74 MAY 



blade, various common orchids, cuckoo flowers, and 

 ox-eyed daisies. Nature set them all in this little 

 corner. 



The most brilliant flowers in the garden are still 

 bulbs the flaunting parrot tulips ; and mingled 

 with them are multitudes of poet's narcissus, which 

 are quite as beautiful, though .not so gay. Some 

 of these last are also growing thinly in the grass 

 with cowslips between, and here and there a white' 

 wood hyacinth ; the harmony of tender tints is very 

 pleasant among the cool green. But the place that 

 best suits the cowslips is the moist ground of the 

 lowest bed in the rose garden, where, plentifully 

 nourished and kept cool and slightly shaded by 

 standard trees, they grow very large and brighter 

 in tint than elsewhere, the green calyx being 

 especially vivid. 



May 20. At the end of the month, when the 

 wallflowers are cleared away from the sheltered 

 beds beneath the windows of the house, portulaca 

 is sown all along the edge in a wide border, and 

 such things as will thrive in so dry a place are 

 planted behind it. It is an undesirable arrange- 

 ment, ugly and displeasing, because it is always 

 artificial in appearance. The flowers complain in 

 unmistakable flower language that they have been 

 bedded out for the summer in a place where no 

 others will thrive, instead of being provided with 

 quarters where they may live in peace and die 

 when old age comes to them. There is no getting 

 away from the fact that they have not any abiding 

 place, so there is little pleasure to be gained from 

 them, but only the conventional covering of a border 

 which would otherwise be bare. 



