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.



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.



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.



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.