92 ORNAMENTAL GARDENING 



No words can describe the glory and beauty of such a mass of 

 foliage, whether one looks at it from a little distance or from 

 within it, or its wonderful outlines against the sky. The Wine 

 or Sugar Palm is just throwing out an immense new leaf, fully 

 fifteen feet long, and as it is only partly expanded it looks like 

 some gigantic scimitar; but it is a sword of peace and not of war. 



Beyond and to the left of this group are three tall pine trees 

 with finely rounded heads, the " Three Graces," and up one of 

 them an American woodbine has climbed to the very tip top. 

 At night their great heads stand out as blots of darkness against 

 the sky. To the west of the house a moonflower has covered a 

 long stretch of fence, a patch of bananas and a large mango tree, 

 and its great white blossoms gleam out like stars in the dawn. 



The stars are dimming fast and now the clear note of a Cardinal 

 that has just awakened breaks on the ear, then another and an- 

 other with a song almost as varied as that of a mocking bird, 

 but in which the peculiar "Chew, chew" is often repeated. 

 Next a mocking bird joins the morning chorus and, in a little 

 while the woods will echo with the sharp cry of the bluejay. 



Along the road which encircles the house there is a large 

 Avocado tree on one side and an umbrella China tree on the 

 other, and the latter reaches its branches across until the two 

 meet overhead forming a grand arch. Under this it is still quite 

 dark but there is a lovely vista looking through it towards the 

 northeast. Near it a Dombeya has grown into an immense 

 shrub, and in the winter this will be loaded with large, pendent 

 heads of handsome pink blossoms. Farther on a young tropical 

 almond tree has pushed its whorled horizontal branches across 

 the road and they are overlapping those of a big silk cotton from 

 the West Indies and forming another arch. 



To the left is a group of young pine trees, seven in number, 

 the " Seven Sisters." Up one of them a Stigmaphyllum, a charm- 

 ing vine bearing Orchid-like flowers, is climbing. Up another 

 the great flowered Solanum wendlandi grows; on a third is a 

 scarlet Bougainvillea ; a fourth is enveloped by a Kudzu vine and 

 up a fifth a young Faraday a splendens is beginning to twine. 

 On the sixth a Bignonia venusta is gay with gorgeous orange scar- 

 let, tubular blossoms all through the late winter. Over the last 



