A SEASIDE GARDEN 243 



leads to the boat landing, the weathered rocks, washed 

 with soft tints blended of the breath of sea mist and sun- 

 set rays, break through the sand. In the lee of these, 

 held in place by a line of stones, is a long, low bed of 

 large-flowered portulaca, borrowed from inland gar- 

 dens, and yet so in keeping with its surroundings as to 

 seem a native flower of sea sands. 



The fleshy leaves at a little distance suggest the form 

 of many plants of brackish marsh and creek edges, 

 and even the glasswort itself. When the day is gray, 

 the flowers furl close and disappear, as it were, but 

 when the sun beats full upon the sand, a myriad upraised 

 fleshy little arms stretch out, each holding a coloured 

 bowl to catch the sunbeams, as if the heat made molten 

 the sand of quartz and turned it into pottery in tints of 

 rose, yellow, amber, scarlet, and carnation striped. It 

 was a bold experiment, this garden in the sand, but 

 already it is making good. 



Then, too, what a refreshment to the eyes is it, when 

 the unbroken expanse of sky and sea before the house 

 tires, to turn them landward over the piece of flowers 

 toward the cool green marshes ribboned with the pale 

 pink camphor-scented fleabane, the almost intangible 

 sea lavender, the great rose mallows and cat-tail flags 

 of the wet ground, the false indigo that, in the distance, 



