MY SHRUBS 25 



Callicarpa longifolia is a deciduous shrub from Japan, with 

 flowers in violet spikes and violet berries to follow. My infant 

 plant grows well, but has not yet blossomed. The other varieties 

 are tender, save the rare C. giraldiana. 



Calophaca wolgarica^ from Siberia, is hearty, and hangs out its 

 rather dull yellow, pea-flowered blooms among dwarf conifers — 

 various species of pinus and thuya, fir and retinosphora — which 

 make it welcome enough. Here, too, are yews in miniature, 

 and certain junipers, of which Juniperus hihernica nana, like a 

 big blue shaving-brush, can cheer my most dejected hour. To 

 speak generally of these tiny trees, which have thrust themselves 

 into this chapter, I admit that natural dwarfs cannot vie with the 

 aesthetic, artificial miniatures of Japan — those wonderful living 

 pictures painted by generations of faithful artists ; those tortured 

 things hanging to life by their eyelids, and suggesting, in the com- 

 pass of a porcelain tray or bowl, the whole battle of a tree against 

 lightning and tempest and time. These solemn atoms rightly 

 awake far deeper emotions than my fat and prosperous dwarfs ; but 

 the ideal of a northern Vandal like myself is prosperity, peace, and 

 plenty in my garden patch ; and, while I admire the more subtle 

 and sublime conceptions of the Japanese — earthy wretch that I 

 am — there is no desire in me to emulate their emaciated master- 

 pieces. I respect their ideals and applaud their ambition ; I 

 cheer the genius who can give you a whole country-side — its 

 contours and complexities, plains and forests, and cloud-capped 

 hills, within the ambit of a tea-tray ; but such good things are not 

 for me ; such flights leave my bucolic spirit bewildered and 

 fainting. I will not heave up a mountain in a flower-pot and 

 set a blasted maple upon its dizzy crags ; I will not make an 



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