CHAPTER VII 



OLD FLOWER FAVORITES 



God does not send us strange flowers every year. 

 When the spring winds blow o'er the pleasant places 

 The same dear things lift up the same fair faces ; 

 The Violet is here. 



It all comes back ; the odor, grace, and hue 

 Each sweet relation of its life repeated ; 

 No blank is left, no looking-for is cheated ; 

 It is the thing we knew." 



ADELINE D. T. WHITNEY, 1861. 



OT only do I love to see the 

 same dear things year after 

 year, and to welcome the same 

 odor, grace, and hue ; but I 

 love to find them in the same 

 places. I like a garden in 

 which plants have been grow- 

 ing in one spot for a long time, 

 where they have a fixed home and surroundings. 

 In our garden the same flowers shoulder each other 

 comfortably and crowd each other a little, year after 

 year. They look, my sister says, like long-estab- 

 lished neighbors, like old family friends, not as if they 

 had just " moved in," and didn't know each other's 

 names and faces. Plants grow better when they are 



