242 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



of wild asters twenty feet across. Here are gathered 

 all the asters that either love or will tolerate dry soil, a 

 certain bid for their favour having been made by mixing 

 several barrels of stiff loam with the top sand, as an 

 encouragement until the roots find the hospitable mix- 

 ture below. 



The late purple aster (patens) with its broad clasping 

 leaves, the smooth aster (lavis) with its violet-blue 

 flowers, are making good bushes and preparing for the 

 pageant. Here is the stiff white-heath aster, the fa- 

 miliar Michaelmas daisy, that is so completely covered 

 with snowy flowers that the foliage is obliterated, and 

 proves its hold upon the affections by its long string of 

 names, frostweed, white rosemary, and farewell 

 summer being among them, and also the white- wreath 

 aster, with the flowers ranged garland- wise among the 

 rigid leaves, and the stiff little savory-leaved aster or sand 

 starwort with pale violet rays. Forming a broad, 

 irregular border about the asters are stout dwarf bushes 

 of the common wild rose (humilis), that bears its deep 

 pink flowers in late spring and early summer and then 

 wears large round hips that change slowly from green 

 to deep glowing red, in time to make a frame of coral 

 beads for the asters. 



Outside the hedge of bays, where a trodden pathway 



