26 VARIETY IN THE LITTLE GARDEN 



are in full beauty; and while the colors are mixed (for the seed 

 was planted in rows near each other in the trial garden), the 

 colors and forms of some of them are so particularly good that 

 they serve to remind one of the beauty of Shirley poppies for 

 variety in the garden. Here is for instance, one, almost like a 

 miniature peony of rose-type, very large, flat, with outer petals; 

 all the inner part of this flower is very double, and of the most 

 delicious shell-pink; and all are held together by one of those 

 little buttons of pistils and stamens of a pallid green which give 

 such interesting centres in both color and form. Another of 

 these entrancing Shirleys is made up of four large thick petals; 

 these are white at the edges, the rest of the flower stained in that 

 tone known as ashes of roses, a dull or faded rose. The pistil in 

 this case stands well up from the flower, and the corona of 

 stamens is of a pale brown, lovely with the dull rose of the poppy. 

 Also here is a third of striking beauty. This is a very large 

 white poppy, the edges of whose four petals are margined with 

 most vivid pink, almost a carmine. Others of these poppies are 

 broad white singles, with bands half-an-inch wide of pale rose 

 at the edge; large pure white doubles with what seem thou- 

 sands of tiny silken tongues composing the flower; immense 

 globes of a vivid light scarlet; others of palest salmon-pink, 

 cream- white at the top of the flower — all with the heavy blue- 

 green foliage, the nodding bud, the handsome seed-pod. Out 

 of such a pod a little Norwegian maid once taught me to make 

 a teapot, with one inch-long twig for the spout, a hooped one 

 stuck in opposite for the handle, and the fine brown fluted top 

 of the poppy seed-pod for the teapot's base. 



There were other tones of pink in this fine row of poppies, all 

 verging upon the yellow-pinks. Never have I seen such immense 

 Shirleys, never finer opium poppies than these. True, there were 

 some small Shirleys of a dull, rather uninteresting lavender. 



