A SEASIDE GARDEN 239 



when covered with feathery white bloom in May, before 

 the leaves appear, gives the sandy shore the only orchard 

 touch it knows. Of course the flowering period is over 

 when the usual shore season begins, though nowadays 

 there is no off time people go to shore and country 

 when they are moved; yet the beach plum is a pic- 

 turesque bush at any time, especially when, in Sep- 

 tember, it is loaded with the red purple fruit. In the 

 two spaces on either side the alley the sand is filled with 

 massed plants that, when a little more time has been 

 given them for stretching and anchoring their roots, 

 will straightway weave a flower mat upon the sand. 



Down beyond the next point, one day last autumn, 

 Horace and Sylvia found a plantation of our one New 

 England cactus, the prickly pear (Opuntia opuntia). 

 We have it here and there in our rocky pasture ; but in 

 greater heat and with better underfeeding it seemed a 

 bit of a tropical plain dropped on the eastern coast. Do 

 you know the thing? The leaves are shaped like the 

 fans of a lobster's tail and sometimes are several- jointed, 

 smooth except for occasional tufts of very treacherous 

 spikes, and of a peculiar semitranslucent green; the 

 half-double flowers set on the leaf edges are three inches 

 across and of a brilliant sulphur-yellow, with tasselled 

 stamens ; the fruit is fleshy, somewhat fig-shaped, and 



