Part 27

* * * * *

It is rare to find Rose Achilleas anywhere. Yet they are as pretty a thing as we have ever seen in a border; the blossoms seeming to drift on their slender stems, one above the other like little sunset clouds.

What has been for once a complete pleasure is the wide bed under the drawing-room window. The Ceanothus—which loves us—has been a treasure of delicate bloom; and, against it, the great old bushes of lavender have thrust their spikes in profusion. Just the right tone to harmonize. Then the Longiflorum Lilies—excellent, sturdy, conscientious darlings!—have lifted their satin shining trumpets above the Heliotrope that loves us too; and Lobelia, the one vivid line of colour, has rimmed the thick cushion of “Mrs. Sinkins’” foliage most artistically. The grey-green gives the finishing touch to a really reposeful combination. There are also two or three clumps of Nicotiana Affinis, softly mauve, and faded purple crimson. To gaze at that corner against the amethyst of the moor is a never-ending delight.

But another garden disaster has been the annihilation of all the seedlings which we sowed in the open border! It is laughable now, but sad too, to turn back the pages and read the vainglorious project of running a dazzling ribbon of Nemophila against the Dorothy Perkins hedge. ‹It might have been frightful; so perhaps Providence kindly intervened!› But that Nigella “Miss Jekyll” should have refused her mysterious and pretty presence in the Blue Border is a deep disappointment.

We are again gnashing our teeth over the Blue Border. The fact is, we suppose, it is too much to expect beauty all the year round, no matter how boastfully garden writers inform you of their artifices in that direction: how cleverly, for instance, the annual Gypsophila will bury the unsightly decay of the Iris leaves, or how you can pull branches of “Miss Mellish” down over the Delphiniums.

Why do not our Delphiniums bloom twice? Every garden book and every catalogue cheers your heart by promising a handsome second bloom to the industrious clipper-off of seed-pods. But never a Delphinium has responded to our kind attentions in that direction. Perhaps our soil does not give them strength enough for such exertion. But it is idle speculating. One must learn what one’s garden will do and what it won’t do—and make the best of it.

* * * * *

The greatest of all the tragedies that have befallen us lately is indubitably the passing away of poor old Tom. We are now catless!

Poor little friend! Where has that quaint, faithful, dutiful identity gone to? Juvenal says Heaven would not be Heaven to him if he were not to meet his own dogs there—a sentiment which we have, we believe, ourselves set down elsewhere. St. Francis the Poverello saw God in all His lesser creatures. It is not possible to think that we shall lose anything in a completer world.

Tom was the most conscientious of cats. He now lies beside Susan. We are going to get two little tombstones made for us by the Watts Settlement at Compton. Susan’s epitaph has already been mentioned. Nothing more to the point could be imagined:

“Here lies Susan, a good dog.” “Here lies Thomas, for eighteen years our faithful cat-comrade.”

So shall it stand recorded over the new grave.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

XXVIII

Mid-August and the lists beginning to come in! Mr. Eden Phillpotts, in his delightful garden book, says that no one is a true garden lover who is not instantly lost in every nurseryman’s list, who does not immediately draw out orders far beyond his means, and spend his time in plans and combinations that shall transcend Kew as well as Babylon. What garden lovers are we in this respect! It is only when the orders are written out and the prices totted up that sober reason obtrudes its forbidding countenance—and then the painful process of “knocking off” begins. Nevertheless we are becoming adepts in combining lavishness with economy. There are delightful firms whose plants are literally to be had at a quarter of the price of others, with results quite as happy.

There is the Dutchman who sends us our bulbs. He has grown to be a friend, and his English letters are charming, “Dear Mrs.,” he wrote when Gladioli, “The Bride,” arrived in a state no Bride should be in, really without a wedding garment—“Dear Mrs., She is a flower the most agreeable in the garden, but she is very unpleasant to travel.”

His catalogue makes equally fascinating reading. The quaint spelling and phraseology are more than attractive. Who, for instance, would not wish to invest in Narcissus, thus described:

“Astrardente, white and apricot orange, edged fiery scarlet magnificent and nice flowers.”

“Nothing,” says another grower, “can equal, much less excel, early single Tulips.”

“Pottebakke White,” cries a third, “is a very large pure white flower, and not to surpass better.”

“Of snow-like variety and delicious fragrance a most beloved flower,” thus our special Hollander labels Lilium Longiflorum Takesima, in words that have a certain charm of poetic simplicity which would not have misbecome the artistic Japanese himself.

However tempted by other nationalities, we choose to be Dutch in our bulbs. This is the list we have just dispatched to Haarlem:

“600 China blue single Hyacinths. 1 dozen Cavaignac pink Hyacinths. 1 dozen Fabiola blush Hyacinths. 50 Roman Hyacinths. 100 Scarlet Duc van Thol Tulips. 50 Rose Duc van Thol Tulips. 300 Thomas Moore Tulips. 1000 Darwin Tulips, best mixed. 500 Parrot Tulips, in the finest mixture, bright colours. 100 Gladiolus Brenchlyensis. 100 Gladiolus Hollandia. 1000 mixed striped Crocus. 1000 Scilla Siberica praecox. 1000 blue Grape Hyacinths. 1000 Snowdrops Elweseii. 1000 Poeticus recurvus Narcissus. 100 Hyacinthus Candicans. 1000 Single Trumpet Daffodils mixed. 500 Double Daffodils mixed.”

Of these some of the scarlet and rose “Duc van Thol” Tulips, and all the “Cavaignac” and “Fabiola” Hyacinths are for forcing; and, of course, the Roman Hyacinths also. The other bulbs are destined for the open ground.

Gladiolus Hollandia is described as the “Pink Brenchlyensis,” and is much recommended. We have never grown her yet, but her scarlet cousin is a great success in our garden. We find our Gladioli do so much better when planted in the spring, that we are asking the firm not to send them to us for another seven months. But they are included in the autumn list so that he may reserve us good sound tubers.

It is evidently against garden decorum to mention the name of a horticulturist, for some garden writers make a point of assuring the reader that they will never be guilty of such an indiscretion; but we see no harm at all in paying, by the way of this discursive pen, a tribute to the perfect satisfaction hitherto afforded us by our chosen bulb grower, Mr. Thoolen, of Haarlem. His Tulips, Hyacinths, and Narcissi have stood the test for three years. Of course, in our soil we cannot expect more than one good season out of anything except Crocus, Scilla, and Narcissi.

Daffodils, which up till now have been unaccountably absent from our garden plans, are to be heavily indulged in this year. Besides what appears in the above list we are venturing on another thousand from a certain Mr. Telkamp, likewise in the land of windmills.

The following is the order which we have just dispatched to him: