THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE JOY OF GARDENS By LENA MAY McCAULEY "7n Paradise a garden lies" RAND McNALLY AND COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK Copyright, IQII, BY RAND. MCNAI.LY & COMPANY 455 FOREWORD ANY book about gardens, written for the pleasure of writing, must have its sources in dreams. The visions of gardens beautiful and retired hover before the imagination, and no real garden, however humble, but is invested in celestial light of cherished hopes of what it may become in fragrant flowers or what it might have been had fortune been kind. The facts and the fancies of this book were discovered in various gardens, some centuries old, fruitful of memories of those whose hands have long since turned to dust, others in the joyous public gardens with parterres, and the most precious of all in the quiet gardens of my friends. "Gardening," said a wise writer, "is among the purest of pleasures," and one tossed on the fretful world knows that there is no purer delight than that which comes to the human heart with friends in gardens. To many friends, far and wide, I owe whatever inspiration lives in these pages. The illustration of the book was an afterthought carried out in the desire to suggest the art of landscape gardening. Credit is gratefully recorded to those who aided with the pictures, and especially to Jens Jensen, Jessie T. Beals, Mary H. -Northend, J. Horace McFarland, W. H. Rau, Henry Fuhrman, E. L. Fowler, Alice Enk, and Mode Wineman. vi FOREWORD The gardens enhanced by landscape art are beautifying our country, but the most joyful gardens are the little planta- tions of flowers about homes everywhere and beyond the reach of the camera. L. M. McC. CONTENTS PAGE List of Illustrations ix ON WINGS OF HOPE i A PRELUDE OF HEAVEN'S HARMONY. "..... 10 THE DELIGHTS OF FAITH 20 WHEN SPRING AWAKES 28 SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 37 THE USES OF ADVERSITY 47 WHEN SOUL HELPS FLESH 56 As FANCY FLIES 65 THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 74 THE ODORS OF ARABY 83 ET [IN ARCADIA FUISTI 94 WHEN BEES COURT THE CLOVER . 104 IN MIDSUMMER FIELDS 113 A CARNIVAL OF GOLD 122 THE FRIENDSHIP OF FLOWERS 131 HERBS o' GRACE 141 WHEN AUTUMN LINGERS 151 MY LADY DAHLIA TAKES THE AIR 160 IN ELYSIAN FIELDS 170 ESCAPED FROM GARDENS 182 OF DRIFTWOOD AND DREAMS 193 IN GOD'S ACRE 203 Appendix 211 vii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A Water Garden at Altadena, California . . Frontispiece FACING PAGE A Bit of Formal Garden, "Wychwood," Lake Geneva, Wisconsin i A Garden on Long Island, New York 4 A Garden at Manchester, Massachusetts .... 8 A Garden at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 12 Rose Gardens near New Rochelle, New York ... 16 A Garden at Winnetka, Illinois •. . 20 A Rose Garden at Thomasville, Georgia 28 A Water Landscape Garden at Glencoe, Illinois . . 32 A Garden on Long Island, New York 37 Purple Phlox, West Parks, Chicago ... . . 44 Rose Gardens of Madame Modjeska, Los Angeles, California 48 A Garden at Bar Harbor, Maine 52 A Formal Garden at Prides Crossing, Massachusetts . 56 A Garden at Stockbridge, Massachusetts .... 60 A Water Garden at Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 65 Garden at the Longfellow Home, Cambridge, Massa. chusetts 68 A Garden at Manchester, Massachusetts .... 76 Villa Tasca, Palermo, Italy 80 A Garden at Altadena, California 84 In the Boboli Gardens, Florence, Italy 92 A Japanese Garden at Wynnewood, Pennsylvania . . 96 A Formal Garden at New Haven, Connecticut . . . 100 A Garden at Katonah, New York . . . . . . 104 Garden at "Egandale," Highland Park, Illinois . . 106 x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE A Pergola in a Los Angeles Garden 113 Garden of Mabel Osgood Wright 1 1 6 House and Garden at Bar Harbor, Maine .... 124 Water Garden and Pergola at Ellenville, New York . 128 A Garden at Winnetka, Illinois 132 Peacock Garden of Ernest Thompson Seton, Cos Cob, Connecticut 136 A Garden at Ardmore, Pennsylvania 141 A Garden near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . . . 144 A Formal Garden at Brookline, Massachusetts . . 148 Approach to a Water Garden, Lake Como, Italy . . 152 Autumn Garden, Garfield Park, Chicago ... .156 A Formal Garden at Beverley Cove, Massachusetts . 160 A Terrace Garden at Lake Forest, Illinois . . . 164 Terrace Walk, Home of Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett, Kent, England 172 Home of John D. Rockefeller, near Tarry town, New York 176 Water Garden at Lincoln Park, Chicago 181 Court of the Sultana, Generalife Palace, Granada, Spain 184 A Formal Garden on Long Island, New York . . . 188 Scoinford Old Manor, the Home and Garden of Alfred Austin, Kent, England 193 A Garden near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania . . . 196 An Old-fashioned Garden near Philadelphia, Penn- sylvania 200 A Garden at Winnetka, Illinois 204 A Terrace Garden at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin . . 208 Garden Plans 240-246 Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege Through all the years of this owr life, to lead From joy to joy : for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. — WORDSWORTH. THE JOY OF GARDENS ON WINGS OF HOPE WINTER has fled. What matter if skies are gray and lawns hidden deep beneath the driven snow, for at dawn the sparrows sang of the coming of spring and let out the secret that St. Valentine's Day is here. The mist curtains parted before sunrise. The east, long veiled in somber vapors of smoked amethyst, which only on rare winter mornings flashed with the light of the slumbering fires, blazed with roseate flames as if to assure the ice- bound lands that the sun still wheeled in the heavens at his appointed time and all 's right with the world. Strike open the rusty lock of the garden gate ; the hour has sounded for conquest. The upper air is as bright as at Eastertide, silver wreaths of fog trail fairy-veils on the tops of the pine trees, and the sun shines resplendently, diffusing a gentle warmth through the atmosphere as he rises higher and higher to the full splendor of midday. The blanket of snow covering the lily beds is melting, 2 THE JOY OF GARDENS and tiny rills are coursing down the paths. The doves have come out to sun themselves, cooing sweetly as they patter to the eaves of the bam roof, and take short flights to try their wings. We can almost hear the seeds stirring in the earth where the full tide of sunshine falls upon it, and the whole garden seems to bloom with the spirits of flowers of other years. Then falls the afternoon; the vision passes, and dull-cloaked February awaits in the twilight. Yet we have lived through hours that have been glad, and we shall not forget that spring has given the sign and will burn her signal fires stolen from the sun faring north- ward. Winter is over, and the making of gardens is at hand. The miracle of grass and flowers will repeat itself, for the promise of a new world is in the air, the mysteri- ous vibration that quickens the pulses and awakens the hopes that fell by the way with the autumn of yesteryear. The February days are golden opportunities to the practical gardener, who counts them the appointed time for making ready for the fetes of summer. By being forehanded while frost is in the ground it is possible to gain from two to four weeks in the following season. Columbus saw the spice-laden islands of the East in his dreams and steered for them, and the gardener makes his charts and paints rosy pictures while gathering his tools to launch on his undertaking. His course is bent accord- ing to his desires, and his discovery flies their colors. ON WINGS OF HOPE 3 As day follows day we realize every whim of the weather is a blessing in disguise, once the mind is made up to think of gardens. From the window the landscape is hidden by driving rain and sleet ; the walks are impass- able. Nature has ruled that we stay at home and forget, under the magic of the florist's catalogue, the theater in town. The calendar warns that March is but a fortnight away, when spring is due, and the skunk cabbage will be up in the woods on a sunny bank, and hepaticas hang their pale bloom on a sheltered southern slope. The sleet may rattle against the windowpane and the wind howl down the chimney; nevertheless it is time to begin gar- dening, and to do it now — as the legends say. We open the florist's gay booklet and mark the shrubs and the trees we had planned to set out. A crimson rambler should adorn the side window ; and small though the lot is, it was decided at the last cold snap that a wind- break of evergreens would be worth while to turn away Boreas from the perennials and the exposed porches of the dining room. Nature inspires the garden lover how to order a little paradise on paper, and as for wisdom, there are abroad wisacres aplenty only too glad to recite their experi- ences. We can say to ourselves in perfect faith that "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her," and go our ways in adventures in gardening. If one seed is 4 THE JOY OF GARDENS discouraged and refuses to send forth its plant, there are many more just waiting the chance to get a foothold and to make greenery and color above the earth we have scratched. With garden books all around, and so much other advice, we should be able to put what we ought to have with what we really want, in good taste. Then comes another night of blustery weather to keep every one at home and the neighbors fast behind their own doors, and we declare in exultation that fortune has sent it to be the hour of planning. Accordingly we clear away the books of fiction and the tempting magazines from the table, and prepare for a serious campaign in formal lists. It looks to be dull work; but if you would not be sorry later on, drive out the lurking distrust of summer success and play that all will go as gayly as a fairy tale, for beauty still abides among old-fashioned posies. Flowers are fed by faith, like all the homely virtues, and faith is the first essential in getting bloom. It is united to some hard work, it is true ; but who ever minded the drudgery of a mountain climb after he had gained the heights? Long ago the garden plan had its serpentine paths or was laid off in parallelograms, but to-day the waste ground given to paths is used for planting, and turf is trained over the lawns and close to the beds. The gravel path appears only as the practical marching ground to ON WINGS OF HOPE 5 the f nt door and for the comfort of milkman and grocery boy who approach the kitchen. ' It is not neces- sary to use compass or rule and waste ground in walking measures among the flower beds. The clover turf is pleasanter to the foot in summer, and is a refreshing backgrc d for clumps of hardy phlox, peonies, giant larkspui and other perennials which, once invited in, remain always. For a pastime let us draw the first plan on sketch paper and wash in the colors of the scheme for the beds. Blooming posies are amicable folk, and I never knew their colors to fight — figuratively speaking — except in California, where purple bougainvilleas keep up a fierce warfare with scarlet geraniums, causing chills to creep down the spines of nervous artists. It is safe to mix the homely flowers, always using many white blossoms, while much pleasure is to be gained in massing plants of a single variety and color; as many petunias with a border of sweet alyssum, or scarlet gera- niums with white feverfew to make a contrast; and beds of pansies, stocks, begonias, or ageratum look well with dwarf geraniums of the silver-leaf variety or candytuft or dusty miller. The choice being made, write the names of the flowers in the places they are to occupy in the beds and, if your imagination is not vivid, wash in the colors with paint. In thinking of annuals one should not overlook the 6 THE JOY OF GARDENS faithful perennials and spring bulbs — though the latter were, of course, set in the autumn — and daffodils and iris are at home in their own corners. Bleeding hearts and peonies are the earliest joy-bringers, and, however little your plot, keep a place for them. After all, a rainy February will have its brighter side if the orders for seeds and shrubs have been mailed and the garden plans made in the evenings. An inclement half-holiday gives time to search for tools in the cellar and to hunt for dahlia roots, cannas, and gladioli put away in November; and the first sunny day will send us looking after the hotbed — but that is another story. By and by the hands of the clock hint that the lamp will soon burn low. If we are to have our nightly com- pany of an old book it is high time to take one from the shelves. What better than the master of the Utopian Garden — Francis Bacon ? "And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the land, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells, so that you may walk by a whole row of them and find nothing of their sweetness; yea, though it be in a morning's dew. Bays, likewise, yield no smell as they grow, rosemary little, nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the ON WINGS OF HOPE 7 sweetest smell in the air is the violet, especially the white double violet which comes twice a year, about the middle of April and about Bartholomewtide. "Next to that is the musk rose; then the strawberry leaves dying, with a most excellent cordial smell; then the flower of the vines — it is a little like the dust of a grass which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth; then sweetbriar; then wallflowers, which are very delightful to be set upon a parlor or lower chamber window ; then pinks and gillyflowers, especially the mat- ted pink and clove gillyflower; then the flowers of the lime tree; then the honeysuckle — so they be somewhat afar off. Of bean flowers I speak not, because they are field flowers. But those which perfume the air most de- lightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon and crushed, are three; that is, burnet, wild thyme, and water mints; therefore you are to set whole alleys of them to have pleasure when you walk or tread." As he considers still further man's making of gardens, to which God Almighty first pointed the way in Eden, he looks adown the year in the long procession of months and writes, "I doe hold it, in the Royall Ordering of Gardens, that there ought to be gardens for all months of the year; in which severally things of beauty may be there in season." What sensible advice this is — posies to greet the swallow, others for grasshopper and harvest time, others to abide with the cricket. 8 THE JOY OF GARDENS A torrent of spring rain is dashing upon the window- panes, and the icicles tinkle like silver bells as they fall from the balcony above and are shattered on the stone sill. How they glittered, outdoing crystal balls in sun- shine this morning, reflecting in their shining depths the flowers soon to parade in the garden below! Here is magic that we can make without wand or incantation; we have dreamed the color scheme, invited many to the tableau, and if to-morrow's day is fair the earthen beds shall be turned with a spade. Though inefficient and feeble in many things, poor blind mortals that we are, here is a certainty, and we can actually steal a march on nature and defy the weather by going about our gardening betimes. So often our best- laid plans have fallen to rack and ruin that it is no wonder we cast a thought in the direction of adverse demons. Does the wind howling through the trees, shaking the doors with ghostly hands — does the wind know that we have tried to get ahead of nature and have packed the oak leaves thickly above the snowdrops and first hyacinths? Does the Nemesis of a late spring spy the plantlets that were struggling to light in the hotbeds a week ago, just waiting for the melting of the last snow*? The answer is here in the flower basket of leaf mold lifted from the sunny slope of the ravine. The brown matted covering is broken, and in the warmth and the ON WINGS OF HOPE 9 sunshine that flooded the south window life began stir- ring in the seedlings blanketed under the oak leaves. A white, furry crosier is uplifted by the hepatica, a fern holds out a coil of green, and an acorn has turned over on its side to reach toward the light the tender pink sprout of a young tree. The joy of gardens is in the air, and when clouds have blown away and the sun is shining again, we shall bid defiance to the vagaries of willful spring and go planting on our own account. A PRELUDE OF HEAVEN'S HARMONY AT midnight March came in like a lion bent on ven- geance, announced by all the trumpets of the sky and a roar in the tree tops. The first peep of day showed whirling rings of mist taking the shapes of ghostly spirits which seemed to moan : "The wind blows out of the gates of day, The wind blows over the lonely of heart, And the lonely of heart is withered away — " The tones died in the distance as the dense fog swept on before the blast as fierce and chill as if it had been the breath of the Northland, from the far-away Hebrides and the hills where the dream-maiden Fiona MacLeod wove her verses. When it was light the gardener looked out on the frowning clouds and turned a cold shoulder to weather simulating pranks of the artistic temperament. Was this spring masquerading for a day in blustering March? So it is by the calendar, and experiences of old shall not deceive us. Could we paint the weather god of this season, what else should he be but a combination of Jove 10 HEAVEN'S HARMONY 11 the sportive, of Saturn the threatening, together touched with the mischief of volatile Mercury ! When March gets into the human circle and stirs up the imagination and the emotions, the association is dis- turbing. The cheerful window garden of fragrant prim- roses fails to awaken gentle reflections; neither Francis Bacon nor Gilbert White nor John Parkinson rises to the wild spirits of March. While "wind and rain and changing skies" play overhead the Gaelic muse and Chopin's preludes make music within doors, where the fire burns brightly on the hearth. Such is March — variable as the winds that blow, as the gardener knows who learns to be weatherwise. Weather knowledge is a by-product of gardening gleaned on occasions as he watches for the south wind and, dread- ing the north, welcomes the east, and puts by his hose at the sign of a rain-laden cloud. No one scans the skies more anxiously than the gardener in a dry spell ; no one is quicker to spy the sulphurous yellow vapor laden with hail, nor is there a professional weather man more accu- rate in counting the sunny days. But, for all this, who knows March*? Some writer on birds and flowers accepts the situation with resignation and would divide the year into four seasons — and March. This is as it should be. Let March roar like the lion and be gentle as the lamb, sleet the garden and then thaw it, invite the covers off the beds and send the thermometer 12 THE JOY OF GARDENS to the depths, and yet, while doing its freakish worst, we would count the year a desert without it. Weather wisdom, like Dogberry's scholarship, comes by nature. Its first intuitions may be instilled in the child who finds the sky a field for his observations as ex- citing as the back yard or the neighbor's lot which makes up his play world. He looks from his little garden to the sky, and somewhere in his wondering mind grows a rever- ence for the omnipotent power hidden behind the blue firmament. If puffed with conceit that man is the master of his fate, uncover the hotbeds on a sunny March day when the changed skies are soft and warm, and note what happens before dusk. March is on the lookout for human planters, and he who "bides a wee" is safe. He is cautious about lifting the frames and raking off the bulb beds, or taking shelter from the perennials; and, when the season permits, employs the waiting hour making the rounds of the lawn and grounds with a notebook, to think of the things that ought to be done and the things he would like to do, and to write them down. Where the lawn sweeps to the road, an expanse of green may be depended upon to frame an aristocratic set- ting to the house. It is no light matter to keep a lawn in order, to banish the weeds and coarse grass, shut off the explorations of moles, and keep the sod shaven and even. However charming grass may be, the presence of flowers HEAVEN'S HARMONY 13 adds a personal touch to the surroundings. Any one among us can recall places set in immaculately kept lawns, with perchance a single foliage bed laid with mathematical precision. Day after day for years we may pass the gate without any conception of who dwells within or what manner of man he is. Drawing rooms of this type are familiar, and whole houses whose interiors keep the secrets of the tastes of their masters and mistresses. Far more lovable are the pretty, disorderly rooms with books and papers, pictures hung here and there, bric-a-brac treasured from child- hood, reflecting moods and every holiday of the year. True, the art decorator frowns on this. "Away with it all !" he cries. "Look to simplicity !" And should you heed him and visit that room devoid of its nonsense, you would discover to your sorrow that its soul had fled. Nowhere could be found the suggestive lures to book and to picture worlds; gone the memory of happy occa- sions amid the distraction of matching colors and simple forgetfulness — a day without friends, a future that stretches like a desert to the far horizon. Yes, you are saved dusting; but imagine being imprisoned in this coldly correct and conventional chamber, and compare it with what might have been had you but the foolish orna- ments of childhood, the old dictionary, the prints, and the stack of torn music heaped on a convenient chair, and the bookcases about. Who lives in this tastes of the 14 THE JOY OF GARDENS whirl of life and its myriad colors — and loves even March in his garden. There lies a happy medium between soulless conven- tions and riotous disorder. Crocuses that smile from the first grass blades on the lawn, the wee, modest, crimson- tipped daisies that wash their faces in morning dews all summer long, give character to the proper expanse before the door. Every passing neighbor gets a message of cheer, and, is his horizon dark, you have given him a smile. If no altruistic sentiment of this order stirs you, imagine how artistic purple and yellow crocuses look in April, daisies in June, and scarlet salvia in autumn in a sea of green. Now the storm clouds have vanished, and March, lamblike, lends a charm to all pastoral scenes. The wind blows from the south, the weather vane tilts uncertainly, and the windows are thrown open to admit the spring; the fancy presents the most hopeful undertakings that we have thought of in many a day. A troop of nesting spar- rows is scouring the gardens for straws and foraging for seeds at the very spot where the spade will turn over the earth when the pools have dried away. At this stage of action the summer border is of that unsubstantial fabric that dreams are made of. Do not scoff at it, unbeliever who never scratched the earth or tasted the joys of creation by planting a seed. Consider but a little, and discover that more than half the joys of HEAVEN'S HARMONY 15 life are visions created by our longing selves in anticipa- tion of something beautiful which we would have for our own. Winged by hopes, we step lightly over the quagmires of everyday to live in inspiring atmospheres and gather posies in fairy gardens. To be able to do this counts one among those blessed with a safe haven at hand when February rains flood the air, the melting snowdrifts have lost their purity, and the garden lies drowned, with the trees standing dully in a forbidding atmosphere. The immortal artist knows that we need the grays to throw the skies into brighter contrast ; and if we bid dull care be gone and put spur to the imagination, lo! the garden blooms with the firstlings of Easter, and no Hindu magician has been at hand to wave his wand to make it so. It has been whispered that many florists' catalogues and railway time-tables go to those who never plant and to those who never travel. The little woman in her one room, when work is done, yields to the luxury of plan- ning a garden which perchance some turn in the wheel of fortune may give her in the unread future. No down- town playhouse could transport her as does the thin- leafed picture book in the twinkling of an eye. And when she has settled her perennials and sweet herbs she puts the pamphlet tenderly away for another dream hour. One who has tested the magic of it does not need our 16 THE JOY OF GARDENS pity, even if the garden is confined to a single pot on the window sill, or is no real garden at all. Few magazines equal the florists' catalogues for variety of lore ; and what a wealth of gardens, whole country estates, one can plan with a single pamphlet ! A child who has not learned to seek out his catalogue, with its gay pictures of flowers, has missed something in life, for it is a clew to a liberal education. Had he a garden of his own he could not learn the names and habits of so many flowers, nor become so familiar with them. To-day we are interested in vines, and out come pencil and paper, and we decide where the trumpet creeper would do best, where a purple clematis Jackmanii, where the morning-glories should unfurl to the morning, and where we dare experiment with these new things that we have never met. By investing a few dollars the kitchen door may become a bower, the old tree draped in beauty, the screen fence before the ash heap hidden behind a cur- tain of bloom. When enthusiasm burns high, the order is written out that very night, and may send us out in the rain to a letter box, and to bed we go with visions of flowering vines rambling about eaves and making the old house the prettiest in the neighborhood. Many men and women are gifted with a passion for planting and planning artistic homes. Their whole energy is spent in making, and when the task is accom- plished they are willing to move to another home in its HEAVEN'S HARMONY 17 beginnings to go over the task again. They are born promoters of gardening on whom the fact of possession bears heavily, as their temperament bids them be up and doing. The stuff of the pioneer is in their fancy, blazing trails and conquering wildernesses, and living by the temptations of the florists' catalogues. We whose hearts cling to places cannot understand their building and leaving, and would pity them. But they do not need our pity in the least, as theirs has been the delight of creating, and in going to pastures new they will taste it again. The indoor garden is a pleasure for the year around, which dwellers of old houses have culti- vated with great success. The latter-day architect seems to have conspired against plants and pictures. It argues ill for his breadth of view, for however artistic in an architectural way a house may be, it will never be a home unless it is prepared to foster human graces. It must be more than a noncommittal work of art, more than a shell devoid of worry and distractions, more than a scheme of lines and a color harmony. It should have invitations to draw out gentleness and loveliness, and to lead the mind to pleasant places. Thus wall spaces for pictures and convenient nooks for flowers should be provided, so as freely to exercise their mission of beauty. The flower for the window, like the child in the house, is a wellspring of joy. In March it is the preacher of i8 THE JOY OF GARDENS springtide. Every week of the winter should have its blooming visitants in the garden under glass, and when spring comes nature gives the best of all to welcome the returning sun, whether indoors or out of doors. As early as Ash Wednesday — mid-February or the fortnight there- abouts— the cinerarias unfold their daisy-shaped flowers of rich purples, reds, blues, and whites about a tropical leafage. What a charming companion a single pot of these may be in a sunny window ! And if one has coaxed a Chinese primrose with delicate frilled pink bloom, and encouraged a pot of broom to shake its yellow honey bells and a bunch of heather to make gay, the indoors is as fragrant as the out of doors will be a month later. The calceolaria is another curious flower coming at this time, and because of its strangeness and orchid reminders it is most appro- priate in a pot, and better at home on a window sill than if it were out of doors by and by among the familiar denizens of the borders. Contentment in life, after all, is built upon our indus- try in learning to see things and to store the fancy with riches for times and seasons. The wealth gained from cloud-gazing, weather lore, wild flowers, the migrating birds — and, not least, the treasures of florists' windows and catalogues — cannot be stolen from us. Spring is knocking at the door. The wind and sleet are false prophets. All nature tells of the flight of HEAVEN'S HARMONY 19 winter; even that book for stormy evenings — Paracelsus — fell open at the touch, and we read : "Then all is still : earth is a wintry clod ; But spring wind, like a dancing psaltress, passes Over its breast to waken it ; rare verdure Buds tenderly on rough banks, between The withered tree roots and the crack of frost, Like a smile striving with a wrinkled face ; Savage creatures seek Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews His ancient rapture." These lines alone should give the poet immortality. THE DELIGHTS OF FAITH WOMAN first saw the light of day in a garden, and could she cherish the faith that "in paradise a gar- den lies" what comfort could be hers! The suburban bride, settled in her new home, goes to town at the first sign that spring is on the way, bent upon investing in gar- den tools. The last snowbank has not retreated before the March sunshine, and you may see her going forth one of these fair mornings equipped with garden gloves, a hoe, and a rake. The turf is still soggy, and the piles of leaves heaped in the corners near the porch and at the roots of trees are water-soaked masses. It is too early to dig, and the rake has uncovered no ambitious green sprouts. Even lilac buds are backward and, while swollen, show the wisdom of waiting a little longer. Each hour the sky changes, and the weather vane tilts uncertainly. So the bride leans on her rake, enjoying the sunlight that warms the brisk little breeze blowing from the south, and looks abroad up and down the road to find what the rest of the world is about. A moment before she had been lost in a day-dream of a hedge of goldenglow, of 20 THE DELIGHTS OF FAITH 21 Japanese morning-glories climbing the porch, of young crimson ramblers, and of an old-fashioned garden bed with a big clump of the new yellow snapdragons attended by an orchestra of bumblebees drilling the nectarines for feasts of honey. Far down the road a cock crows lustily. His triumph- ant note is that of a true trumpeter of spring hailing good tidings. Led by his call, the woman looks in the distance. What is it that hides the grove since last she looked that way, and what the caricature of chanticleer; what ani- mals, strange and grotesque, parade the painted barri- cade ? The woman sighs ; she might have known that the billboard fiend had made his plans and stolen a march on suburban beauty. Little tragedies such as these make a plea for walled gardens — from which the world may be shut out. As much as we Americans like open lawns upon which the houses stand looking toward neighbors with hospitable intent, the only way to gain privacy and the restful seclu- sion of a garden out of sight of suggestions of billboards and posters that tear the mind here and there with a thousand inconsequential distractions, is to erect screens for vines, plant shrubs, or to make a concerted attack on the billboards for spoiling rural beauty. A corner in the library devoted to books of magic may be counted among the things needful to get in tune with gardens. Sketching plans on paper, marking off beds with 22 THE JOY OF GARDENS pegs and string, deciding on shrubbery clumps, ordering seeds, digging, planting, cultivating, and gathering flow- ers— all these are only a small part of gardening when you have thoroughly entered into the spirit of it. On gray days discouragement haunts the paths, upon which one turns his back and hunts the shelf with the books of magic. Here is one that never failed. It is Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne. If it is a stranger, don't seek introduction through the edition de luxe in your library, but buy a little book, and it will be handy to slip in your pocket; and if by chance it is left on a garden seat, and the dews drench it, you will not sor- row for money lost, but will take it up tenderly, dry it, and read again. From Gilbert White one learns contentment and the riches of life in nature. What a rare man he would have been in the midst of a family of children ! But had it been so the world would have lost a magic book. At the glimpse of a page billboards, soggy earth, cutworms, or whatever has bothered the mind, take flight, and our little lot is a small world with vast possibilities. The poorest neighbor can plant crown imperials for the pleasure of watching for the little bird that runs up the stems to poke its head into the bells of the flowers to sip the sweets standing in the nectarium of each petal. He may set snapdragons for bumblebees, and seek honeyed blossoms loved by insects that invite the redstart to make THE DELIGHTS OF FAITH 23 its nest on your premises. Through the eyes of Gilbert White the keeper ol trie tiniest inclosure has his vision en- larged beyond the lew beds and struggling bloom that he calls his own. The insect kingdom, the bird world, the passing clouds, are all part of the flower garden, with the sun that daily stays "leaning on his staff, and looking back over the world as a man might do at the last of his journey." A few days of stiff winds dry off flooded places with marvelous rapidity. One may venture to predict that, following a fierce February and stormy early March, mild weather will come apace. The head of the house, who drives a nail straight, has probably finished making a cold frame ; namely, a box with a window-frame top and no bottom. The cold frame is set over a bed on the south side, where the sun strikes it all day. The bulbs that have been kept away for Easter will pick up under the glass. Bits of old matting and carpet furnish a protection from the chill of stormy nights ; and if the covers have been propped up during the day to let in the fresh air and sunshine, the props should be taken out before the penetrating chill of twilight comes and the last sunshine has stolen away from the tree tops. While earth sleeps outside, violets and narcissi will bloom under the shelter. Awaking in the morning at the warble of early rising birds, and hearing a distant bell toll six, while the 24 THE JOY OF GARDENS crimson blush of dawn was reflected on the chamber wall, there came to mind a book on tfhe Delights of Faith. It was written by a Cambridge fellow whose life interests were bounded by a tiny room and a single window look- ing out upon an old garden on the banks of the peaceful Cam. The scholar, enamored of bookish seclusion in his youth, had given all his years to The Delights of Faith and the care of his garden, and then had gone to rest con- tent that he had finished his book. Those who came later and rested on the moss-grown bench under the yew tree he had planted, listening to the hum of bees from his hives near the clump of splendid foxglove, and scenting the pungent odor from the box hedge that he had trimmed, felt the garden of beauty renewing its promises with returning springs was his true legacy to posterity and the eloquent volume on the de- lights of faith. The time-stained pages were turned one by one to catch a vital spark of an ardent soul, and the mellow sun- shine of the English afternoon grew golden in the full tide of spring's glory. The linnets sang in the fragrant bower of laburnum, and heaven seemed surely to have come down to earth. It needed no argument of priest or creed to write the delights of faith. Biding our time in wayward March in this western world, which has yet to make its gardens for posterity, the almanacs and fashion-mongers tell us that spring is here. THE DELIGHTS OF FAITH 25 Every noon the sunshine marks a line farther north on the leaf-covered hepaticas and the brown bulb beds, showing a daring spear or two of green. In the confined garden spaces our careless eyes overlook the daily progress of the northward coming of sunshine. If one* would see it in its mystery and beauty, let him take a flight from the Gulf to the Lakes and behold how spring is marked on the countryside as plainly as if the Almighty Artist dipped his brush in green every morning and spread it across the face of nature, scattering flowers in its trail, each day a little nearer to the arctic snows. It does seem rather far-fetched to imagine that the tree tops feel the sunshine before our duller senses are awake, because they are that much nearer heaven. Yet this must be true, else why are the topmost twigs on the elm, maple, poplar, ash, willow, and cottonwood decorated with swelling buds'? Look and look again at them, for it will not be long before their graceful shapes will be hidden with draperies of foliage. The drooping disposition of the elm and the elegance of the birch and maple are never more evident than when outlined against the twilight of a March sky. It has taken long to become acquainted with the bare catalpa and linden, and if you have not known the silver-leaf poplar, hunt out a few in the neighborhood. Hereafter it will be listed among the wayward friends of testy temper, twisted 26 THE JOY OF GARDENS by every influence, gnarled and knotted and picturesque when leafless or in fine fettle, and, though not claiming honors of grace, an interesting friend. This is digressing from our original flower hunt in the tree tops. The true lover of trees peers about for them whenever he takes his walks abroad, knowing that their time is short. Of course the short-sighted must take a field glass, but bird hunting or flower hunting under these conditions does not bring the happy intimacy that comes from bird society on your own lawn, or studying tree flowers overhanging the porch. Trees play a part in the joy of gardens; and, were mine the privilege to plant this spring, I should choose for flowers, as well as for shade, a Judas tree, a locust, a flowering crab, catalpas, and lindens — if I had space for all. The birds should have their share of fragrant bou- quets from budding time until June slips into summer, when the air hums with bees. Nor should a March pass forgetting the blossoming elms, maples, willows, and their companions. Gather a bunch of tree twigs anywhere, and wait for surprises in the vase of water in the sunny window where you have set them. It is true it is a crime to injure a tree, but in this single instance the lesson is worth the sacrifice, and all will be forgiven if you have learned to know the powdered gold that is shed from the ash, the tassels of the willow, the THE DELIGHTS OF FAITH 27 fairy flowers of elm and maple, and the tropical luxu- riance that pushes its way from the rosin-tipped, sweet- scented buds of the cottonwoods. Never again will you pass a tree without its cycle of beauty unrolling before you. The serious crowds gathered before the seedsmen's shops remind us that many things should have been done in the suburban garden before the equinox. Wind-blown weeds and grass lodged in the shrubbery have been raked out and burned, and every shrub inspected to dislodge cocoons and suspicious insect nests. Never mind what is said of the deceit of catalogues, and keep away from friends who have fads without a real love for flowers, holding fast to your delights of faith. The first item for a successful garden is to want one. With the desire comes intuition, and laying in a goodly store of garden books and talking to an old-timer who has a garden puts one on a long way toward experience. Flower culture is like child raising — you are dealing with life in which sunshine and love are essentials. WHEN SPRING AWAKES YELLOW jonquils guilty of gold stolen from the sun- shine, and the violets breathing odors sweet in every florist's shop, assure us that spring is here, with the chariot of Apollo north of the equator and lengthening days that are wresting more minutes and hours from the night. An inheritance of the immortal spirit of the Greeks has given to our own times the association of daffodils and swallows, thyme and the hum of bees, and charming sug- gestive touches of poetry, without which life would be a dull pageant. How sweet the memory of the flowery steps of flying Proserpine ! If the jonquils peeping from flower baskets and nod- ding in the hands of passers-by could speak, we might learn of a land where spring is come. We should hear of acres of bloom far to the south, of billows of gold that we may see with that "inward eye that is the bliss of solitude"; and then, still in the spirit of Words- worth, "the heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils." But why not have daffodils of our own4? Their time of life is brief, it is true, but what a moment of concentrated 28 WHEN SPRING AWAKES 29 joy it is! How does it happen that we have forgotten jonquils, daffodils, narcissus poeticus*? Out with the garden plan, and put them down along by the lilacs in the turf at the fence corner, and set out a hundred and more bulbs at the proper time. Underline it well, and swear to yourself not to forget. If we had time to mourn we would put on sackcloth and strew ashes and berate ourselves for our forgetful- ness, which lets moments of purest delight flit by. How many jonquils we have neglected to plant through life, to our own sorrow ! But delay no longer. Look ahead to next spring, and the merry frilled cap of the sunny flower will nod to you through the darkness of wakeful nights and the gloom of heavy days, and you can say, "I have something to hope for — there is that bed of jonquils, my company of daffodils, and the narcissus poeticus that blooms in May." To begin with, buy a pot of budding jonquils now, es- pecially if you fear the fickleness of your resolution. A dollar spent on enough to fill a window brings royal re- turns; and note the wisdom of this, for, when the flower's brief span of life has run, you can gather up the bulbs and plant them where you wish to meet them again next spring. The lawn mower will run over them during the summer, the clovers will not whisper where they are in the grass, but next March a bunch of flat spikes will push through the brown mold. By trie first of April there will 30 THE JOY OF GARDENS be yellow-tinged buds, and some fair morning, when you awake to hear the robin in the trees, there will be golden trumpets swaying to and fro, keeping time to his matin song. Perennials are the crown jewels of gardens. It is a foolish procedure to uproot and change every year. The demon of novelty may beset us, and the magazines fill pages with advice of this or that in good taste. It is our privilege, however, to keep character in our garden, to seek the bloom time has tested, and to make it all a place of loveliness to keep cheer in our thoughts as time flies by. A little plat back of the house is an opportunity, though from fence to fence it is but twenty-five feet. If an unwilling city dweller looking for beauty in a resi- dence locality, you probably have discovered a neighbor- ing lot of this size, and have gone out of your way sometimes to look through a knot hole in a high board fence to find out if the dielytra is hanging out its sprays of bleeding hearts at the same time the snowball bush which you can see from the street is in bloom, and if the peonies are still as thrifty, and if there are enough May pinks along the sidewalk to give you a few for the asking. Next to entering into the pleasure of gardens set by flower lovers gone before, is the keen satisfaction of plan- ning one about a new home. Perhaps the order should be reversed — the new before the old — or maybe there is no choice at all when returns have been weighed. The WHEN SPRING AWAKES 31 altruistic spirit is more largely exercised in planting for those who come after, and it should be tempered with a serious responsibility. Some have been heard to say, "Decorate to-day, for to-morrow you move," and they expend all their fancy on potted geraniums, palms, and hastily sown annuals. To the winds with them ! They well deserve to move often, and a concerted plan should forbid their ever having a posy from any of our fragrant borders. Flower growing may seem a trifling thing, but if heaven has blessed you with a bit of ground, remember the parable of the man with the talents and turn to the page in your conscience that considers gardens for yourself, your neighbors, and to-morrow. Why should we be chosen from thousands — we blessed and they denied? Perhaps they long for a spade and pruning hook more than we do. Fate, sharing her bounties, has given us this — maybe a garden to plant in common with the bride of Twelfthnight who has just found her nest beyond the city's roar. An unconquered suburban lot on a gloomy March day has an unlovely aspect, but it is an opportunity. Sitting on the sunny corner of the porch with the garden plat on a book, a catalogue, and a box of water colors, one can look abroad and in the mind's eye see the perennials blooming. Of course they are massed where they will be sheltered and out of the way of the beds of annuals. 32 THE JOY OF GARDENS Dip your brush in pink and wash in a tall clump of foxgloves; the many colored hollyhocks would look well hard by; the blue larkspurs must make a group by them- selves; and there should be a clump of white phlox — the queens of the meadow. Fancy a long row of goldenglow following the paths for autumn ; and to this side, where it may be seen, paint a bleeding heart as the sign of the clump of dielytra, and, where space is to spare, the peonies. For the sake of romance let there be a little violet bed and a congenial place for lilies of the valley. The pro- cession of perennials should keep pace with the sun, "the daffodils that come before the swallow dares and take the winds of March with beauty," and snowdrops celebrat- ing Easter, the bleeding hearts at Whitsuntide, the peonies and foxgloves for June, and the larkspur, holly- hocks, and phlox abiding with sweet William all summer until autumn glory brings down its own. To catch pleasure as it flies is a rare accomplishment. The main thing is to grasp the opportunity, thanking the stars that it is yours; and to make the best of it with a cheerful heart, not questioning if it is great or small. A thrill of music on the air announces that April is here, whispering in the tones of flutes and violins on the three waxed cords of an eolian harp strung in the east window. In a moment of vexation we turned to an irri- tating draft that rebelliously defied the March blast, and WHEN SPRING AWAKES 33 to thwart all naughty spirits of the air had waxed a bit of string, stretched it in the crevice, and lo ! upon the listen- ing ear came the musical trumpet of winds. Now the song without words has faded in the distance to give place to the long-drawn sweetness of the fairy waldhorn of April and an orchestra of tremulous music. Innocent delight has been wrested from the midst of besetting annoyance, and pleasure caught as she flies. The April atmosphere throbs with promises — the strange odors of blossoming tree tops, of opening lilac buds, hint of lily bells and the first shy hepatica above ground. The scimitars of skunk cabbage and blades of iris announce a transformation. April skies and April rains make the background and fitting accompaniment to the stir of awakening nature out of doors. "There's as much in the nature as in the culture of the soil," sang Cowper of the intellectual gardens, which, unfortunately, cannot be made over with wood ashes, though in the mental garden fencing plays its part in shutting out evils and in making it ready to bear the right and agreeable blossom. As April really marks the beginning of gardening in the North, when frost is out of the ground, it behooves us to look into the nature of the soil, and perchance to scour the neighborhood for "the man who knows" and can tell what is actually needed. Then the garden can be spaded, raked, and worked over, both the nature and the culture 34 THE JOY OF GARDENS of the soil preparing the way for the seeds to put in their best growing. Plants are the most grateful things on earth, and abundantly repay a cultivating hand, which should be kept busy until frost comes. Have you ever thought how uninteresting those things are that have no past and seem to live only in the present? These are the new towns set up on speculation, the groups of suburban villas, the rows of semi-detached tenements in which every man tries to fancy he is under his own rooftree, and packs his belongings in the spring to try another house, vainly imagining that he is home-hunting. Foolish man and foolish town ! Had they but planted roots that would strike deep for permanency, twined a vine, set a tree, before they were aware they would have had a leafy background and would be making history. For it is history — record of things done to weave into the fabric of time — that envelops houses and towns in human interest and really makes them homes. If perchance yours is one of a score of little houses in a made-to-order subdivision, make the vow secretly to step out of the class, though you are in the midst of it. Plant a syringa, a flowering almond, and a tree honey- suckle in your lot, with peonies, bleeding hearts, phlox and goldenglow and, if there is room, a hardy climbing rose, a Baltimore belle or rambler, beside your front door. Before spring is gone this modest garden will be the cen- ter of neighborhood attraction. If you have decided to WHEN SPRING AWAKES 35 put in a cherry tree, the migrating birds will have told it all along the skies; and for a few dollars a rented house has become a residence with a history. Catching pleasure as it flies is not a feat demanding money or social standing; it is doing easy and pretty tasks and not waiting until to-morrow. Some one of these days there will be a new prophet, who will carve on his temples "To-day," and straightway every one will make the best of his passing hours and will not put off happi- ness and leisure and kindliness until a ghostly to-morrow that never comes. Every householder will buy his win- dow box, make his flower beds, and study his catalogue for bloomers to make his gardens grow, and not deny himself the pleasure until he is "able to move into the country." Permanence is a secret of the charm of old gardens. It is the thought that the same flowers have bloomed year after year, and have turned their pretty faces to the sunshine of successive summers, increasing in glory with the passing of time. This, then, is a plea for perennials, shrubs, and ornamental trees, which may be compared to the virtues giving beauty of character to the encourager thereof. What matter if one rents, and moves now and then ! Does he not get the reward of his garden of bloom while he remains, and does he not have the greater blessedness of looking backward at the garden he has left, knowing 36 THE JOY OF GARDENS that others are watching orioles in the cherry tree, others gleaning surprises in spring, others enjoying the sweetness of his rosebush? It is enough to make a man more a man. The nature of the soil having been made perfect in early April, it is safe to think about seeding. Here are the lists of hardy perennials and annuals, and the lore of dahlias and sweet-pea planting. Before the middle of April the native shrubs going to destruction in suburban lots should be transplanted into the yard. What can be prettier than the Siberian dogwood, the pussy willow and its cousins, and the wild crab? If intent on improving vacant lots, a clump may be planted there, as well as four-o' clocks, Shirley poppies, sunflowers, and larkspurs, which persist under adversity. April, fickle and uncer- tain, opens the planting time and the practical garden making. SWEETNESS AND LIGHT HAPPINESS is a light-footed goddess dancing at- tendance on the consciousness of work well done. She plays at hide and seek, evading you as you turn to bid her stay, then shyly comes upon you unawares, whisper- ing a word that your heart may hear when you have put aside your longing in devotion to the duties nearest you. Many a floral tragedy is created, many a domestic failure precipitated, by putting off the day of preparation. Who blames flowers for giving up the ghost when they have been invited into the world to meet beds unready and to suffer for nutriment and water? Who wonders that household bliss fades away where there is neither cheer nor welcome? The world has such as the bouncing Bet and happy-go- lucky folk who flit away from environment and take pleasure gypsying in the sunshine ; but, in truth, neglected gardens, like neglected homes, are places of discourage- ment. In the final accounting let us hope that penalties for failure will be laid on the sinners who should have cultivated the soil fit for rising ambitions, and not on tender youth bom in an unfriendly world. 37 38 THE JOY OF GARDENS The bird choirs have assembled robins, bluebirds, and other songsters who wake with the dawn. Gardening is play work when the sun is shining, the heavens are of April blue, and music fills the air. The garden books have not marked the red-letter day of planting just yet, but the flutter of nest building and the leafing of tree and shrub warn that nature is going ahead with her plans. She does not stay, or linger, dreading a busy season. Who will be to blame by and by if the seeds do not come up1? Yonder lie your heap of perennial roots and bundles of shrubs. You wonder humorously to yourself why your friend the florist does not post a sign, "No gar- den without a spade." The man in search of work, the man out of a job, the man who yearns to earn an honest dollar, is not hunting industry on the highroad at garden-making time in the village. You may lean on your rake in the sunshine under the robin's tree for sixty minutes — perhaps for a whole morning — and the man with a hoe, or the anxious laborer, will not loom up on the hilltop. The critical moment of decision has come; you must set the alarm clock an hour earlier, and toil if you would have your reward. Break up the hard clods with a mattock, get the chil- dren to help with rakes, and when the surface is fine and smooth, the soil pulverized, a thrill of satisfaction will creep over your weary body, and genuine happiness greet SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 39 a good job. Unless this comes to pass, do not blame the seedsman when seeds refuse to come up and do their best. Our trusted friend Eben Rexford bids us have patience and wait until May before sowing annuals. Turn the pages of the familiar log book. Oh, rapture ! It is sweet- pea planting time. "Sow in new ground as soon as it can be worked, except the white-seeded sorts, which should not be sown until the ground is comparatively warm and dry. Sweet peas do better in cool weather than in hot, sending strong roots deep into the soil." My country friend favors a screen of brush for his sweet peas, which stand tiptoe, looking out sweetly from the brown twigs. Coarse-meshed wire netting, fastened to posts, makes a practical trellis which the sweet peas will cover with a leafy green and fragrant decoration from June to November. The failure of sweet peas usu- ally may be traced to neglect on the part of the gardener. The choice of color is a personal matter, as all sweet peas are lovely. Our friends who have the naming pas- sion, who dote on calling snapdragons antirrhinums and everyday plants by many-syllabled Latin titles, can in- dulge their memories with the select "400" of sweet-pea society. What a delight to mention "Lady Grizel Hamil- ton," "Countess Spencer Var," when we have our com- pany manners on; or, when we are sportive, to talk jocularly of the "Gray Friar" or "Captain of the Blues." The day of the first blossom on the trellis will mark an 40 THE JOY OF GARDENS epoch in the garden diary — which of course you will keep, not only recording flowers, but birds, insects, tree frogs, and humankind that visit it. After that eventful morning the sweet-pea clippers must be ready, and bloom not clipped for the vases cut to prevent seeding, as every bit of life should go to making flowers. A day's work with spade ends in a luxurious enjoyment of the hour of April sunset. Choose the west window, where the full beauty of fleeting gold, the brightening of the silver crescent of the moon, and the torch of Venus may be yours. One of the magic books may lie at hand, and you read : "Just when you were safest, there 's a sunset touch. A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death. A chorus ending- from Euripides — And that 's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self To rap and knock and enter in our soul. Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring Round the ancient idol on his base again — The grand Perhaps !" What heresy is this in the face of the sky pageant, the vespers of the birds, and the hopes of sweet peas planted in the garden! Shut the door on the elves of doubt. There is no "grand perhaps"; the grass is green once more, the crocus holds up its chalice of gold, and nature, unfaltering, is true to her ancient promises. SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 41 To dress and to invite one's soul is a privilege without price — and without sin if we invite the gods. To loaf and to invite nonsense is another thing in tune with plant- ing thistles for the sake of watching them come up. But who will say us nay when we half shut our eyes and behold iris trailing her rainbow robes across the sunny slopes of the ravines, awakening the rosy hepaticas to paint beauty over the brown earth, or follow her to the brook when the buttercups and cowslips open their golden coffers at the call of spring ! What punishment more awful than to be "shut away in outer darkness," without fragrance, music, or color, and to have eyes that see not and ears that hear not? The perfume of opening violets and lilac buds, the blue of rain-washed April skies, and the wind harps in the tree tops accompanying the robin's matin song would be as things that were not. It is a blessed chance that coin from the mint cannot purchase these things, or earthly painters change the color harmonies that nature plays upon our eyes as strains of music fascinate our ears. The humblest and most sorely distressed needs but invite his soul to the vision of azure beds of scillas reflecting the blue of heaven from the fresh green of the young grass on the lawn, or look with rapture upon the gold-woven tapestry of royal crocuses gemmed with the dew of early morning, or go in search of the pink clouds of peach and apple bloom in the groves. 42 THE JOY OF GARDENS In thinking of other worlds beyond, we should have vast comfort in this if we were certain that we could en- joy our garnered experience, which we have bought so dearly. Last season there was the memory of a tangled flower garden where each sweet thing went its willful way — and surely flowers ought to know what is best and grow in grace if given their way. We know advocates of natural gardens for children as well as for flowers every- where, and it is probable that the outcome is marked with the same astonishing results, since foxes of mischief and vagrant weeds of. ne'er-do- well tendencies creep through the palings left unwatched. "Plant things sure to grow and leave the rest to na- ture," said a wiseacre disciple of the natural garden, pre- senting the seeds. Later he walked by on the other side of the street as scarlet zinnias touched elbows with purple phlox and blue larkspur and tall sunflowers looked dis- consolate among weigelas amabilis. The disciple of the natural garden groaned inwardly while confessing that he had not dreamed a color scheme and invited his soul before seed buying. "All chance, direction which we cannot see," he murmured. "Even nature plans her color schemes, groups her plants, and harmonizes with ribbons of white and green." The superb scarlet zinnias massed by themselves with the green grass all around or a fringe of dainty feverfews, the purple phlox associated with their white kindred in a SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 43 clump apart, and the larkspur tangled with Shasta daisies, and order and harmony reign among these simple folk. As in life we should choose friends for youth and friends for age, some for the idle hour and many for the everyday of passing years, in a like humor we may as- semble our flower companies to keep pace with the moods from January until Christmas. Why haste to plant all the garden at once, when it is so important, and the working and planning are a delight1? Its beauty, after all, is the reflection of the inner taste of the ardent gardener. When to-morrow you stop to look across a lawn where bloodroot is nodding its cap among the hepaticas under the shrubbery, and where trilliums are lifting the mold under the snowberry bushes, and there are signs of colum- bine and shooting stars, you may smile to yourself that all that simplicity is like a charming verse of poetry, the fine picture of a divine thought of one who roved the wild- flower haunts. And as you go down the street, and the tender grass waves about clumps of sunny jonquils, and there the sun shines warmest where a colony of narcissus poeticus is swaying, and in prim rows the tulip blades have cut stiff ranks across the lawn, you may say to yourself that here is one who has hoped and is now having high festival be- cause of dreams coming true. Then perchance, as you note the ruddy buds of peonies 44 THE JOY OF GARDENS and sharp swords of iris peeping above the ground, you pray your memory to remind you to pass that way again in May to feast your eyes on the purple of the iris and the luxuriant bloom of the peonies while the air is heavy with their fragrance and bees are gathering sweets. Some time in your wandering you may rest under a hedge, awaiting the passing of an April shower, and look forth into a quiet little garden that brought out a picture of last June. Then it was flame and mystery with hosts of Oriental poppies, glowing red, dropping their heavy heads amid cool green foliage. What a wealth of gor- geous color was that tiny garden ! And as July came and once more you turned your steps to its familiar paths, lo! a cloth of gold, eschscholtzia of the Golden West, spread splendor all about, and you vexed your heart to know what manner of gardener had sown seeds to blossom so royally. Nor was the pageant done, for the frosted autumn woods bent above the cardinal of salvia framed in wreaths of star-eyed asters and goldenrod, and, as win- ter snows lay deep, the mountain ash, bittersweet, and scarlet berry shone above the snow. The poet's feeling for sweetness and light leads us to make the garden charming with color and perfume. When we recall the old garden treasured in memory it had its color dream to live in the mind's eye; a back- ground of flaunting pink hollyhocks against a distant fence, a thriving tangle of mignonette — maybe naught SWEETNESS AND LIGHT 45 but a mound of tropic petunias heavy scented, or in a kitchen garden yellow-frilled marigolds and honeyed wallflowers. It is an idle thing to scatter the seeds of good intentions far and wide with a careless hand. The strong plants will tower above the weaker, and the frail faint in the shad- ows, for that is the inscrutable law of life. The garden picture is arranged by the laws of gentle living for sweet- ness and light and the joy of color. Have fragrance aplenty — mignonette, rose geranium, lavender, and lemon verbena — and amid their cool greens weave a galaxy of hues to give the beauty of the rainbow through a season. To-morrow will be May Day. How the merrymak- ers of old England loved it! "Corinna, come, let 's go a-Maying" out in the meadows where the cowslips spread gold for the larks and throstles. An English May is a joyous time, and of uncommon power to awaken in Milton, the sturdy Puritan, the song: "Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The flow'ry May, who from her green lap throws The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose. Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire Mirth and youth and warm desire; Woods and groves are of thy dressing, Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing. Thus we salute thee with our early song, And welcome thee, and wish thee long." 46 THE JOY OF GARDENS Our land may be too young to have matured a love for wandering in spring and taking what God's lovely earth gives freely for the pleasure of all. It is not too late to walk new paths. Work and then play. Let's all go a-Maying. The woods and marshes are clad in fresh beauty. Come, let 's go a-Maying ! THE USES OF ADVERSITY IT cannot be counted a sin to envy the goodwife who goes abroad in the dewy sweetness of the early morn- ing to dig dandelions from the grass on the park lawns. The atmosphere in the first hours of a May day is pale with gauzy vapors rising from the ponds and exhaled by the bursting buds on shrubs and trees. It is laden with the odor of an incense faint and exhilarating that wears the tremulous pianissimo of lily bells and honeysuckle flutes. To such music the goodwife takes her basket and goes to the shrine of Mother Nature, and there one may find her on her knees among the tender herbage, hoarding the gold of the dandelion. She shares her treasure with the few elect, and, when dandelion season is gone, her simple faith in flower lore brings her again to knock at our doors with her basket heaped with old-fashioned bouquets of spice pinks, verbenas, mourning brides, alyssum, and sweet marjoram, bordered with the lace of asparagus. Happy is he who has found his gospel of art and is satisfied therein. It is simple enough, if one is content to £0 through life looking through a punched elder stem. 47 48 THE JOY OF GARDENS But if one is without blinders, and greets the dandelion gatherer and her bouquet sisterhood in the morning, meets our friend of the Japanese cult at luncheon, and dines with a florist, he ponders into the long reaches of the night and begs of the powers that be for a sign of the right and true way. No gentle heart could deny sympathy with the posy bunch of the dandelion gatherer, nor could the finest tuned reject the gray- toned room with its single opening rosebud leaning from a crystal vase, nor could one turn a deaf ear to the creed of a "mum" or carnation breeder; the world has room for them all. It is only a question of selection and sociability. The generous, loving heart would in time rebel at the vacant harmonies, the solitude of self and none other in the esthetic room, and the "mum" breeder would join in stealing off for a holiday behind the hedge, where the country folk were sharing harmless gossip and making bouquets for everyday homes, where willow chairs elbowed with mahogany, and books of verse disturbed the dust on neglected volumes of wisdom, while the wander- ing breeze rustled the chintz curtains before the casement. Then, if we are given the grace to have courage to cultivate a tangle of familiar flowers that live but a sum- mer, the sun warns us that it is high time to plant the seeds. We may yet get ahead of the ambitious neighbors who made garden in April, for no seed will sprout before THE USES OF ADVERSITY 49 the ground is well warmed to that cozy, half-dry condi- tion, not too dry nor yet too moist, suitable to hold and feed hungry rootlets. Most of the annuals do not root deeply, but live from day to day on sunshine and surface moisture, in common with many other gay children of the human species on earth. While we may indulge in the luxury of a pergola draped with vines, one for each season, or have sunken gardens or water gardens for show, the woman gardener, with a strain of the feeling of the dandelion gatherer, takes her genuine comfort in the border of old-fashioned flowers. The flowers themselves are as curious and way- ward as the folk of a country village, and their outlook on life just as illogical. Annuals in general refuse to grow symmetrically, and the botanist in search of freaks always finds his reward in quaint variations of the reversions to an original type. But the gentle housewife thinks of none of these things, cherishing the notion that she is going gardening when she puts on her sunbonnet, her leather gloves, and takes her basket of tools — a trowel, weeder, and clippers. Before this happy stage of action is reached, who can tell what strategy has been practiced, what battles fought with the goodman of the house, or the arch enemy of things unconventional, the architect and the artistic land- scape gardener*? It is not well to meet in open fray in gardening any more than it is in nine tenths of the issues 50 TH.E JOY OF GARDENS of life. The enemy must be circumvented by guile; he must be conquered without his knowing it; and he must be left imagining himself victor while the gentle house- wife goes her way quietly enjoying the spoils of conquest, which, when the truth is told, are all that she cares for. Granting that the architect has set the house in green- sward with a motto of silence and serenity, eliminating notes of distraction to rest-seeking minds, then choose the other side of the grounds and shield the riot of merry color by a hedge of hydrangeas or castor beans, if he will not permit you to run your sweet-pea screen across this line. Hidden from view of the highroad, one may do what one will with his own, and give no offense to the high-bred taste of the master who contemplates his single clump of Japanese iris in ecstasy, or has made the happi- ness of a summer depend on a mound of flaming cannas edged with calladiums and waving grasses. Alas for the apartment-house born and bred who have no memories of old gardens; and joy go with those who are making their first suburban garden of annuals ! Take comfort in the thought that the simple plants are deter- mined to grow if given a chance, and that the books will help the inexperienced. We who know just a little, and have stolen a march and prepared the earth, should keep a sunny spot for nasturtiums, which will sprawl or climb and give bloom for bouquets until killing frost. Petunias also enjoy a THE USES OF ADVERSITY 51 sunny colony; and Shasta daisies, sweet alyssum, candy- tuft, sweet-scented stocks, rose geraniums, and lemon ver- bena, planted irregularly, harmonize the variety of colors. Among the yellows to-day is a fine, tall snapdragon, and the calendulas, coreopsis and calliopsis, and mari- golds have not lost a whit of their gold. The pinks are a host in themselves in bouquets, and for blues we must have forget-me-nots, velvet pansies, lobelia, and larkspur; in red, nothing finer than a poppy; for purple, heliotrope and ageratum, and the tapestry of many-colored phlox, aster, and zinnia, and, for fun, love-in-a-mist and ragged robins. Yes, there are many more; but, as in life, too many friends are as heartbreaking as none at all, when we can- not gather them about us. Here, too, we must choose the few who will sweeten our days. More than common piety must abide in the soul that accepts the sweet uses of adversity without a murmur when May borrows caprice of April, and with the windy temper of a vixen drenches the newly-seeded beds and washes the furrows into miniature rivers, creating rapids from the plots of choice phlox to the cherished planta- tions of pompon asters. All in the garden that was made fit and fine has been the sport of the storm. How we had boasted of its neatness, and discoursed with envious neighbors on what June had in store, and the parades of July and of August, culminating in the 52 THE JOY OF GARDENS glory of autumn! When, behold, as if Nemesis heark- ened, a little cloud appears in the azure sky, there is a flash of lightning, and the storm riots overhead, the gale rushing down to play havoc among our treasured posses- sions, while the rain falls in torrents. Creatures of fate that we are, it is folly to make com- plaint, and naught abides but hope, looking for sunshine in the sweet uses of adversity. And then comes the morn- ing after, and if we are not blinded by stubbornness we must rejoice in the splendid greens of rain-washed lawns and the exultant rustle of the refreshed trees. "Let patience have its perfect work," echoes the old phrase of wisdom, written by one who had not burned with a passion for gardens nor felt the smarts of disap- pointment. Yet what is there to do but to lean over the garden fence, and observe that our neighbors have fared alike*? All must wait for things to dry, the pools to dis- appear, and true hills of sweet peas and the borders of annuals to take on a natural aspect. A warm May day is ideal weather; and, as we watch, the hardy primroses seem to shake their leaves and to turn their frilled caps to the sky, the pansies smooth out their wrinkles, and forget-me-nots and arabis look as fresh as if nature had touched them up with a paintbrush. It we had our way there would be no spring thunder gusts, but the weather scheme takes into account the delights of surprises, and now in this, the day after, we discover that THE USES OF ADVERSITY 53 perhaps the rain was not so bad after all, and that flowers have a wonderful gift of looking out for themselves. As we lean over the garden fence, the heart leaps at the sight of dandelion gold. The host arrived in a single night, whole colonies and companies, to possess the land. Their advance sentinels came days ago, but who had pictured such an invasion, lavishly spreading carpets of purest gold along the roadside*? The dandelion gatherer is harvesting in the fields yonder, the grass cutter stands with his lawn mower in the middle of the road and knits his brows over the mis- chievous plants that betrayed him while every well- behaved creature behind the fence was shrinking before the storm. His crony, an old gardener, comes along and, leaning on his rake, confesses that he has a tenderness for dandelions; that he likes to see a disk of gold among the dewy grass of the early morning; that he would invite a wee crimson-tipped daisy to make free with his lawn, and had smuggled in a camomile because it shed a fragrance when the foot crushed it while treading the grass. These give the human touch to the most perfect of seeded lawns, something to make the heart beat faster for beauty's sake, a modest flower to recall a poet, a blos- som to breathe fragrance and to entertain the errant bee. Thus the law of perfection is put to naught if you lend an ear to the personal equation; but, as John Sed- ding, prince of garden lovers, has said, while men are 54 THE JOY OF GARDENS what they are art is not all. Man has viking passions as well as Eden instincts, and the over-civilized man who scorns feasting with common folk has lost primal sympa- thy and much happiness. The sin of exclusiveness joins the theory of order in advising the rejection of dandelions, daisies, and others escaped from gardens. The flaunting tulip, in a fringed coat of many colors, with a pedigree from Van Dam of Holland which has cost more dollars than the dandelion gatherer will ask in cents for a bushel of her spoils, roots and all, dares not touch the hem of the dandelion or camo- mile garment when it comes to the sturdy virtues of per- sistence, endurance, and smiling in the face of adversity. And so it is with the host of the common people to-day and to-morrow, ever attending to business in sunshine and in rain, the best of company, striking roots deeper and living up to the faith that "Who shuts his hand hath lost its gold, Who opens it hath it twice told," as George Herbert so prettily tells it. He too belonged to the brotherhood, and bequeathed us a magic book. When dandelions blow and the roadsides in the coun- try are purple with violets, fair Phyllis in the garden longs to transplant wild flowers to her beds and make them her own. Violets will come gladly, because in their THE USES OF ADVERSITY 55 associations with human folk they have philosophically adapted themselves to changes of moods and will ac- commodate themselves to circumstances. Other wildings are not so hardy, the shock of transplanting and the absence of wild earth, of decayed leaves, or undisturbed soil, trouble their nerves, and rather than keep up a piti- ful struggle they give up the ghost and vanish from the ken of society. A tragedy comes to pass in woodland life when some well-meaning flower lover uproots hepaticas, trilliums, columbine, wild flowers, and all the pretty folk, carries them withering in a basket, and strives to make them adorn the earth in prim rows in a flower bed ; but if one is so fortunate as to own a corner of waste woodland, or a ravine, then wild-flower planting is an opportunity. There we may scatter with lavish hands the seeds of partridge berry, broom and furze, plant sweetbrier, witch- hazel, wild roses and wild crab, and root beelwort, Solo- mon's seal, and Jack-in-the-pulpit. Thunder storms may shatter the elements, but a wild-flower garden of this kind will laugh it to scorn and become a haven for wild beauties of feathers and of fur as well as of flowers of the earth. WHEN SOUL HELPS FLESH IN that castle in Spain we have dreamed of for our sun- set years when leisure awaits our bidding, all clocks will chime the waking hour at break of day. None of the roseate loveliness of dawn will escape us, and we shall be abroad to keep company with the songsters and the busy folk of the feathered and winged world. They haste about their business as soon as it is light; and we shall go to our rest when they have ceased from their labors and the twilight has lowered the purple curtains of night. The present scheme of the day's work is not best for successful gardening, for while the gardener takes a morn- ing nap all nature gets in extra stints of labor. Only yes- terday weeding began, and for that unwonted season of energy soul was tardy in inspiring flesh to shake off its slumbers and take itself briskly out of doors. Memories of weed pulling weighed heavily, like the burden of Atlas, stirring the sources of vexation. While we had long since convinced ourselves that we had risen superior to growing pains and wisdom teeth, a painful reminder besets the joints, perchance an ancestral gift of housemaid's knee, a crick in the back, or, that vicious 56 WHEN SOUL HELPS FLESH 57 thing, an error of the imagination, clouding hopeful en- thusiasm and blinding the sight to visions of blooming gardens. If the little breeze should cease playing interludes on the wind harp on the sill, the curtain would be drawn in an instant to shut out the inviting sunshine and the jeers of blue jays, and the satisfied "cheer-up, cheer-up" of the robins, all of which are a reproach and a warning. From past experiences we know only too well that weeds grow apace these fine mornings, and early birds levy taxes on lettuce beds and give thanks after salad. Weeding time is here, alas! and fasting hours for nature that flies or crawls. Rather a cushioned chair on the sheltered side of the porch, a book or two, Omar or Walden, and let the time fleet pleasantly, than a weeding rug, the broad-brimmed hat, gloves, a basket, trowel, and clippers. Yes, the secret of discontent is out — weeding time is here. Bestir yourself, idle gardener! Watchfulness is the price of virtue, industry the foe of garden flowers. While you have slept on your pillow and neglected reverence at the shrine of a sunrise in June, selfish longings for com- fort have filled your mind, and weeds have pushed roots deep into the soil of the flower beds. Cutworms have made cruel sport, and sparrows and doves have played havoc with tender sprouts. Why should birds hunt seed boxes on bird tables when 58 THE JOY OF GARDENS tempting greens grow for their eating, and that strange human in the sunbonnet, who coaxes or "shoos" as the notion is upon her, is wasting the best hours of the twenty- four thinking about herself? Look forth from the window and behold a sorry sight, my idle gardener. No wonder the blue jay laughed wildly, the catbird was gleeful with satire, or the woodpecker beat a triumphant tattoo on the trunk of the hollow oak — everything abroad has been a living legend of enterprise. Even now more sparrows are busy among the radishes and young onions than we thought could be trapped in the neighborhood. Blackbirds and robins together are pull- ing worms in the pansy beds, yet there seems a lurking guilt back of the unconscious posing, and a suspicion that they are spying out the color of ripening cherries on our one treasured tree. Worm pulling may be but a diver- sion to pass the time, and who knows if birds may not take lessons from the handsome bantam rooster which crept under the fence and is making the dirt fly where we sowed the imported seeds from Japan? Every plan for striking terror to the heart of the enemy has failed. The fluttering flags, presumed to suggest traps to sparrows, wave among the green like so many signals of peace, and both scarecrows and stuffed owls have come to naught. A warbler is perched on the shoulder of the mummied bird of night, singing a joyous lyric, and I verily believe WHEN SOUL HELPS FLESH 59 that the china cat, cozily dozing on the fence to be a menace to hungry doves, was touched with a wand over- night and invited all stray kittens to join her and make merry. Surely that is a fluffy angora on its back, playing with the strings stretched for the passion vine, a precious vine carried from an old plantation down in Alabama; and, if eyes do not deceive, another kitten is hunting catnip among the flourishing fringed phlox and snap- dragons. Had we been up with the dawn this would not have happened. "To sum up the whole matter, this unmitigated hostil- ity of the cultured man (with Jacob's smooth hand and Esau's wild blood) to the amenities of civilized life, brings us back to the point whence we started at the com- mencement of this chapter. While men are what they are, art is not all. Man has viking passions as well as Eden instincts. Man is of mixed blood, whose sym- pathies are not so much divided as double. And all man asks for is all of nature, and is not content with less. To the over-civilized man — " This was the page at which the book fell open beside the breakfast plate, and we lost the aroma of the first cup of coffee reading more. The unfolding of the scheme of life, whether in gardens or on streets, is just this thing — pitched battle with two enemies, that of inclination and that of the tide of human fellows and nature's followers at our elbows. Turn the fight to rout one, and the other 60 THE JOY OF GARDENS gains the ascendency; if we plume ourselves on rounding out personal life, conceit plants a thousand faults to sprout amain, and jealous enemies unite for our destruc- tion. If we forget self, on the other hand, to uproot the weeds and drive off aggressors, then the selfish fibers of our hearts harden, the vision narrows, and the contest robs man of his divinity. So fares the battle, and with the knowledge of it we pray in the dark and work by day, asking for grace and wielding the pruning hook alternately with the sword. It is a glad fight when one resolves to be captain of his soul. The Eden instincts soar for ideals; the viking blood sweeps from reach the returning savage. Yes, it 's a brave fight, this adventure of living, and a bit of byplay is the weeding. After breakfast coffee the world looks brighter, and we are willing to extend pardons to all early birds who would feast on rising. As soon as the sunbonnet appears at the doorway the scamps wing to their places in the trees, and perhaps after all they have only eaten a proper share of nature's providing. Who would do without robins, for all the pansy beds; who would exterminate a catbird because of his pranks, or banish the social spar- rows? Under the sapphire blue of skies in June the heart expands in good will and sings the great Ode to Jov to an orchestration of winds in the trees and music of WHEN SOUL HELPS FLESH 61 the spheres, finer harmonies than the mighty hymn in Beethoven's symphony. The roses are bursting their buds, the syringas nave opened their crystalline blossoms with hearts of pure gold, shedding fragrance sweeter than any other, and even the weeds that rjave stolen entrance are looking their prettiest. "Weeding hour is here; do not delay for beauty's sake," warns the wise old gardener. "Little weeds grow to be usurpers, little sins steal life away; therefore steel your heart against them all" — the saucy plantain "soldiers" fringed so daintily with lace adornments, shepherd's purse with silver bloom, the Indian hemp bent on conquest like some young Samson, the encroaching burdock with trop- ical foliage, and the crab grass as persistent and deter- mined as a social climber. What enemy sowed them in the night? What a foot- hold they have gained in moonlight growing, how nobly constructed to dare and endure and to preserve their family untarnished by degeneracy! Yet their energy is misplaced, and this fine quality, so admirable, is ban- ished from the garden to make green the waste places along the roadside because they lack sweetness and light. Mine be the garden of fragrance, of color, and of gentle flowers; so let's to the weeding! The confidence of the birds is a continual wonder. They have made themselves at home without once asking "by your leave — if you please," just as if they had read 62 THE JOY OF GARDENS by a secret telepathy that we were willing to take them into partnership if they would only abide by the laws of sharing equally. No human would dare to assert such airs of independence, no neighbor presume to do what they exploit in perfect freedom from the conventions of good society. They know no world but the wide world, and taking their heads from under their wings between bat's flight and cock's crow, that stillest hour before the dawn, set about singing as if all the world were ready to get up and go forth rejoicing. We have met those who grumble that the country is too noisy with its songsters, cocks, and crickets. But hearken, do not these betray the misfor- tune of ears stopped with selfishness and love of the pil- low after day has lighted her candles'? When one has tuned one's soul to music, the bird chorus is a pean of joy not to be sung to instruments of strings or reeds, but sacred alone to the feathered creatures beloved by St. Francis. Who, looking upon budding nature, does not sigh for the old days of faith, when art grew under the inspiration of human souls and became the flower of the Renaissance to glorify the gloomy houses of worship, to give reverence to childhood and motherhood, even to sanctify the singing of birds'? Blessed be St. Francis of Assisi, who brought love, human and divine, to gardens, to link nature with art. No more gentle touch comes to us down the WHEN SOUL HELPS FLESH 63 centuries from that strange age of riotous living and the making of saints than the sermon of St. Francis to the winged creatures that came to the convent gate. Here under the trees, with the robins overhead making melody, the thrush calling from the shrubbery, the twit- ter of the nestlings of wrens sounding like distant flutes, may we read in the old book that, as the saint had admonished them and lifted his hand in blessing, "those birds began all of them to open their beaks, and stretch their necks, and spread their wings, and reverently bend their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs to show that the holy Father gave them joy exceeding great. And S. Francis rejoiced with them, and was glad, and marveled much at so great a company of birds and their most beautiful diversity and their good heed and sweet friendliness, for the which cause he de- voutly praised their Creator in them. "At the last, having ended the preaching, S. Francis made over them the sign of the cross, and gave them leave to go away; and thereby all the birds with wondrous sing- ing rose up in the air ; and then, in the fashion of the cross that S. Francis had made over them, divided themselves into four parts ; and the one part flew toward the East and the other toward the West, and the other toward the South and the fourth toward the North, and each flight went on its way singing wondrous songs." There is room for me and for thee, bird neighbor, 64 THE JOY OF GARDENS though tender herbs and cherries sweet are to thy liking. Go thy ways, and come again. Over yonder flits another winged intruder, paying ad- mission in the coin of beauty. It is the butterfly, and with him comes his kindred of moths and other bright, gauzy creatures. Truly the butterflies among the blos- soms and the birdlings in the flowering thorn are appro- priate combinations without fault in poetry. As we fling the sparkling jewel weed over the fence, and uproot the sweet-smelling catnip trying to get foothold among the mignonette, the same fierce feeling of savagery rises at the sight of the white moths waving their wings above the nasturtiums. Well we know that not a royal butterfly soars in from the meadow but is bent on a mission to take toll or ask board for its offspring. The weeding industry may cover a multitude of sins and questions which are debatable when there is argu- ment over the rights of possession. To whom does this garden belong — to catnip and its confreres, to the robins and the sparrows, to the butterfly kingdom, or to a wan- dering soul beset with weeds of character who dreamed of planting virtues and reaping heavenly rewards? A WATER GARDEN AT TULANE UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA AS FANCY FLIES MY neighbor has a funny weathercock in the guise of a jaunty sailorman who balances the year around on a frigate sailing without making a single port in the skyey seas above the gable of an old barn. If it were not for the gallant sailorman breasting the gales with never a shadow of doubt of winds that blow, hasting in the teeth of the storm with the defiant courage of a Flying Dutch- man, the outlook from that home window would be grievous to the artistic eye. The little sailorman saves the day, shaping a world of his own for the imagination. Often in August a morning-glory vine climbs from the hidden garden below to deck his ship with flowers, while a scarlet runner creeps along the ridgepole to lay its blos- soms at his feet. In autumn a bittersweet lifts its berries temptingly above the shingles, as if trying to lure him from his course, and all summer the birds, paying for lodging in melody, rest in their flight upon his decks. At last, when winter snowdrifts heap about the lonely figure, he is left in solitude to steer with the wind; and those with books before the fireplace, who look forth to take his signals, bless the little sailorman as an eye-trap 65 66 THE JOY OF GARDENS never failing to harbor the restless thought and to turn it skyward to ways of faith and courage. So truly a neighborhood character is this gayly painted weather vane that we are fain to believe its placing was decreed in the book of fate, and its maker rewarded for his deed. The gardeners thereabouts have perfect confi- dence in his predictions, and note if southerly breezes are warming the earth for sweet-pea growing; if it is safe to plant delicate seeds and to take storm windows from the east side of the house. Or does chance ordain that the frigate and its commander turn northwest, then the trowel is laid in the tool box and the garden hat hung behind the door. At the time of the equinox he records the prevail- ing winds, and in those desperate moments before a thunderstorm his good ship plunges and wavers like a rudderless craft in the grasp of the sea. While a close touch of sympathy binds us to the for- tunes of the weather vane — for are we not all to a certain degree weather vanes ourselves, helpless in the winds of fate*? — the sundial affords another eye-trap to feed the mind upon, keeping us in touch with nature's ways of the upper air. Dear, simple-minded Gilbert White writes that "gen- tlemen who have outlets might contrive to make ornament subservient to utility; a pleasing eye-trap might also con- tribute to promote science, an obelisk in a garden or park might be both an embellishment and a heliotrope." AS FANCY FLIES 67 This is truly a pretty fancy, and reason enough to in- vite our sculptor friend to shape two obelisks, works of art, to serve as heliotropes, one for winter and one for summer, giving pleasure to those delightful souls who never cease to wonder at the course of the sun. "The erection of the former," writes White, "should, if pos- sible, be placed within sight of some window in the com- mon sitting parlor, because men in the dead season of the year are usually within doors at the close of the day ; while that for the latter might be fixed for any given spot in the garden, when the owner might contemplate, on a fine summer's evening, the utmost extent that the sun makes to the northward at the season of the longest days." And in the same garden, let us add, let there be a rustic seat or two, beneath a sweet-smelling shrub, and within hearing of running water. There is room for a sundial in the smallest garden, as it takes but little space, and honeysuckle or roses may embower it if one does not care for the clinging ivy. The creeping shadow on its face seems to link the effulgent glory of supernal day with the sunshine in our own little plot, and the passing hours glide away more sweetly when vanishing in silence. A vast expanse of lawn is a dreary place without some note of play — an eye-trap, as it were, to catch the mind in nets of beauty or pleasure-faring thought. A circle of daisies will change such a lawn to a fairyland, a bird 68 THE JOY OF GARDENS table entertain songsters unawares, a flock of feeding sheep make it a picture, a fountain suggest the naiad in its rippling waters; and the sundial and heliotrope count the hours of sunshine. The great game of life is an endless round of tricks and diversions, of which garden-making is but a side play. If we are bold enough to shake off the shadows of domineering self and look out of our windows, setting our eye-traps, the play takes on a thrilling interest. How often do beauty seekers go out of the path to enjoy an old oak draped in vines, apparently an unconscious decoration of a modest yard? Who does not know of a trellis purple with hanging wistaria in June, or a rose- wreathed doorway, or an outlook from some window through trees that have been trimmed to make an ex- tended view over the hills and far away*? Thoughtless friend, not one of these has come by chance. All are designed eye-traps; and you do your part by making more within doors by hanging a picture, and outdoors by planting a vine, making a woodland shrine, a bank for the wild thyme, or a nook fit for fairies and elves. Nature is a veritable enchantress, and willingly lends her art to a few little tricks to inveigle the lagging dreams. Vines in particular are her favorite means of creating surprises. It would be fair to call them the "wild highlanders" of flower folk, wayward, usurping, x^, mm$$; AS FANCY FLIES 69 usually having their own way, and not to be depended on to do as you wish. The gentle gardener never lacks variety in her vines, nor do any other plants better repay for care, weaving fragrant bowers, covering walls, hiding unsightly places, and taking no space at all when trained up the corner of the house or over a dead tree. Fortunately the roots are to be bought and will live for years if granted winter protection. The wild grape is to be encouraged; and where else is there such sweetness? The purple and white clematis, the sweet honeysuckle, Dutchman's pipe, trumpet creeper, and rambling roses, each and all are just waiting the chance to make an eye-trap. "When thou dost a rose behold, say I send it greet- ing," sang the poet Heine in an immortal song of spring; that, with another charming Lied, "In wondrous lovely month of May, when all the buds are opening," has in- spired melody in music makers since his time, and stirs the hearts of singers everywhere in tune with nature. At this hour, when jocund day is smiling over fields and garden, if we listen we can hear songs of spring echoing through the groves and tinkling among the flower bells and from the trumpets of lilacs and sweet honeysuckles. Joy shines in the faces of the quaint velvet-bonneted pansies, a finer fragrance exhales from the blushing crab- apple blossoms as we pay reverence to their beauty. In the woodland the atmosphere is alive with bird twitters, 70 THE JOY OF GARDENS and soft whisperings of the breeze celebrate the festival of purple phlox, wake-robins, buttercups, violets, and radiant marsh marigolds reflecting purest sunshine where the brook winds into the open meadows. Sing, one and all, and send greeting in this "wondrous lovely month of May," when the human heart receives once more celestial benediction from the skies, and can swing its censer with the incense of love and adoration for all thoughts bright and beautiful, and none dares say it nay. Look out of thy window and abroad. What is there within eye reach to meet in kindly greeting beyond the sprouts in your flower beds? What torch have you kindled to lighten a flame at your neighbor's shrine? You need not journey to Lassa to meet curiosity and strange folk, nor need you draw money from the bank to buy a tonic to warm hearts. There is a little crooked fence, maybe, near the back door, separating your lot from the weedy wilderness of the busy person hard by. Imagine her delight when she looks out of her north window some morning and sees a barren line of boards covered with climbing nasturtiums unfurling chalices of ruddy orange and gold amid set- tings of malachite. If by chance a passer-by takes his privilege of cutting blooms creeping through the palings, what matter? You have sent a greeting of flowers to some one who wanted AS FANCY FLIES 71 them; and alas! if it is permitted to turn to shadows for a brief minute, how often do we send flowers where they are not greeted, because that soul has not awakened to their tender beauty. I should like to cherish the faith that there was a subtle kinship between the flower lover and the flower; and surely if one has known many gardens he must be- lieve that flowers respond to a spiritual greeting and fade under cold neglect, though conditions of earth and air seem to be proper. Our own little garden world being weeded and doing its best at this high tide of the year, growing with all its might, one may take thought if the flowers of tradition have had due reward. There are the Johnny- jump-ups, the common daisy, primroses, cowslips, stocks, and fox- gloves, the flowers of the story book filling the dream gardens. The Johnny-jump-ups, once invited within .your gate, remain evermore, and hard must be the heart that would turn them out to make room for an exotic or strange annual. Plant them where there will be little change of beds, and if a fence is near they will throw seeds through the opening; and some day you will see your neighbor bending over them with delight, or hear the shouts of children coming home from school who have discovered a saucy Johnny keeping company with a bouncing Bet long since escaped from gardens., and taking to the road 72 THE JOY OF GARDENS like any Romany lass born to the camp fire and tent under the stars. Primroses are shyer folk that need shelter, and in a protected corner, with sweet-scented stocks, hose-in-hose, and cowslips, will return with the bluebirds in spring and wait for the foxgloves to nod above them in June. The pinks open many a lovely old-fashioned blossom, transplanting with grateful compliments. It is pleasant to remember that all these dear old- fashioned flowers are travelers, and have girdled the earth in their times. The primulas are natives from the rock heights of the Himalayas and distant Siberia, the Johnny- jump-ups climb to the Alpine snow-line of the Jungfrau, and the pinks were bred on the margins of glaciers from Norway to the Pyrenees and the head- waters of the Amoor. They are citizens of the world, scattering beauty and flowers along common ways, and why not help them on their ceaseless march by sowing broadcast their seeds in waste places, with more of the pink-tipped and wild field daisy, the Shirley poppy, the sweet William and bouncing Bet1? None of these ask for luxury, only craving permission to root, and paying toll in blossoms that, plucked, bring twice as many later on. Now and then in some out-of- the-way corner of the world we meet a member of the brotherhood of flower missioners who looks beyond his AS FANCY FLIES 73 own plantations. When no one is spying he plants a vine, a traveler's joy, a trumpet creeper, or a wild grape along a fence to adorn the road and give pleasure to all that pass thereby, especially to those on whom the world's work bears heavily, leaving no time for garden- ing, but whose hearts are aching with stifled longings for beauty and natural things. It is the generous act of a minute to plant a wayside flower, and the sin of the weed-grown waste is on our heads if we neglect it when for a farthing and a thought we might make it a beauty spot. It is the fulfillment of a loyal natuie to treasure a love for old-fashioned flowers. If childhood has left any pictures of youthful fairyland, there is sure to be some lore of fragrant May pinks and flowers in an old garden which has woven a thread enriching memory in company with strains of old songs and snatches of 'verse more beautiful than any that we have known in later years. Perhaps the garden was a clover field in June, a hill- side white with daisies, a rock bed where the red colum- bine swung its trumpets, or a meadow with shooting stars; and this, linked to the little beds of posies we called our own, made a haunt never to be forgotten. Childhood is a precious season, eager and hopeful, and he who may instill flower love in children gives a magic gift and unlocks a sympathy with nature beyond the effacing hand of time or fortune. THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 'TT'S June, dear June; now God be praised for JL June"; June, brooding above the timeworn earth, enticing to life the glory of summertide; June, of sap- phire skies and golden sunlight; June, of fragrant, flower- scented nights; June, gypsying in the fields afire with scarlet poppies, garlanding the marshes with iris, painting blushes on the peonies of the gardens, and waking the songs of birdland in ferny brake, in thickets, and in tree top! What to compare with June? In what season of the year is life more worth the living? Yesterday the columbines were supreme in the borders ; they swung their trumpets in the breeze. And had our ears been tuned to such fairy music we would have known that to-day would be the royal pageant of the iris. Some time in the early morning the bladed swords guarding their loveliness were withdrawn, and now we may behold them like a winged angelic host arrayed in the palest silver, pearly white, and the purple of kings, melting into the faint harmonies of rainbow tints that might have been reflected from the foamy crest of an ocean wave. 74 THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 75 A gardener born to his honors should be capable of generous friendships and endowed with a heart over- flowing with religious devotion. As a people we are held fast to an old Saxon trait that forbids showing our emo- tions and letting their warmth radiate kindness on all about us, but to the gardener comes the privilege of love and worship for those within the circle of his horizon. Think of the wanderer this morning who is out before the breeze has stolen the dew from the daisies on the lawn, prostrating his soul before the effulgence of the rising sun with the faith of a fire worshiper of the source of light and life. He turns to the trinity symbolized in the iris, the fatherhood, brotherhood, and world-wide sympathy for struggling life, and partakes of the joy of hope and faith in an eternal purpose breathed from every flower uplifted toward the skies. This is the true spirit of the devotional impulse of adoration and thanksgiving, beneath the dome of the skies, with nature's own incense filling the air in the great silence of the out of doors. The lily family alone of all the flower sisterhood has the right to provoke this feeling. That grand old scientist, Professor Ernst Haeckel, speaks of the iris as endowed with "sensible loveliness." Dull must we be if this mystery fails us, and no sym- pathy rises in the heart as we approach a stately company of these queenly flowers, which are so fragile, so pure, 76 THE JOY OF GARDENS that humility oppresses us with a sense of unfitness in the presense of such perfection. The rose is the queen of the garden, voluptuous, ap- pealing to the sense, but queen above queens, a Mona Lisa, a Lady Godiva, knowing life, knowing love and sorrow, reigns the iris, a blossom not for the plucking, but to be planted at the foot of ruined altars, to remind that faith may rise triumphant on unsullied wings. Another devotee of the iris said that when a group chanced to meet his eye in an English garden he was reminded of the gladiatorial hall, "Morituri te salutant" and Eden Phillpotts believes that they are to the garden what Chopin is to music, "the most wonderful, beautiful, and saddest of flowers; we sometimes miss the spirit in them, while overjoyed or overawed by the substance." If you do not know the iris you have missed something in life. The garden books have not so much to say about the family as they should, being occupied with the com- moners, which may be met on more equal terms. Why we should shrink at approaching superiors I do not know, but if by chance a flower or a friend unveils mystery, in a moment we straightway seek out folk of our own kind whom we are sure of, and do not go forward on our knees and lift the veil to partake of the blessing of a nobler presence and the "benediction of the higher mood." The superb varieties of iris grow as easily as their THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 77 relative wildings, which we seek in the swamps and plant in the marshy spots of our grounds. If one has reached that stage of years when his consciousness warns him that it is time to choose companionship to solace the hour when the race is to the swift, a garden inclosure to shut off the clamor of battle that tires the ears, then hunt for a favored spot that will make a bower of green in June. Then with grave thought of what may fill your soul in the glory of June, choose iris susiana, the great Turkey fleur-de-lis, the mourning flower of the Japanese, "that I think in the whole compasse of nature's store there is not a more patheticall," writes quaint John Parkinson, and to the queen susiana present the king loreteti, the emblem of life and dawn in his brilliance and purity. As soon as the frost withdraws from the earth the irises show the tips of their green blades, which advance in regular order from the underworld until a solid phalanx fills the space allotted to them. Nothing so cleanly or shining or strong as this splendid bed of foli- age, making ready for the culmination of its growing. On the morning appointed it bursts upon the eye in a splendor of purples, lavenders, violets, and yellows that pales the sunshine. The honey scent once breathed is unforgotten among the experiences enriching a lifetime, and as the iris passion grows upon us, and more and more of the lovely species from China, Japan, Italy, or the secluded vales 78 THE JOY OF GARDENS of the Himalayas come to dwell in our gardens, we may take comfort -in the thought that we are gathering the rarest offerings of June, the gladdest of all seasons to him who hath the secret learned "to mix his blood with sunshine and to take the wind into his pulses." In mid-June comes an hour when garden color weaves a tapestried background for the parade of the Oriental poppies. Matchless in their beauty of scarlet and black, bursting their buds in the gray of a dawn, vanishing in the purple of dusk, it is well worth waiting a year to greet them as they flit across the threshold of summer in their brief span of life. If you know the poppies' haunts haste to seek them out, — the odalisk, the gypsy queen, in fluted petticoats of red, flaunting their graces above fringes of silver green, passing languorously in a dance they learned long ago on the plain of Ind. They turn toward us with a look of mystery, and sway upon their stems as a Romany maid upon her dancing feet. Why do they not speak1? The violet exchanges shy confidences in perfume, the tiger lily confesses volumes in sphinxlike wisdom, and we are loath to let the Oriental poppy escape without a hearing; its attitude is so elo* quent, its personality so vivid and glowing, and it nods as if it knew the secret of the ages. Poppy friendship is a curious sentiment; it promises much, and when about to unfold its passion withdraws, THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 79 leaving behind it a warmth of devotion to its beauty and a tender sorrow that more of it was not ours. It is pleas- ant to imagine it has a place in the pretty theory of the transmigration of souls, wherein man's imperfect aspira- tions unfold by slow degrees from the nature of the insensate clod, gaining in spiritual loveliness through a cycle of many lives. Why not, after wasting brute passion in the tiger, exhausting foolish loquacity in the parrot, soaring toward unattainable heights with the eagle, trying many paths to knowledge in the devious ways open to myriad- minded man — why not go a step farther and rest for a time to "climb to a soul in grass and flowers"? You, perchance, in your pride, the tulip of the spring; your neighbor, the rose of a hundred leaves, and she with a desire for sunlight and color, an Oriental poppy, to dazzle the world with a spectacle of the garden afire, to shed beauty on the wind, and to take flight to other worlds when June has reached her perfect days. Like the majority of good people we overlook in the crowds, day after day, whose virtues are not known until they do something to separate themselves from their fellows, there are many reliable garden flowers escaping the recognition of the passer-by until they reach the great events of their existence and astonish his eyes with blossoms, and he beholds an old friend before him. Not so with the poppy tribes, which have an individ- 8o THE JOY OF GARDENS uality so marked that the garden weeder does not mis- take them for waifs and strays when weeds are making a strong fight for possession. The infant poppy pushes a quaint little rosette of pale green leaves to the surface, the field poppy showing smooth texture and the Oriental one roughly furred. And as the warm rains fall they hold fast to this personal trait, standing alone in a blue- white among the somber foliage of foxgloves, cam- panulas, queens of the meadow, Canterbury bells, and larkspur. All are ready for bloom at the midday of June, but nature seems aware it is the triumph of the Oriental poppy, and the unfurling buds of campanulas show dull blues, the foxgloves old rose and white, and other per- ennials join with pale yellows, bronze, and varied greens, as if agreed on harmony to create the scheme of richest cashmere color. Then there dawns a rare day when the Oriental pop- pies spread their blood-red petals of crepy delicacy, opening wide their dusky purple hearts, and exhaling heavy, slumber-compelling odors, breathing the spell of the enchantment of summer. It is a triumph among nature's surprises. The little field poppies, whose torches gleam in the yellow harvest fields and keep aflame all summer, are the broomstick witches of the wayside. There are dull days when I feel that it would pay "to go ten thousand THE HIGH TIDE OF JOY 81 miles," as the old song has it, to look upon a hillside abloom with scarlet poppies. And when the sun rays are long and golden, lighting up the hidden fires in the poppy cups, the nodding blooms in the country lanes seem like the red kerchiefs on the heads of shy gypsy maids hasting to keep a tryst. The garden log book records that the blackbirds sing in the linden trees, and weeds and white butterflies share joy and sorrow with the festival of the Oriental poppies. Butterfly sport seems a little business; not so little, how- ever, if you divide your heart between Oriental poppies and nasturtiums when the moon shines on midsummer nights. The swashbuckling cavaliers of the poppy world hide a bitterness in their veins to forbid salad-loving caterpillars, and even little flies and ants keep their dis- tance. But the gentle nasturtium falls victim if no butterfly net is out to capture white butterflies and moths, and a "prevention of cruelty to animals member" makes up her mind that it is a case of the fittest to survive. Weed pulling must alternate with butterfly hunting until plants are big enough to shadow the earth, and then it must be butterfly hunting until frost. Both exer- cises are admirable to play upon muscles and temper, and more wholesome discipline than many a medieval penance we might name. The whistle of the blackbird in the linden, celebrating 82 THE JOY OF GARDENS the arrival of his first family in the nest and doing nothing in particular to help it along, is an exasperating neighbor. If only we knew how to train robins and blackbirds to feast on nasturtium caterpillars instead of boring the turf for earthworms, we would acquire ever- lasting fame in the garden books. The nasturtium friend has two duties at his hand — butterfly and moth hunts and green-caterpillar catching. After all, why grumble? All is in the day's work, and the nasturtium border in cloth of gold, dewy, pungent, and beyond compare, is a reward. The south wind carries the fragrance of the linden bloom down to the weeding woman; the blackbird trills again that note of ravishing sweetness. It is the old tale of work and play, and to keep at it in good spirits is to make ready for the next transformation of June. THE ODORS OF ARABY A JOURNEY into the walled heart of a town, a night spent where every vista leads to chimneys or to the glittering allurements of city amusements, -is most salutary when the demon of restlessness stays the hand from weeding. Who can measure the gladness of the re- turn "? Who can picture that longing to be great enough to command, and rich enough to create, hanging gardens, wooded squares, and flowery terraces here and there and everywhere in the labyrinth of houses'? Praying that an enlightened age may hasten the day when it shall be so, let us hasten to find a seat on the shaded side of the car whence the view will open on the park where the avenues of catalpas are holding aloft their bouquets of blossoms, and the lindens are opening their waxen bells for the honeybees. Along the way is a clover field, small clumps of blushing Alsatian clover, acting as forerunners to the acres of white across the road, where cattle stand knee deep in the perfection of June pastures. And then comes "improved property." Why "im- proved," we wonder, with suburban homes touching 83 84 THE JOY OF GARDENS elbows in twenty-five-foot lots, when the open country stretches free all around, and there might have been space for orchards and gardens'? Will there not be a great awakening for builders of that kind some day, when they see the error of their ways 2 The thought gathered like a dark cloud blown across a clear sky, and vanished before a whiff of fragrant rose- mary rising from the blossoming branches which a slim little woman in black, who had just entered the car, had knotted in the corner of her handkerchief and was now pressing against her cheek. The atmosphere was re- freshed, and the landscape seemed to unveil another garden where the pungent smell of box trees arose from an inclosing hedge of glossy dark foliage, where myrtle covered a terrace which sloped down to an herb garden with its company of sweet-scented plants. "Who loves his garden still keeps his Eden" — for him paradise is regained very truly, as love is a generous re- vealer, bestowing a precious gift of insight ; and the lover of gardens may conjure them from the past or plant them wherever an ounce of earth takes hold in a crannied wall. As the car sped on, the city smoke had settled on the distant horizon and the summer fields were making nature's gardens. It is wild-rose time, garlanding the prairies and forgotten byways; the spiderwort in in- imitable purple set among leaves of silvered green is THE ODORS OF ARABY 85 spreading its beauty in the marshy hollows, and amid the ripened grasses are little colonies of boneset, everlasting, horsetail, and the first black-eyed Susans. While this beauty caught the eye it required no un- common self-control to refrain from talking to the slim young woman in black who carried the sprig of rosemary. Would it have been an intrusion*? A short, fierce con- flict raged between the formal sense of propriety forbid- ding converse with strangers and the friendly impulse to exchange comment on the summer pageant with one who also liked rosemary. But the rare moment fled; before the shell of self was broken she had left the car, and a lonely little woman in black was taking her path down the dusty road between the fields of clover. Who knows but that we missed entertaining an angel unawares! Back within our garden gate we speedily greet our own rosemary tree. No one can ever accuse a devoted gardener of gardening for appearances. When this hap- pens by chance the garden tells on its maker in unmis- takable terms. It is artificial, it is empty of sentiment, and it is a fictitious thing. The true garden is the comfort of those who hunger for friends. Just as there are book friends and picture friends for our moods, so there are flower friends. In as fine a sense they are as dear and, it may be, as consoling as you who are best beloved among the human friends that walk the earth. Every child remembers the flower of his youth, and to 86 THE JOY OF GARDENS many a one the sweet Williams have been the first. Here they are to-day in crimson, sanguine, and white. Stately and fringed, they have come for their summer visit. It was a happy thought to set them where they made a little hedge separating the herb garden from the posies. Long ago the old-man, lavender, thyme, and balm had a place among the hardy annuals in hopes that observant guests would come upon them unawares and be glad. And then followed the discovery that few take pleasure in odors, and fewer are observant; and the lemon verbena looked an alien, the old-man became shabby from the nippings of careless fingers, and the balm languished disconsolate. And so a sunny corner behind the sweet Williams was planted for sweet odors of old days. It seems that the talent to enjoy fragrance is after all a gift of highly developed senses. Even more than the sense of taste the nostrils have the power to touch the springs of a forgot- ten past, and to one a crushed calycanthus bud brings the picture of a Pennsylvania hamlet with luxuriant gardens back of green-shuttered houses nestled deep in the Cumberland Valley; a dried sweetbrier is the magic of a romance; a spray of lemon verbena conjures memory of a tiny red prayer book, a high-backed pew, and long, long sermons while the birds were singing in the weeping willows overhanging moss-grown gravestones beyond the church door. THE ODORS OF ARABY 87 In the little herb garden behind the sweet Williams the rosemary spreads its branches next a graceful rue, the pennyroyal and fennel are side by side, the old-man is sacred from desecrating hands, and thyme grown from seeds sent from Hymettus invites American bees. A silver sage, the purple-tipped lavender, and sturdy catnip make as pretty a group as any in the flower garden, and the mints, savory, basil, and balm have each a place. The perfumes arising from the peonies, iris, and syringas culminate in the roses. Every blossom, how- ever humble — mignonettes, verbenas, alyssum — makes an offering filling the nights and the days with a fore- taste of scented breezes of a fairer world than ours. Go forth into the twilight and listen and wait in the stillness of the eve, and mayhap, like Socrates, you will fall upon your knees and pray: "O Pan, and all ye gods that haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward man" — nor dare there be any who will accuse you of irreverence to any in creation's plan. It hints of self-denial to steal a morning from the days appointed for roaming the clover fields to spend it on a shady porch filling rose jars with dried leaves to sweeten the atmosphere of January. If in summer the senses are elevated to the seventh heaven of delight by the odors wafted from hay fields, in winter they rise to an exhil- aration of exquisite pleasure upon entering a rose-scented room. 88 THE JOY OF GARDENS The magic of the rose, its thousand legends, answer to the spell cast by the aroma of an opened rose jar diffus- ing its presence like the shade of a beneficent genie from the land of Aladdin. Its memories give us privilege to moralize as we sift our rose leaves and spices. We are reminded that it is well to snatch sunny moments from the pleasure hunt of youth, and fill rose jars of remi- niscences to make brightness in the winter of life. Ah, but who can think of winter when the wild rose is abloom*? Away with all shadows set in motion to a minor strain by the hour among slugs and red spiders ! The old spell of the rose is upon us. It is the same weaving of wizardry that gives dreams of the Persian gardens, where nightingales and dewdrops sing and die for the love of a rose. It is this perfume that over- powers the brain, and the sense goes meandering in the mysterious ways of poesy. Close your eyes, and with the rose close to your lips yield to the charm. It is all yours, this wealth of the world — the glamour of moonlight, the tinkle of a fountain, the song of a nightingale above the gentle twanging of a lute, and the fragrance of rose gardens in that far-away land of dreams — be it Persia or that one little garden hidden cherished in the memories of your heart. All this with the incense that rises from the crushed petals on the altar of the rose ! Let us bury behind the books that unblushing THE ODORS OF ARABY 89 romancer, the rose catalogue, which deceived us into believing that the prairies of the Illini might entertain hopes of bowers such as the talebearers told of the East. Led by their glamour we saw the beauty of lands of sun- shine, of vales of Cashmere, and Persian gardens where roses flourished of their own sweet will and scattered their fragrance to the thrumming of lutes, the trills of nightingales, and the quatrains of Omar. The decalogue has nothing against the sin of desire to be a "rosarian," and a sense of justice rebels at the thought of that night when a rose catalogue set the brain afire and put wisdom in the closet while opening the pocketbook. Of course the cherished roses have lived — just lived — to be a battlefield for microbes unseen, slugs and worms too evident. The crimson rambler rambles cheerfully, the rugosa is spreading its tropical foliage. They leave nothing to be desired as far as their duties are concerned; but ask not of the Provence roses, the Irish roses, the rare hybrids that have excited so keen a rivalry among the perverse creatures infesting the rose garden. At the end of the street is one of those old-fashioned cottages, now a dusky white, with timeworn green shut- ters. "What man failed to do with his architectural opportunities, nature has done most willingly with roses. All the past month young and old have leaned over its paling fence and gloated upon its disorderly charms, and then passed on without a thought of the careful lawns 90 THE JOY OF GARDENS beyond. The woman who lives in the dusky cottage has roses to spare, and yet has never read a rose book or aspired to be a "rosarian." The eglantine hedge, planted no one knows when, has crept around three sides of the lot within the paling fence, stretching out long, sweeping branches to arch the narrow gate. All the neighborhood knows that it is sweetbrier, and in June no schoolgirl who stops to greet its owner goes away without her bouquet. At the side of the porch is a clump of Scotch roses, a variety that has adopted the climate as its own, and, being another of the delicious scented sweetbriers, adds to its grace in small roses of lovely shining yellow, a transmuted sunshine, a cloth of gold, if ever one was permitted by fairydom to drape a rosebush. Not far away is another unnamed common rose — but is any rose common'? It bears a thousand leaves treas- ured by the makers of rose jars, leaves that shed a richer odor on being crushed, just as some lives bring out their loftier virtues under the pressure of adversity. The Baltimore belle and prairie queen have wreathed the window frames, and among the tangled grass below the wild prairie roses have crept in from the roadside with bouncing Bets and yarrow. As we turn the corner of the house where the sun glares down on the clayey soil, we discover a small plan- tation of roses covered with buds and open blossoms. THE ODORS OF ARABY 91 Why this prosperity amid neglect, when ours, watched by day and night, are the victims of hungry pests'? What have we done to call down insect Goths and Vandals'? There is a freemasonry among gardeners safe to take advantage of, if we keep alive the right spirit of humility about our own successes and are more willing to take advice than give it. An offer of a pitcher of cold butter- milk on a hot morning, a plate of fresh huckleberry cake, or a basket of black cherries are the proper keys to invite civility, and the most crabbed gardener stiffened in his own opinions about you and your affairs must look kindly upon a Greek bearing such gifts. However, a gentle neighborly curiosity impelled a visitor to approach the dusky cottage with a peace offer- ing, and to regard the owner of the sunbonnet with gracious deference. She was on her knees, with leather gloves, trowel, and clippers, giving service to General Jacqueminot, Marechal Niel, Clothilde Soupert, and Bon Silene, and a sweet sanguine rose nestled in her hair. She had no views on roses, but used her woman's wit to whisk her spiders with a broom, sprinkle an emul- sion from her own recipe of hellebore, soapsuds, and what-not, and there were two or three old umbrellas kept to hoist over precious buds when a thunderstorm was due ; and her reward was roses. If fate denies those under the clouds of city smoke the right to become "rosarians" they may have other 92 THE JOY OF GARDENS compensations. Every one who has a garden expects to hear how the roses are doing — keeping alive that pleasant fiction that if we will we may have them — and so we may, if we shut our ambitions from the varieties that belong to Provence and lands where it is ever summer and always afternoon, without the rains of a dying year and a winter of discontent. Our sweet peas are like girl graduates, pretty, dainty, and youthful. They have come in rose time, and climbed high on their screen, and their little bonnets look far down the road. Cutting sweet peas before breakfast is a real sweetener of the atmosphere before planning to work, perchance to hunt stakes and tear strips of muslin to tie up the tall dahlias and gladioli. Dahlias take hours of coaxing, while the gladioli seem to consider life an easy affair; yet the dahlia fancier would not give one root for a dozen gladioli, and the devotee of gladioli would laugh to scorn a devotion to dahlias. As we are denied glittering successes in roses, it is within the power of a tactful gardener to transfer his loves. Perchance when our back is turned on red spiders and slugs to lavish affection on some hardier plant than the rose, the pests themselves will travel along and meet a Goliath lurking in unexplored vegetation. Or it may be, if we let them alone they will find rumpled rose leaves in their Capua, and a gourmand appetite will urge them to anarchy and to devour one another. THE ODORS OF ARABY 93 A devotion to the rose must be fostered as one of the finer passions of life, in which feeble human power offers a gift of affection to nature's supreme flower, without rival in color, and with a breath blown by enchantment from the Elysian fields to this commonplace earth of ours. ET IN ARCADIA FUISTI ;