Part 4

With the first faint green lines that are visible along the flower beds come the weeds, yea, and even before them; a wild, vigorous, straggling army, full of health, of strength, and a most marvelous power of growth. These must be dealt with at once and without mercy; they must be pulled up root and branch, without a moment’s delay. There is clover that appears with a little circular leaf and has a root that seems to reach all round in the under world; it goes everywhere and holds on to the earth with a grip which is unequaled by anything that grows. Not an atom of its roots must be left in the ground, for every thread of it will send up new shoots, and if not watched fill all the space in a few weeks. Another difficult weed to manage is the chickweed, which is so delicate that it breaks at the slightest touch. It is a most all-pervading weed; it fills every space between the flowers, overruns them like a green mist, and will surely strangle them if left unmolested. Alphonse Karr, who so greatly enjoyed his garden, and wrote of it with so much pleasure, says: “The chickweed is endowed with a fecundity that no other plant possesses.... Seven or eight generations of chickweed cover the earth every year.... It occupies the fields naturally, and invades our gardens; it is almost impossible to destroy it.”

There is a long procession of weeds to be fought: pigweed, ragweed, smartweed, shepherd’s purse, mallow, mustard, sorrel, and many more, which make the first crop. The second consists largely of quitch-grass, the very worst of all, and purslain or pusley, which Charles Dudley Warner has immortalized in his charming book, “My Summer in a Garden.” The roots of quitch-grass are as strong as steel and run rapidly in all directions underneath the surface, sending up tender shoots that break too easily when you touch them. The root must be found, grasped firmly, and followed its whole length to utter extermination, or the grass will come up like a giant, and later cannot be dealt with except by pulling up also the flowers among which it inextricably entangles itself. The flat, olive-green leaves and red fleshy stems of the pusley, running over the ground in a mat, next appear; this is easily disposed of, only it continues to come up,--fresh plants in endless succession rise from the soil all summer, and must be watched and faithfully destroyed.

There is one weed, or wild plant, dodder by name, which has given my island garden the greatest possible trouble. It is often wrongly called gold-thread, because it looks like a tangled mass of amber thread, but the true gold-thread is quite different. The whole plant consists of nothing but these seemingly endless brittle reddish yellow stalks with bunches of small, dull, whitish flowers without stems, borne at intervals, with no leaves at all. It has no root in the earth, it is a parasite, and not at all particular as to what it fastens itself upon; anything that comes in its way will answer its purpose. It is very pretty in its place, growing among the goldenrod and blue skullcap at the top of the rocky little coves that slope down to the water about the island, throwing itself from plant to plant, and making a mass of translucent amber color. But alas! when it gets into a civilized garden, woe, woe unto that garden! A handful of it in bloom was brought to my piazza twenty years ago, and some of it was accidentally thrown into the flower beds; I have been fighting it ever since. I have never yet been able to get rid of it! Next year I found my Nasturtiums, Cornflowers, Marigolds, and all the rest tangled together in this yellow web, a mass of inextricable confusion. Year after year I waged war against it, but even yet it is not entirely exterminated. I never allow a plant of it in the garden, no seeds of it ripen there, and none of it grows near the place outside; not a single atom of it in my small domain could possibly escape my eye, and yet its seeds come up more or less every year; I am sure to find one or two plants of it in the garden somewhere. They emerge from the ground, each like a fine yellow hair, till they are an inch and a half or two inches long; they reach with might and main toward the nearest legitimate growing plant, and when they touch it cling to it like a limpet; then they draw their other end up out of the ground and set up housekeeping for the rest of their lives. They adhere to the unhappy individual upon which they have fixed themselves with a grip that grows more and more horrible; they suck all its juices, drink all its health and strength and beauty, and fling out trailers to the next and the next and the next, till the whole garden is a mass of ruin and despair.

For many springs after the first year it appeared I used to take a glass tumbler and go all over the beds soon after they were laid out, pulling up these tiny yellow hairs, and in an hour or two I have pulled up five or six tumblers full. I gathered them in glasses so that I might be quite sure of all I plucked, and because they could not easily blow away out of such a receptacle. For wherever they might fall, if they touched a green growing thing they would in an astonishingly short space of time make themselves fast for good, or rather for ill! Every year I watch for it with the most eager vigilance as I weed carefully over the whole surface of the little pleasance, but sometimes it steals up after all the weeding is done, and, before I know it, I find it has begun to tie the flowers together. Then I pull up all the plants it has touched, lay them in a basket, carry them down, and cast the whole into the sea. It is the only way to be rid of it. I have known it wind its inexorable way tightly up the large smooth stem of a tall Sunflower, where I had not thought of looking for it, till there was not an atom of the skin of the stalk visible, only amber-colored dodder and its white, dull flowers from the great head of the blossoming Sunflower tree to its root. Into the sea the whole thing went, at once, without a moment of delay!

These are only a few of the weeds with which one must battle, though dodder, I fancy, seldom troubles any one on the planet as it does me. It takes an island garden to produce so remarkable a growth! Most of them soon become familiar, too familiar, indeed, and at last one learns how to manage them. The great mistake which the inexperienced gardener makes is in leaving a morsel of the root of a weed in the ground. Only by combing the earth through and through between the rows of plants with the small hand-fork (after all the intruders have been removed as carefully as possible with the hand), can you be sure that they are gone. Other seeds of weeds will be overturned and brought to the surface in the process, and these will sprout in their turn, but by this time the flowers will have made so much headway that they will crowd out the new crop of weeds enough to insure their own safety, except in some few instances. Apple of Peru (Stramonium) is one of the most powerful and persistent among the enemies; a poisonous thing with a loathsome odor, it must be watched for and routed, which fortunately is easily done. In its perfected growth this is the most uncanny plant,--a strong, low bush with bat-like leaves of dark green, and long, pale lavender, lily-like flowers, followed by a round spiked seed-vessel. Says Hawthorne: “What hidden virtue is in these things that it is granted to sow themselves with the wind and to grapple the earth with this immitigable stubbornness, and to flourish in spite of obstacles, and never to suffer blight beneath any sun or shade, but always to mock their enemies with the same wicked luxuriance?” Mrs. Gatty (the mother of that beautiful woman, Juliana Horatia Ewing, who has so discoursed on the subject of flowers and many other things as to make all time her debtor) answers the question, “What is a weed?” by this statement, “A weed is a plant out of place.” A keen and close observer of nature says: “A better definition would be, ‘A plant which has an innate disposition to get into the wrong place;’” and goes on to say: “This is the very essence of weed character--in plants as in men. If you glance through your botanical books you will see often added to certain names, ‘a troublesome weed.’ It is not its being venomous or ugly, but its being impertinent--thrusting itself where it has no business and hinders other people’s business--that makes a weed of it.... Who ever saw a wood anemone or a heath blossom out of place? ... What is it, then, this temper in some plants--malicious as it seems, intrusive, at all events, or erring--which brings them out of their places, thrusts them where they thwart us and offend?” This seems to me the best definition of what constitutes a weed that I have seen.

And their strength is mighty, and their name is legion. If there were no other enemies which the gardener must fight, this one of weeds alone is quite enough to tax all his powers and patience.

Then the plants kill each other if they are left to grow as thickly together as the seeds were sown; they must be “thinned out” as soon as they have attained to their second leaf, leaving two, three, four, or five inches between each two plants side by side. I always leave two plants where one would be enough, because something is so likely to happen to destroy them, and if there are two the hard fates may perhaps leave one. Some things require much more space than others. Pinks that spire up so thin and tall can be set closer together than Poppies, which spread widely in all directions. This pulling up and throwing away of the superfluous plants is a very difficult thing for me to do. I cannot bear to destroy one of the precious young seedlings that I have watched and tended with such love and care, but it must be done. It is a matter of the very greatest importance. The welfare of the garden depends on it. I comfort myself as best I may by saving all that will bear transplanting, and then giving them away to the flower plots of my fellow-gardeners on neighboring islands.

Soon the whole plot mantles over all its surface with the rich, warm green of vigorous leafage. The new growth rejoices. That is the right word for it. The gladness of green growing things is apparent to any seeing eye. They rejoice with a radiant joy in sun and rain and air and dew, in all care and kindness. They know and respond to everything that is done for them. The low-growing Drummond’s Phlox is one of the most satisfactory flowers for a beginner in the art of gardening. There is no such word as fail in its bright lexicon; and it blossoms continually from the last of June till frost. Looking carefully every day, by the last half of June I find the pale clustered flower buds showing; then it is not long to wait before the whole bed is a blaze of varied color, a delicate woven carpet of myriad vivid hues. In the lovely buds the petals are folded one over the other in beautiful succession. The flowers are five-petaled, with a faint, sweet perfume; they are borne in flat clusters of an exquisite, velvety texture, with a clearly marked eye in the centre encircling the few pearl-white stamens; this eye varies with the hue of each different flower. There will be delicious pinks among these Phloxes, from the palest rose to the deepest cherry; all shades of red from bright, light scarlet, clear and pure, to a rich black red,--the Black Warrior. There will be all heavenly purples, pale lilacs, deep red purple and blue purple, perfect snow white: the eye in this last is soft green, like the touches on a Snowdrop bell. The scarlet flowers have a ring of black-red about the centre, delicately gorgeous. There are almost endless varieties and mixtures of color; they are full of surprises. The Star of Quedlinburg is such a pretty, quaint change rung upon this pleasant theme of Phloxes. The centre of the outer line of each petal is drawn out at the edge like the tails on the under wings of the Luna moth. These long tails in which each petal terminates give the flower the aspect of a star with rays. “Ask of Nature why the star form she repeats,” says Emerson. It is forever repeated among the flowers.

At bird-peep, as the country folk have a charming way of calling the break of day, I am in my dear garden,--planting and transplanting, hoeing, raking, weeding, watering, tying up and training those plants that need it, and always fighting for their precious lives against their legions of enemies. There is a time of great danger upon the island from the birds when they are migrating northward. They come suddenly down from the sky in myriads, on their way to the continent, and I have known them to strip the little plot of every green shoot in a single day, utterly bare. Nothing but fishing nets draped over the whole space will save the garden when these hungry hordes descend. But I do not lose patience with the birds, however sorely they try me. I love them too well. How should they know that the garden was not planted for them? Those belonging to the thrush tribe are the most mischievous; the others do not disturb the flower beds so much. The friendly robin, though a thrush, only comes for worms, to which he is more than welcome. Most of the other birds--bobolinks, kingbirds, orioles, purple finches, and many other beautiful creatures less familiar--stay with us for a short time only, on their passage north or south every year; but a single pair of kingbirds build every summer in the one tall elm-tree on the island, where also builds a cosy nuthatch and raises a numerous family, and one pair of most interesting kingfishers haunts the upper cove till late in the season. A Maryland yellow-throat began building here last summer. For several years one pair of cuckoos lingered through the summer, but at last ceased to come. A few blackbirds build, the white-throats stay late, but several varieties of swallows, the song-sparrows, and sandpipers remain and rear their broods. How we wish the robins would stay too, and the orioles and all the sweet company! But there are no trees to shelter them. Their coming and going, however, is a matter of the greatest interest to the little family on the island, and we are thrown into a state of the deepest excitement by the apparition of a scarlet tanager, or a rose-breasted grosbeak, or any of those unfamiliar beauties. Once a ferruginous thrush came and stayed a week with us in early June. Every day when he perched on a ridge-pole or chimney-top and sang, the whole family turned out in a body to listen, making a business of it, attending to nothing else while that thrilling melody was poured out on the silent air. That was a gift of the gods which we could, none of us, afford to neglect!

Says the wise Lord Bacon again: “And because the Breath of Flowers is far sweeter in the Aire (when it comes and goes, like the Warbling of Music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the Flowers and Plants that doe best perfume the Aire.”

The most exquisite perfume known to my garden is that of the Wallflowers; there is nothing equal to it. They blossom early, and generally before June has passed they are gone, and have left me mourning their too swift departure. I wonder they are not more generally cultivated, but I fancy the fact that they do not blossom till the second year has much to do with their rarity. It requires so much more faith and patience to wait a whole year, and meanwhile carefully watch and tend the plants, excepting during the time when winter covers them with a blanket of snow; but when at last spring comes and the tardy flowers appear, then one is a thousand times repaid for all the tedious months of waiting. They return such wealth of bloom and fragrance for the care and thought bestowed on them! Their thick spikes of velvet blossoms are in all shades of rich red, from scarlet to the darkest brown, from light gold to orange; some are purple; and their odor,--who shall describe it! Violets, Roses, Lilies, Sweet Peas, Mignonette, and Heliotrope, with a dash of Honeysuckle, all mingled in a heavenly whole. There is no perfume which I know that can equal it. And they are so lavish of their scent; it is borne off the garden and wafted everywhere, into the house and here and there in all directions, in viewless clouds on the gentle air. To make a perfect success of Wallflowers they must be given lime in some form about the roots. They thrive marvelously if fed with a mixture of old plastering in the soil, or bone meal, or, if that is not at hand, the meat bones from the kitchen, calcined in the oven and pounded into bits, stirred in around the roots is fine for them. This treatment makes all the difference in the world in their strength and beauty. After the Wallflowers, Roses and Lilies, Mignonette, Pinks, Gillyflowers, Sweet Peas, and the Honeysuckles for fragrance, and of these last, the monthly Honeysuckle is the most divine. Such vigor of growth I have never seen in any other plant, and it is hardy even without the least protection in our northern climate. It climbs the trellis on my piazza and spreads its superb clusters of flowers from time to time all summer. Each cluster is a triumph of beauty, flat in the centre and curving out to the blossoming edge in joyous lines of loveliness, most like a wreath of heavenly trumpets breathing melodies of perfume to the air. Each trumpet of lustrous white deepens to a yellower tint in the centre where the small ends meet; each blossom where it opens at the lip is tipped with fresh pink; each sends out a group of long stamens from its slender throat like rays of light: and the whole circle of radiant flowers has an effect of gladness and glory indescribable: the very sight of it lifts and refreshes the human heart. And for its odor, it is like the spirit of romance, sweet as youth’s tender dreams. It is summer’s very soul.

This beautiful vine will grow anywhere, for anybody, only give it half a chance, such is its matchless vigor. I wonder why it is not found in every garden; nothing so well repays the slightest care.

Next in power come the Sweet Peas, blossoming the livelong summer in all lovely tints save only yellow, and even that the kind called Primrose approaches, with its faint gold suffusion of both inner and outer petals. I plant them by myriads in my tiny garden--all it will hold. Transplant, I should say, because of my friends the birds, who never leave me one if I dare plant them out of doors. But this transplanting is most delightful. I thoroughly enjoy digging with the hoe a long trench six inches deep for the strong young seedlings, lifting them from the boxes, carefully disentangling their long white roots each from the other as I take them out, and placing them in a close row the whole length of the deep furrow, letting the roots drop their whole length, with no curling or crowding, then half filling the hollow with water, drawing the earth about the roots and firming the whole with strong and gentle touch. They do not droop a single leaf so transplanted; they go on growing as if nothing had happened, if only they are given all the water they need. Already they stretch out their delicate tendrils to climb, and I love to give them for support the sticks with which the farmers supply their pea vines for the market; but on my island are no woods, so I am thankful for humble bayberry and elder branches for the purpose. It is another pleasure to go afar among the rocks for these and wheel them to the flower beds in a light wheelbarrow, which is one of the most useful things one can possess for work about the garden. At once the vines lay hold of the slender sticks and climb to the very top, fain are they to go much farther. But I cut the tops so that they may branch from the sides and keep within bounds, and they soon make a solid hedge of healthy green. Oh, when the blossoms break from these green hedges like heavenly winged angels, and their pure, cool perfume fills the air, what joy is mine!

I find Sweet Peas can hardly have too rich a soil, provided always that they are kept sufficiently wet. They must have moisture, their roots must be kept cool and damp,--a mulch of leaves or straw is a very good thing to keep the roots from drying,--and they must always be planted as deep as possible. Wood ashes give them a stronger growth. Their colors, the great variety of them, and their vivid delicacy are wonderful; they are most beautiful against the background of the sea; they are a continual source of delight, and never cease to bloom, with me, if gathered every day and watered abundantly, the whole summer long, even through the autumn till November. But they must never be suffered to go to seed; that would check their blossoming at once. I revel in their beauty week after week, bringing them into the house and arranging them in masses every other day. Clear glass vases are most effective for them, and they look loveliest, I think, when each color is kept by itself. For the Princess Beatrice, which is a divine pale pink, a shade of rose refined and exquisite, there are glasses of clear pink that repeat the hues of the flowers with magical gradations and reflections. For the white kinds there are white vases, the most effective of ground glass, the opaque surface of which matches the tone of the flowers.

Of the named kinds of Sweet Peas the most beautiful shades of pink that I know are the divinely delicate Princess Beatrice, the palest rose-color; Adonis, a deeper pink, very clear and rich; the Orange Prince, a most ineffably splendid color of bright yellow-rose; these together make a combination of color that satisfies the inmost soul. Carmine Invincible is the most splendid red; the Butterfly is white edged with mauve, and combined with the delicate rose Princess Beatrice makes a delicious harmony. Blanche Ferry is also a lovely rose. Queen Victoria is the best white I have known; but every year new varieties are found which seem more and more beautiful, and it is only by trying them that one finds which to depend on.

Of the worth of these I have mentioned I am sure; they are the strongest growers, the freest bloomers, and the most beautiful of their kind. They never disappoint you if you give them the right care. The list of flowers in my island garden is by no means long, but I could discourse of them forever! They are mostly the old-fashioned flowers our grandmothers loved. Beginning with Snowdrops, Crocuses, Daffodils, Narcissus, a few Hyacinths, Scillas, an English Primrose or two, Tulips, and several other early blooming plants, one big red Peony, Columbine, Ragged Robin, Cornflowers, Roses and Lilies, Larkspurs, Pinks and Gillyflowers, Sweet Williams, Wallflowers, Forget-me-nots, single Dahlias, Sunflowers of every kind, and Hollyhocks of all colors, Poppies in almost endless variety, Nasturtiums of all hues, pot Marigolds, summer Chrysanthemums in great variety, Rose Campion, or Rose of Heaven, Pansies, Phlox, Sweet Peas, and Mignonette, Crimson Flax and the tall blue Perennial Flax (a wonderful blue!), many kinds of Coreopsis,--all most valuable and decorative,--Asters, Honeysuckle and Clematis, Morning-glories, Lavender and Foxgloves, Candytuft, Verbenas, Thunbergia, Penstemon, the heaven-blue Ipomea, white Petunias,--because they are so beautiful by moonlight,--a few Four-o’clocks, and so forth. These are enough for a most happy little garden. A few more modern plants are added, a golden and a rosy Lily from Japan, a lustrous white gold-hearted Anemone from the same country, for autumn blooming, one or two tuberous-rooted Begonias, some Gaillardias and Zinnias, the fragrant little Asperula (Woodruff), and some others. Among the new plants one of the most interesting is the Hugelia Cœrulea, which grows a foot and a half high, with a many-branched woolly leaf, and flowers in flat clusters of the most delicious light blue. This is a flower with an atmosphere; it has a quality of beauty quite indescribable.

I copy the notes of a few days’ work in the garden in May, just to give an idea of their character and of the variety of occupation in this small space of ground.

May 11. This morning at four o’clock the sky was one rich red blush in the east, over a sea as calm as a mirror. How could I wait for the sun to lift its scarlet rim above the dim sea-line (though it rose punctually at forty-seven minutes past four), when my precious flower beds were waiting for me! It was not possible, and I was up and dressed before he had flooded the earth with glory. “Straight was a path of gold for him,” I said, as I gazed out at the long line of liquid splendor along the ocean. All the boxes and baskets of the more delicate seedlings were to be put out from my chamber window on flat house-top and balcony, they and the forest of Sweet Peas to be thoroughly watered, and the Pansies half shaded with paper lest the sun should work them woe. At five the household was stirring, there was time to write a letter or two, then came breakfast before six, and by half past six I was out of doors at work in the vast circle of motionless silence, for the sea was too calm for me to hear even its breathing. It was so beautiful,--the dewy quiet, the freshness, the long, still shadows, the matchless, delicate, sweet charm of the newly wakened world. Such a color as the grass had taken on during the last few warm days; and where the early shadows lay long across it, such indescribable richness of tone! There was so much for me to do, I hardly knew where to begin. At the east of the house the bed of Pansies set out yesterday was bright with promise, every little plant holding itself gladly erect. I began with the trellis each side of the steps leading down into the garden, and first set out a Cobœa Scandens, one to the right and one to the left,--strong, sturdy plants which I had been keeping weeks in the house till it should be warm enough to trust them out of doors. They were a foot high and stretching their sensitive tendrils in all directions, seeking something for support. They grasped the trellis at once and seemed to spread out every leaf to the warm sun, while I poured cool water and liquid manure about their roots, and congratulated them on their escape into the open ground. Near them, against the same trellis, I put down two Tropæolum Lobbianum Lucifers, a new scarlet variety of these delicate Nasturtiums, that they might climb together over the broad arch. Some time ago I had planted there also some Mexican Morning-glories sent me by an unknown friend, and if they come up, and Cobœa, Nasturtiums, and Morning-glories all climb together and clasp hands with Honeysuckle, Wistaria, and Wild Cucumber, my porch will, indeed, be a bower of beauty! Then against wall and fence I set out the stout bushes of single Dahlias which have been growing ever since last January. A new variety called Star of Lyons interests me. I am anxious to know what it is like, what its color, what its shape. It is such a pleasure always to be finding new varieties and combinations, fresh surprises in unfamiliar flowers. Seeking the smallest posy bed I own, into this I transplanted another stranger, Papaver Alpinum Roseum, a rose-colored Iceland Poppy. How I shall watch it grow, and how eagerly wait for it to blossom! Eight egg-shells full of it were set down and carefully watered. Next, a row of baby Wallflowers were established in a long line near the tall ones that are thick with buds. I am going to try to have a succession of bloom from these, if it can be accomplished, all summer. In another bed I began to set out a few of the choicest Sweet Peas, the new kinds; these were already a foot long from tip to root ends. I have no words to tell what pleasant work this is! After the Sweet Peas were comfortably settled, I covered the whole bed with a length of light mosquito net, pegging it at the corners, laying sticks and stones along the edges to hold it down, so that the saucy sparrows should find no loophole by which to wriggle inside; they having watched the whole process with interested eyes from their perch on the fence-rail. How beautiful it was to be sitting there in the sweet weather, working in the wholesome brown earth! Just beyond the Sweet Peas I could see my strong white Lilies springing up, a foot high already, with the splendid hardy Larkspurs behind them, promising a wealth of white and gold and azure by and by. From time to time through the calm morning, as I labored thus peacefully, I heard the loons laughing loud and clear in the stillness, and by lifting my head could see them off the end of the wharf at the landing swimming to and fro with their bright reflections, catching no end of fish and having the most delightful time,--every now and then half raising themselves from the water and flapping their wings, showing the dazzling white with which the strong pinions were lined, and laughing again and again with a wild and eerie sound. This means that a storm is coming, I know. But I love to hear them, and how devoutly thankful I am that there is not a creature with a gun on this blessed island! The loons know it well, or they never would venture in so near, while they shout to the morning their wild cries.

Near me, where I had made the earth so very wet, suddenly fluttered down a ruddy-breasted barn swallow, the beauty! for on such heavenly terms are we that he did not mind me in the least as he gathered a tiny load of mud for his nest against the rafters in the barn, and flew away with it low on the wind. The barn swallows do not visit my small inclosure as often as do my nearer neighbors, the white-breasted martins.

All this time the lovely day was slowly changing its early delicate colors and freshness for the whiter light of noon. By twelve o’clock the wind had “hauled” from west to south, going round through the east, and sending millions of light ripples across the glassy water, deepening its color to sparkling sapphire, and at last the sun overhead seemed to pelt quicksilver in floods upon it, and then it was dinner-time. After an hour of rest again I took up my work. All about, here and there and everywhere, I dug up the scattered Echinocystus vines and set them against the house, so that they could run up the trellises on all sides to make grateful shade by and by. A few straying Primroses waited to be moved outside the fence,--they take up so much room within, and room is so precious inside the garden. Young plants of the charming, old-fashioned Sweet Rocket had to be collected from the nooks where they had sown themselves far and near, and set in clumps in corners. Then there was a box of white Forget-me-nots some one had sent me, to be established in their places, and I finished the afternoon by planting Shirley Poppies all up and down the large bank at the southwest of the garden, outside. I am always planting Shirley Poppies somewhere! One never can have enough of them, and by putting them into the ground at intervals of a week, later and later, one can secure a succession of bloom and keep them for a much longer time,--keep, indeed, their heavenly beauty to enjoy the livelong summer,--whereas, if they are all planted at once you would see them for a blissful moment, a week or ten days at most, and then they are gone. I have planted and am going to continue planting till the middle of June, in this year of grace 1893, no less than two whole ounces of Shirley Poppies in all, and when one reflects that the seeds are so small as to be hardly more than visible to the naked eye, one realizes this to be a great many.

May 12th. Again a radiant day. I watched the thin white half ring of the waning moon as it stole up the east through the May haze at dawn. This kind of haze belongs especially to this month; it is such an exquisite color, like ashes of roses, till the sun suffuses it with a burning blush before he leaps alive from the ocean’s rim. Again in the garden at a little after six, to find the sparrows busy tunneling up and down the bank, devouring the Poppies that I planted yesterday. How they can see the seeds at all, or why they should care to feast on anything so small, or why they do not all perish, as poor Pillicoddy proposed doing, from the effects of such doses of opium, passes my understanding. There was nothing to be done but to plant them all over and then trail through the dewy grass long boards to lay up and down, covering the bank, for protection.

First, there were the small Tea Rosebushes to be set out in their sunny bed, made rich with finely sifted manure and soot and a sprinkling of wood ashes. And here let me say that all through the spring, beginning when the hardy Damask and Jacqueminots, etc., are just unfolding their leaf buds, it is a most excellent plan to sift wood ashes quite thickly over all the Rosebushes, either just after a shower or after you have been sprinkling them; let it remain on them for several hours,--if the sun is not shining I leave it half a day,--but then it must all be carefully washed off, every trace of it, or it will spoil the leaves. This kills or discourages all sorts of insect pests, and the effect of the ashes on the soil about their roots is most beneficial to the Roses.

As I sat in measureless content by the little flower bed, carefully slipping my pretty Bon Silenes and Catherine Mermets and yellow Sunsets and the rest out of their pots, and gently firming them in the ground, with plenty of water for refreshment, a cloud of the most delicious perfume brooded about me from a bed of white violets at the left, the hardiest, faithfulest, friendliest little flowers in the world. I found two small Polyantha Roses had lived all winter in this sheltered bed; that was indeed a charming find! At the back of it grows a tall Jacqueminot, a black Tuscany Rose, and the strong white Rosa Rugosa, a Japanese variety which bears very large single flowers in the greatest profusion. This Rose is extremely valuable, easily obtained, so hardy as to be almost indestructible, and absolutely untroubled by any disease or insect plague whatever. Its foliage is always fresh and handsome, and its seed vessels are huge scarlet balls as large as an average Crab-Apple, most ornamental after the flowers are gone. But the old, old black Tuscany Rose is the most precious of all. Mine came from an ancient garden that vanished long ago, but which used to be a glory to the town in which it grew. It is a hardy Rose also, in color so darkly red as to be almost black,--a warm red, less crimson than scarlet, glowing with a kind of smouldering splendor, with only two rows of petals round a centre of richest gold. At the end of this bed is a Water Hyacinth floating in its tub, and near it, in another tub, a large pink Water Lily, kept over from last summer in a frost-proof cellar, is sending up the loveliest leaves, touched with so sweet a crimson as to be almost as delightful as the blossoms themselves. All the rest of this day was spent in transplanting Asters from boxes into the beds all over the garden, edging nearly every bed with them, so that when the fleeting glory of Poppies and other earlier annuals is gone there will still be beautiful color to gladden our eyes late in the summer, quite into the autumn days.

In the afternoon I had all the many boxes of Sweet Peas brought to the piazza to be ready for transplanting, but remembering the sparrows, I covered each box carefully with mosquito netting before leaving them for the night.

14th. Sunday. A storm of wild wind and flooding rain, the storm the loons predicted! At breakfast my gardening brother said, “Well, my sweet peas are all gone!” “Oh,” I cried in the greatest sympathy, “what has happened to them?” for he had planted six pounds or more, and they had come up finely. “Sparrows,” was his laconic reply. I flew to my boxes on the piazza: they were safe, only through a tiny crack in the net over one a bird had wriggled its little body, and pulled up and flung the plants to right and left all over the steps. But my brother’s long rows, so green last night, were bare except for broken stems and withering leaves. Alas, it is so much trouble to cover such a large area with netting, he thought this time he would trust to luck, or Providence, or whatever one chooses to call it, but it is a fatal thing to do. Now he has to plant all over again, even though I shall share my boxes with him, and it will make his garden very late indeed. This time he will not fail to put nets over all! I sat on the piazza sheltered from the rain and watched the birds. Unmindful of the tempest, they skipped gayly round the garden, over and round the steps, examined all the tucked up boxes of Sweet Peas, wished they could get in, but finding it out of the question gave it up and resigned themselves to the inevitable. To and fro, here and there they went, peering into every nook and corner, behind every leaf and stick and board and stalk, busily pecking away and devouring something with the greatest industry. I drew nearer to discover what it could be, and to my great joy found it was the slugs which the rain had called forth from their hiding-places; the birds were working the most comprehensive slaughter among them. At that pleasing sight I forgave them on the spot all their trespasses against me.

15th. A thick fog wrapped the world in dimness early this morning; at eight o’clock it was rolling off and piling itself in glorious headlands over the coast, gleaming snow white in the sun, but here and there thin silver strips lay across distant sails and islands, lingering as if loath to leave the earth for the sky. I took the baskets of plants I had found necessary to dig up to give the rest room, and paddled across to the next island in a little lapstreaked dory, to give them to my neighbors for their flower plots. Great is the pleasure in the giving and the taking. It was such a heavenly morning, so blue and calm after the tumult of yesterday! Along the far-off coast the joyous hills seemed laughing in the sunshine, and the great sea rippled all over with smiles.

From the low shores of the islands came the singing of the birds over the still water, with an indescribably quiet and peaceful effect, and as I rowed into the cove of my destination, passing the coasts of the little island called Malaga, I saw outlined against the sky the lovely grasses already blossoming among the rocks. A kingbird sat on a bowlder and meditated; there was no tree, so he was fain to be content with a rock to sit on. I passed him almost near enough to touch him with my oar, but he did not stir, not he! My errand done and the plants distributed, I hastened back to my own dear little plot again, and up and down all the paths I went, digging out every unwelcome root of grass, plantain, mallow, catnip, clover, and the rest, once more raking them clear and clean. Outside, in a bed by itself, I sunk four pots of repotted Chrysanthemums, to be ready for the windows in early winter. All along the piazza are the house plants waiting to be attended to, cut back, repotted, and the soil enriched for winter blooming. Every day I attend to them, a few at a time. I cannot spare much time from my planting, weeding, watering, transplanting, and so forth, in the garden, but soon they will be all done. Began to transplant a few of the hundreds of the main body of Sweet Pea plants into the ground, carefully covering each bed as I finished with breadths of light mosquito netting to make them sparrow-proof. As I was working busily I heard the sweet calling of curlews, and looking up saw six of them wheeling overhead. Such sociable birds! They replied to my challenge as if I had been one of themselves, and as long as their calls were answered, lingered near, but being forgotten presently drifted off on the wind, their clear whistle sounding fainter and fainter as they were lost in the distance. All the rest of this day was spent in setting out Sweet Peas, and it will take more than a whole day more to finish, for I put them all round against the fence outside, and into every space I can spare for them within. After tea I hunted slugs as usual, and scattered ashes and lime, but I really feel that my friends the toads have done me the inestimable favor of reducing their hideous numbers, for certainly there are less than last year so far. Early in April, as I was vigorously hoeing in a corner, I unearthed a huge toad, to my perfect delight and satisfaction; he had lived all winter, he had doubtless fed on slugs all the autumn. I could have kissed him on the spot! Very carefully I placed him in the middle of a large green clump of tender Columbine. He really wasn’t more than half awake, after his long winter nap, but he was alive and well, and when later I went to look after him, lo! he had crept off, perhaps to snuggle into the earth once more for another nap, till the sun should have a little more power.

To our great joy the frogs that we imported last year are also alive. We heard the soft rippling of their voices with the utmost pleasure; it is a lovely liquid-sweet sound. They have not lived over a winter here before. We feared that the vicinity of so much salt water might be injurious to them, but this year they have survived, and perhaps they may be established for good.