The Piedmont Section 



give the impression of individual flowers so much as a profusion of 

 color — color that fills the artist in you with delight! Beds of 

 indigo and topaz; masses of orange, shading to cream; beds filled 

 with branching candelabra of red gold. Carpets of pansies, purple 

 and mauve; white clematis above, waving its star-sprinkled sprays 

 with the wind, and thorny vines with vermilion buds tangling 

 behind w'hite lilies; immense hydrangeas, tinted like diatoms; long 

 avenues of pink gladioli stretching away to the west. 



On days like these, the hazy mountains look perfectly enormous 

 and give you a strange uplifting-of-the-spirit sensation. An hour 

 later I drag my eyes away from them, for the advance of the morn- 

 ing brings many important occupations. There are my old friends, 

 the fruit trees, that must be visited; to dispute the bees' title to the 

 softest seckel pears, to find the first ripe figs, to waylay "Kritty," 

 the pretty octoroon, as she passes through with a tray of purple 

 grapes — and to eat of these fruits under the mimosa tree. There 

 are three of these mimosas, a large young one, which is the daugh- 

 ter of this older, and a tiny one, surely its grandchild. Every year 

 I plan to adopt the grandchild mimosa and carry it home to Rich- 

 mond to raise — but it is there still. 



Finally, the garden-builder herself comes out to join me, ac- 

 companied now like the delightful Elizabeth in her German garden, 

 by three babies, their laughter tinkling through the box-bushes even 

 before they appear. A moment later, perhaps, with dimpled arms 

 outstretched and squeals of excitement, they chase, toddle and 

 tumble after, but never overtake, the bright-hued butterflies, flying 

 in and out among the flowers, while the mother sits down to her 

 knitting by me. 



Nothing can surpass the Bloomfield garden now! A few 

 locusts may be singing, "Good-bye, Summer"; a dead leaf falling 

 may remind the rest they will not be here always — but "let their 

 loveliness fade as it will," for this immediate moment it is flawless, 

 no flower fears the frost and every vine "entwines itself verdantly 

 still." Nan Maury Lightfoot. 



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