2 8o THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



and guard them in a bed underlaid with stout -meshed 

 wire netting, so that no mole may leave a tunnel for 

 the wicked tulip-eating meadow-mouse. 



It is these late May-flowering tulips of long stalks, 

 like wands of tall perennials, that you can gather in 

 your arms and arrange in your largest jars with a 

 sense at once combined of luxury and artistic joy. 



Better begin as I did by buying them in mixture; 

 the species you must choose are the bizarre, bybloems, 

 parrots, breeders, Darwin tulips, and the rose and 

 white, together with a general mixture of late singles. 

 Five dollars will buy you fifty of each of the seven 

 kinds, three hundred and fifty bulbs all told and enough 

 for a fine display. The Darwin tulips yield beautiful 

 shades of violet, carmine, scarlet, and brown; the 

 bizarres, many curious effects in stripes and flakes; 

 the rose and white, delicate frettings and margins of 

 pink on a white ground ; but the parrots have petals 

 fringed, twisted, beaked, poised curiously upon 

 the stalks, splashed with reds, yellows, and green, 

 and to come suddenly upon a mass of them in the 

 garden is to think for a brief moment that a group 

 of unknown birds blown from the tropics in a forced 

 migration have alighted for rest upon the bending 

 tulip stalks. 



