the
WILD BERGAMOT       | H.P.    |Lavender|3-6 ft.|Summer |familiar mints. Of
                    |         |        |       |       |good decorative
                    |         |        |       |       |effect, should be
                    |         |        |       |       |used as a background
                    |         |        |       |       |in the bed of sweet
                    |         |        |       |       |odours, as
                    |         |        |       |       |especially after a
                    |         |        |       |       |rain they yield the
                    |         |        |       |       |garden a clean
                    |         |        |       |       |fragrance of tonic
                    |         |        |       |       |quality. The bergamot
                    |         |        |       |       |grows wild in many
                    |         |        |       |       |places and is easily
                    |         |        |       |       |transplanted.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Primula             | H.P.    |        |6 in.  |May    |The beautiful tufted
ENGLISH FIELD       |         |Primrose|       |       |primrose of the
 PRIMROSE           |         |yellow  |       |       |English poets. Grows
                    |         |        |       |       |in this country best
                    |         |        |       |       |on moist, grassy
                    |         |        |       |       |banks under high or
                    |         |        |       |       |in partial shade.
                    |         |        |       |       |It has, during the
                    |         |        |       |       |ten years that I
                    |         |        |       |       |have grown it,
                    |         |        |       |       |proved entirely
                    |         |        |       |       |hardy. The seed may
                    |         |        |       |       |be in the ground a
                    |         |        |       |       |year before
                    |         |        |       |       |germinating, but
                    |         |        |       |       |once established the
                    |         |        |       |       |plant cares for
                    |         |        |       |       |itself.
Primula Japonica    | H.P.    |Yellows |6 in.- |May    |The border primrose
 mixed border       |         |and reds| 1 ft. |       |so freely used in
                    |         |        |       |       |England but rarely
                    |         |        |       |       |seen in everyday
                    |         |        |       |       |gardens here, where
                    |         |        |       |       |I have found it
                    |         |        |       |       |perfectly hardy.
                    |         |        |       |       |Makes a border of
                    |         |        |       |       |rich colour for the
                    |         |        |       |       |May garden. Must be
                    |         |        |       |       |watered freely in
                    |         |        |       |       |hot, dry seasons.
Primula Officinalis | H.P.    |Yellow  |1 ft.  |May    |The English cowslip,
COWSLIP             |         |        |       |       |a charming garden
                    |         |        |       |       |flower, but more at
                    |         |        |       |       |home in nooks of
                    |         |        |       |       |grassy banks, like
                    |         |        |       |       |the primrose, or in
                    |         |        |       |       |the open.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
POPPY               | H.P.    |Yellow  |1 ft.  |Early  |Poppies are very
 { Iceland poppy    |         |and     |       |Summer |difficult to
 { P. nudicale      |         |white   |       |       |transplant, owing to
                    |         |        |       |       |their long,
                    |         |        |       |       |sensitive roots,
                    |         |        |       |       |though it can be
                    |         |        |       |       |done. It is easier,
                    |         |        |       |       |therefore, to sow
                    |         |        |       |       |them thinly where
                    |         |        |       |       |they are to remain
                    |         |        |       |       |and weed them out.
P. orientale        | H.P.    |Dazzling|2-3 ft.|June   |A gorgeous flower,
                    |         | scarlet|       |       |subject to damping
                    |         |        |       |       |off if heavy rains
                    |         |        |       |       |come when it is in
                    |         |        |       |       |full bloom. Should
                    |         |        |       |       |be used to fill in
                    |         |        |       |       |between white
                    |         |        |       |       |shrubs, as its
                    |         |        |       |       |colour is impossible
                    |         |        |       |       |near any of the
                    |         |        |       |       |pink, purple, or
                    |         |        |       |       |magenta June
                    |         |        |       |       |flowers, and a
                    |         |        |       |       |single plant
                    |         |        |       |       |misplaced will ruin
                    |         |        |       |       |your garden.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
PHLOX               | H.P.    |In      |3-4 ft.|July-  |Offshoots of these
 P. paniculata      |         |variety,|       | Oct.  |hardy phloxes may be
                    |         |crimson,|       |Miss   |usually obtained by
                    |         |purple, |       |Lingard|exchange from some
                    |         |salmon, |       |in June|friend, as they
                    |         |carmine,|       |       |increase rapidly.
                    |         |and     |       |       |But there is a charm
                    |         |white   |       |       |in raising seedlings
                    |         |with    |       |       |on the chance of
                    |         |colored |       |       |growing a new
                    |         |eye     |       |       |species. These
                    |         |        |       |       |phloxes are the
                    |         |        |       |       |backbone of the
                    |         |        |       |       |hardy garden from
                    |         |        |       |       |July until frost,
                    |         |        |       |       |while Miss Lingard,
                    |         |        |       |       |a fine white
                    |         |        |       |       |variety, blooms in
                    |         |        |       |       |June to be a setting
                    |         |        |       |       |for the blue
                    |         |        |       |       |larkspurs.
Phlox subulata      | H.P.    |Pink and|6 in.  |       |The dwarf phlox that
 MOSS PINK          |         |white   |       |       |hides its foliage
                    |         |        |       |       |under sheets of pink
                    |         |        |       |       |or white bloom and
                    |         |        |       |       |makes the great mats
                    |         |        |       |       |of colour seen among
                    |         |        |       |       |rock work and on dry
                    |         |        |       |       |banks in parks and
                    |         |        |       |       |public gardens.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
PENTSTEMON          | H.P.    |        |3 ft.  |Summer |Very fine border
European            |         |Many    |       |       |plants, almost as
 varieties. Mixed   |         | rich   |       |       |decorative as
                    |         | colours|       |       |foxgloves, showing
                    |         |        |       |       |tints of reds
                    |         |        |       |       |through pink, white,
                    |         |        |       |       |blue and white
                    |         |        |       |       |cream, etc.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
PANSIES             | H.B.    |Many    |1 ft.  |April  |It is usual to sow
 in varieties       | flowers | rich   |       | to    |pansies in frames
                    | first   | colours|       |Dec.   |during September
                    | year    |        |       |       |and October, winter
                    |         |        |       |       |them under cover,
                    |         |        |       |       |and transplant to
                    |         |        |       |       |beds the following
                    |         |        |       |       |spring.
                    |         |        |       |       |If pansies (well
                    |         |        |       |       |soaked previously)
                    |         |        |       |       |are sown in the seed
                    |         |        |       |       |bed in late August
                    |         |        |       |       |or early September,
                    |         |        |       |       |they will be compact
                    |         |        |       |       |little plants by
                    |         |        |       |       |November, when they
                    |         |        |       |       |may be transplanted
                    |         |        |       |       |to their permanent
                    |         |        |       |       |bed or else covered
                    |         |        |       |       |where they stand,
                    |         |        |       |       |protected by leaves
                    |         |        |       |       |between the rows and
                    |         |        |       |       |a few evergreen
                    |         |        |       |       |boughs or a little
                    |         |        |       |       |salt hay over them.
                    |         |        |       |       |If an entire bed is
                    |         |        |       |       |set apart set apart
                    |         |        |       |       |for pansies and only
                    |         |        |       |       |the finest flowers
                    |         |        |       |       |allowed to seed, the
                    |         |        |       |       |bed will keep itself
                    |         |        |       |       |going for several
                    |         |        |       |       |years by merely
                    |         |        |       |       |thinning and
                    |         |        |       |       |adjusting the
                    |         |        |       |       |seedlings.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
DAY PRIMROSE        | H.P.    |Golden  |1 ft.  |Early  |A day-flowering
Oenothera fruticosa |         |yellow  |       |summer |member of the
                    |         |        |       |       |evening-primrose
                    |         |        |       |       |family, resembling
                    |         |        |       |       |the golden sundrops
                    |         |        |       |       |of our June meadows.
                    |         |        |       |       |Very fragrant, and
                    |         |        |       |       |if once established,
                    |         |        |       |       |will sow itself.
EVENING PRIMROSE    | H.B.    |Yellow  |3 ft.  |All    |The exquisitely
Oenothera biennis   |         |        |       |summer |scented silver-gold
                    |         |        |       |       |flower that unfurls
                    |         |        |       |       |at twilight to give
                    |         |        |       |       |a supper to the hawk
                    |         |        |       |       |moths, upon whom it
                    |         |        |       |       |depends for
                    |         |        |       |       |fertilization. Grows
                    |         |        |       |       |in dry soil and
                    |         |        |       |       |should be used in
                    |         |        |       |       |masses to fill in
                    |         |        |       |       |odd corners.
--------------------+---------+--------+-------+-------+--------------------
Violas              | H.P.    |Purple, |6 in.  |April  |A race of plants
TUFTED PANSY-VIOLETS|         |yellow, |       |to Oct.|closely resembling
  for bedding       |         |rose,   |       |       |pansies, that fill
                    |         |mauve,  |       |       |an important place
                    |         |white   |       |       |in the gardens of
                    |         |        |       |       |Europe, but are as
                    |         |        |       |       |yet little known
                    |         |        |       |       |here, though they
                    |         |        |       |       |are as hardy as the
                    |         |        |       |       |primulas. As a
                    |         |        |       |       |border for shrubs or
                    |         |        |       |       |rose beds they are
                    |         |        |       |       |excellent, but when
                    |         |        |       |       |planted as a bed,
                    |         |        |       |       |should be in partial
                    |         |        |       |       |shade.
====================+=========+========+=======+=======+====================
*: Hardy Perennial.
**: Hardy Biennial.




SOME WORTHY ANNUALS

====================+========+==========+========+==========================
                    | TENDER |          |        |
     NAME           |OR HARDY| COLOUR   | HEIGHT | REMARKS
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
ASTER               | H.A.   |All shades|18 in.  |Asters are the standby of
Most reliable       |        |of blues, |- 2 ft. |the late summer and autumn
 varieties--        |        |purples,  |        |garden, and for this
Truffants           |        |and pink  |        |reason it is better to sow
Victoria            |        |up to deep|        |them in the outdoor seed
QUEEN OF MARKET     |        |blue, also|        |bed than to attempt
 (very early)       |        |white.    |        |forcing. They require
Comet               |        |          |        |light, rich soil, mixed
 (quaint and        |        |          |        |with old manure, as fresh
  artistic)         |        |          |        |manure breeds many aster
EMPEROR FREDERICK   |        |          |        |ills. Two enemies--lice at
 (best white)       |        |          |        |the root and black
HOHENZOLLERN        |        |          |        |goldenrod beetles on the
 (new large         |        |          |        |flowers--must be guarded
   flowers.)        |        |          |        |against--the first by
                    |        |          |        |digging sulphur powder,
                    |        |          |        |unslaked lime, nitrate of
                    |        |          |        |soda, or wood ashes into
                    |        |          |        |the soil both before
                    |        |          |        |sowing the seed and again
                    |        |          |        |into the place where they
                    |        |          |        |are transplanted; the
                    |        |          |        |beetle must be dislodged
                    |        |          |        |by careful hand picking.
                    |        |          |        |Cover the seeds with half
                    |        |          |        |an inch of soil, and in
                    |        |          |        |transplanting set the
                    |        |          |        |plants from a foot to
                    |        |          |        |eighteen inches apart,
                    |        |          |        |according to variety.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
SWEET ALYSSUM,      | H.A.   |White,    | 1 ft.  |A cheerful little
  Variety           |        | fragrant |        |mustard-shaped flower
  Maritimum         |        |          |        |borne in short, thick
                    |        |          |        |spikes, useful for edgings
                    |        |          |        |or to supply the white
                    |        |          |        |setting necessary to
                    |        |          |        |groups of party-coloured
                    |        |          |        |flowers.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
BALSAM              | T.A.   |White,    | 18 in. |A rapid-growing, tender
 Camellia flowered  |        |peach,    |        |annual from India, and
                    |        |carmine,  |        |while rather stiff in form
                    |        |lavender, |        |of growth, very decorative
                    |        |rose,     |        |for the summer borders
                    |        |scarlet,  |        |surrounding a sundial.
                    |        |spotted,  |        |The flowers, like
                    |        |and straw |        |compact, double roses, are
                    |        |          |        |very useful for set table
                    |        |          |        |decorations and may be
                    |        |          |        |used in many ways.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Calendula--POT      | H.A.   |Yellow    | 1 ft.  |Showy flowers for summer
MARIGOLD            |        |and orange|        |beds, not good for
Calendula           |        |White     |        |cutting, as they grow
 officinalis        |        |          |        |sleepy indoors and in
 grandiflora        |        |          |        |cloudy weather.
Calendula Pongei.   |        |          |        |
 fl. pl.            |        |          |        |
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
CANDYTUFT           | H.A.   |White,    | 1 ft.  |A sturdy white flower
Iberis Coronaria    |        |fine      |        |useful for edgings in the
Rocket Candytuft    |        |erect form|        |same way as sweet alyssum.
                    |        |          |        |May be sown in fall for
                    |        |          |        |early flowering.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
CORNFLOWER          | H.A.   |          | 1-2 ft.|One of the most
Centaurea           |        |          |        |satisfactory of the taller
Centaurea Margaritae,|        |          |        |growing annuals, the
 fragrant           |        |White     |        |flowers having some of the
SWEET SULTAN        |        |          |        |qualities of an
Suaveolens          |        |Yellow    |        |everlasting, and making
Moschata            |        |Purple    |        |fine buttonhole flowers
CYANUS--EMPEROR     |        |          |        |or house bouquets. The
 WILLIAM            |        |Deep blue |        |Sweet Sultans are
 (Rich blue         |        |          |        |delightfully fragrant, and
  cornflower)       |        |          |        |the Cornflower one of the
                    |        |          |        |finest of our blue
                    |        |          |        |flowers. They should be
                    |        |          |        |sown in borders or large
                    |        |          |        |beds where they are to
                    |        |          |        |bloom and while the Sweet
                    |        |          |        |Sultans must be spring
                    |        |          |        |sown, the Cornflower if
                    |        |          |        |sown in October will bloom
                    |        |          |        |in May.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
COSMOS              | H.A.   |White     |4-8 ft. |A beautiful autumn flower
Giant fancy         |        |Pink      |        |if they are on their best
                    |        |Maroon    |        |behaviour and bloom on
                    |        |          |        |time, but like the little
                    |        |          |        |girl with the curl--when
                    |        |          |        |they are bad, they are
                    |        |          |        |horrid.--They take a
                    |        |          |        |great deal of room during
                    |        |          |        |a long season which can be
                    |        |          |        |often used to better
                    |        |          |        |advantage--planted with
                    |        |          |        |asters.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Dahlia              | H.H.P. |Various   |3-6 ft. |If sown either indoors or
Single and cactus,  |        |          |        |in a frame, these Dahlias
 mixed varieties    |        |          |        |may be as cheaply raised
                    |        |          |        |as any common annual--with
                    |        |          |        |the chance of growing
                    |        |          |        |many beautiful and new
                    |        |          |        |varieties. The roots may
                    |        |          |        |be stored in sand in the
                    |        |          |        |cellar during winter like
                    |        |          |        |other bulbs.
                    |        |          |        |I class this seed with
                    |        |          |        |annuals from the fact that
                    |        |          |        |it must be sown in spring
                    |        |          |        |and cannot be left over
                    |        |          |        |winter in the hardy bed
                    |        |          |        |though it is a _half_
                    |        |          |        |hardy perennial.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Gaillardia, called  | H.A.   |Red and   |1 ft.   |Fine daisy-shaped flower
 BLANKET FLOWER from|        |yellow    |        |for colour-masses or
 its habit of       |        |          |        |picking. May be sown in
 covering the ground|        |          |        |in the borders after bulbs
 with bloom         |        |          |        |have died away, and will
Gaillardia, picta   |        |          |        |and will bloom until hard
 Lorenziania        |        |          |        |frost.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Ipomaea              | T.A.   |          |10-15   |Our most beautiful annual
                    |        |          | ft.    |vines. The common morning
                    |        |          |        |glories should be kept
                    |        |          |        |from seeding in flower or
                    |        |          |        |vegetable gardens, because
                    |        |          |        |before you know it the
                    |        |          |        |strong tendrils will have
                    |        |          |        |twined about vegetables
                    |        |          |        |and flowers alike and
                    |        |          |        |strangled them.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Ipomaea              | T.A.   |          |        |An early variety of the
                    |        |          |        |of the popular moonflower
Ipomaea, Mexicana    |        |Satiny    | 15 ft. |
 grandiflora        |        | white    |        |
 alba--Large white  |        |          |        |
 moonflower         |        |          |        |
Ipomaea, Northern    | T.A.   |Pinkish   | 15 ft. |
 Light              |        |heliotrope|        |
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Imperial Japanese   | T.A.   |White,    |30-40   |One of the most artistic
morning-glories     |        |rose,     | ft.    |flowers of the modern
                    |        |crimson,  |        |garden, the seed must be
                    |        |all       |        |must be sown early,
                    |        |shades of |        |preferably in a hotbed,
                    |        |purple    |        |and extra precautions
                    |        |          |        |taken to insure its
                    |        |          |        |germination, as the
                    |        |          |        |coverings are exceedingly
                    |        |          |        |hard. It is best to soak
                    |        |          |        |them over night in several
                    |        |          |        |changes of warm water or
                    |        |          |        |else very carefully notch
                    |        |          |        |the shell of the seed with
                    |        |          |        |a knife. This last
                    |        |          |        |performance is rather
                    |        |          |        |risky, if the knife slip
                    |        |          |        |ever so little, and it is
                    |        |          |        |best to trust to the
                    |        |          |        |soaking. For those who are
                    |        |          |        |in the country only from
                    |        |          |        |June to October and have
                    |        |          |        |little room for vines,
                    |        |          |        |these morning-glories
                    |        |          |        |will prove a new
                    |        |          |        |experience, for in flower
                    |        |          |        |and leaf they present an
                    |        |          |        |infinite variety of shape
                    |        |          |        |and marking. The flowers
                    |        |          |        |are both self-coloured as
                    |        |          |        |well as marbled, spotted,
                    |        |          |        |striped, margined, and
                    |        |          |        |fringed.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
MIGNONETTE          | H.A.   |          |1-2 ft. |These three species of
Miles Spiral        |        |Green     |        |mignonette I have found
                    |        | and white|        |perfectly satisfactory.
Giant Pyramidal     |        |Green,    | 18 in. |If quantity is desired
                    |        | deep     |        |rather than quality, the
Parson's White      |        |White and | 9 in.  |seed may be sown thinly
                    |        | buff     |        |where it is to remain. But
                    |        |          |        |for specimen stalks to
                    |        |          |        |come up to catalogue
                    |        |          |        |descriptions, each plant
                    |        |          |        |must have individual
                    |        |          |        |treatment, like the
                    |        |          |        |asters.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
NASTURTIUMS         | H.A.   |All shades|        |A showy climbing or
Tall                |        |of reds   |        |trailing plant, useful for
Make your own       |        |and       |        |outdoor decorations and
 mixture by buying  |        |yellows,  |        |the clean-smelling flowers
 the twenty named   |        |chocolate,|        |being equally valuable for
 colours offered and|        |pink, and |        |table decorations.
 blending them.     |        |salmon    |        |Should be either planted
                    |        |          |        |on a bank, wall, or in
                    |        |          |        |front of a fence, stone or
                    |        |          |        |otherwise. If stone, a
                    |        |          |        |thick support of peabrush
                    |        |          |        |should be given, set
                    |        |          |        |slantwise toward the wall.
                    |        |          |        |Be careful not to place
                    |        |          |        |nasturtiums where you will
                    |        |          |        |look over them toward beds
                    |        |          |        |containing pink or magenta
                    |        |          |        |flowers or where they will
                    |        |          |        |form a background for the
                    |        |          |        |same, as in spite of some
                    |        |          |        |beautiful tints of
                    |        |          |        |straw-colour and maroon,
                    |        |          |        |the general nasturtium
                    |        |          |        |colour is dazzling,
                    |        |          |        |uncompromising
                    |        |          |        |vermilion-orange.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
PHLOX DRUMMONDII    | H.A.   |          |11/2 ft.  |A thoroughly satisfactory
Best colours in     |        |          |        |flower for the summer
tall flowering class|        |          |        |garden, whether sown
                    |        |          |        |broadcast to cover beds
Alba                |        |White     |        |left empty by spring bulbs
Coccinea            |        |Scarlet   |        |or sown in a seed bed and
Isabellina          |        |Light     |        |transplanted eight inches
                    |        | yellow   |        |to a foot apart, when if
Rosea               |        |Pink      |        |the dead flowers are kept
Stella Splendens    |        |Crimson   |        |well picked off, they will
Atropurpurea        |        |Purple    |        |make sturdy, compact
                    |        |          |        |bushes.
DRUMMOND PHLOX      |        |          |6-8 ft. |The dwarf varieties make
Snowball            |        |White     |        |charming edges for hardy
Chamois Rose        |        |Pink      |        |rose beds or shrubberies.
Fireball            |        |Flame     |        |
Surprise            |        |Scarlet   |        |
                    |        |edged with|        |
                    |        |white     |        |
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
POPPIES             | H.A.   |          |1 ft. - |Poppies are gorgeous
                    |        |          | 18 in. |flowers, but in our
SHIRLEY, the most   |        |All shades|        |changeable climate, as a
 satisfactory reds  |        |class, are too short-lived
 of poppies for     |        |          |        |to pay their way, except
 outdoor decoration |        |          |        |in summer gardens where a
 or cutting         |        |          |        |brief period of bloom
                    |        |          |        |suffices, or in a garden
                    |        |          |        |so large that there need
                    |        |          |        |be no economy of space.
                    |        |          |        |Shirley is sown in May and
                    |        |          |        |again in August for spring
                    |        |          |        |flowering.
                    |        |          |        |Even under adverse
                    |        |          |        |conditions the Shirley is
                    |        |          |        |always dainty and never
                    |        |          |        |makes a disagreeable,
                    |        |          |        |soppy exhibition after a
                    |        |          |        |rainy period like the
                    |        |          |        |carnation and peony
                    |        |          |        |flowered varieties.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
PORTULACA           | T.A.   |Red,      |6-8 in. |A most useful "filler" for
Buy the separate    |        |white,    |        |sunny nooks,--rockwork,--
 colours and mix    |        |pink,     |        |for covering bulb beds,
 them yourself, as  |        |crimson,  |        |and concealing mishaps
 in the commercial  |        |yellow    |        |and disappointments.
 mixtures both      |        |          |        |Its fat, uninteresting
 scarlet and pink   |        |          |        |foliage, that makes mats
 appear in tints    |        |          |        |a foot broad and proclaims
 that set the teeth |        |          |        |it first cousin to
 on edge            |        |          |        |"pusley," is covered
                    |        |          |        |during bright sunshine by
                    |        |          |        |a wealth of gay flowers
                    |        |          |        |two inches across and of
                    |        |          |        |satiny texture.
                    |        |          |        |Heat, and plenty of it, is
                    |        |          |        |what Portulaca craves,
                    |        |          |        |backyards agree with it,
                    |        |          |        |also dry banks, and even
                    |        |          |        |seashore sand if there is
                    |        |          |        |a foothold of loam
                    |        |          |        |beneath.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
Salvia Splendens--  | H.A.   |          |2-21/2 ft.|The familiar flower that
FLOWERING SAGE      |        |          |        |sends up its spikes of
Bonfire             |        |Intense   |        |flame from August until
                    |        | flame    |        |frost--should be sown in
                    |        |          |        |seed beds and set out from
                    |        |          |        |one to two feet apart.
                    |        |          |        |Watch out and do not put
                    |        |          |        |your salvia where it will
                    |        |          |        |come in competition with
                    |        |          |        |the crimson-hued hardy
                    |        |          |        |phlox tribe. Scarlet
                    |        |          |        |geraniums and the crimson
                    |        |          |        |rambler rose in
                    |        |          |        |conjunction are not more
                    |        |          |        |painful.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
SWEET PEAS, twelve  | H.A.   |Various   |6 ft.   |If sweet peas are to be
 good colours       |        |          |        |grown in any quantity,
                    |        |          |        |they should be sown after
Apple blossom       |        |Pink      |        |the manner of tall garden
Black knight        |        |Maroon    |        |peas and the colours kept
Boreatton           |        |Deep      |        |separate. This is a great
                    |        | Crimson  |        |aid both to their
Coquette            |        |Primrose  |        |gathering and artistic
Crown jewel         |        |Cream,    |        |arrangement.
                    |        | violet   |        |
                    |        | veins    |        |
Duke of Clarence    |        |Claret    |        |
Firefly             |        |Dazzling  |        |
                    |        | scarlet  |        |
Gorgeous            |        |Orange and|        |
                    |        | rose     |        |
Mrs. Kenyon (very   |        |Primrose- |        |
 large)             |        | yellow   |        |
King Edward VII     |        |Very fine |        |
                    |        | crimson  |        |
Mrs. Dugdale        |        |Best      |        |
                    |        | rose-pink|        |
Navy blue           |        |Rich dark |        |
                    |        | blue     |        |
Primrose            |        |Light     |        |
                    |        | yellow   |        |
Senator             |        |White,    |        |
                    |        | purple,  |        |
                    |        | and      |        |
                    |        | maroon   |        |
                    |        | striped  |        |
Mont Blanc, very    |        |White     | 2 ft.  |
 early              |        |          |        |
Stella Morse        |        |Primrose  |        |
                    |        | flushed  |        |
                    |        | with pink|        |
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
SUNFLOWERS          | H.A.   |All shades|4-8 ft. |Cheerful flowers to line
Henry Wilde         |        |of yellow |        |up against fences or at
Primrose-coloured   |        |          |        |the back of shrubberies,
Cucumerifolius      |        |          |        |whose seeds, if left to
 hybridus fl. pl.,  |        |          |        |ripen, will secure the
 a fine mixture of  |        |          |        |company of many birds for
 new varieties,     |        |          |        |your garden through the
 decorative and     |        |          |        |autumn and early winter.
 good for cutting   |        |          |        |
Single Russian (The |        |          | 8 ft.  |
 Henyard Sunflower),|        |          |        |
 large head heavy   |        |          |        |
 with seeds         |        |          |        |
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
VERBENA             | H.A.   |          |11/2 ft.  |The best summer-bedding
Defiance, scarlet   |        |          |        |plant that is raised from
 bedder             |        |          |        |seed, which must be well
Candidissima        |        |          |        |soaked before sowing. The
Auriculaeflora,      |        |          |        |mammoth varieties are the
 various, with      |        |          |        |most satisfactory, and
 white eye          |        |          |        |among them are to be
Mammoth, mixed,     |        |Red,      |        |found shaded tints of rose
large flowers, often|        |white,    |        |and lavender that have
 fragrant, of many  |        |blue,     |        |decided perfume.
 beautiful colours. |        |purple,   |        |
                    |        |crimson,  |        |
                    |        |pink,     |        |
                    |        |striped   |        |
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
WALLFLOWER          | H.A.   |Gold and  |11/2 ft.  |While the most beautiful
Paris single annual |        | Brown    |        |species of wallflowers are
                    |        |          |        |in this climate so tender
                    |        |          |        |that they must be wintered
                    |        |          |        |in pits or cold frames,
                    |        |          |        |this single species, if
                    |        |          |        |sown in spring and
                    |        |          |        |transplanted, will bloom
                    |        |          |        |until Christmas.
                    |        |          |        |It is one of the most
                    |        |          |        |valuable and
                    |        |          |        |characteristic plants of
                    |        |          |        |the bed of sweet odours
                    |        |          |        |and can be used to fill
                    |        |          |        |odd nooks, against stone
                    |        |          |        |walls, or the foundation
                    |        |          |        |of buildings.
--------------------+--------+----------+--------+--------------------------
ZINNIA (Crabbed age | H.A.   |          |1-16 in.|Bedding annual, of
and Youth)          |        |          |        |brilliant colours and
Salmon              |        |          |        |vigorous growth. If room
Snowball            |        |          |        |is lacking, the dwarf
Sulphur             |        |          |        |varieties are best unless
Golden              |        |          |        |the soil is very poor. It
Fireball            |        |          |        |is best to buy the seed in
Rose                |        |          |        |separate colours, and when
                    |        |          |        |transplanting from the
                    |        |          |        |seed bed, combine as
                    |        |          |        |required.
                    |        |          |        |Avoid the purple and
                    |        |          |        |magenta shades, they are
                    |        |          |        |quite impossible.
====================+========+==========+========+==========================






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