Old Time Gardens 



There is a line of Poppy colors which is most 

 entrancing ; the gray, smoke color, lavender, mauve, 

 and lilac Poppies, edged often and freaked with tints 

 of red, are rarely beautiful things. There are fine 

 white Poppies, some fringed, some single, some 

 double the Bride is the appropriate name of the 

 fairest. And the pinks of Poppies, that wonderful 

 red-pink, and a shell-pink that is almost salmon, and 

 the sunset pinks of our modern Shirley Poppies, 

 with quality like finest silken gauze ! The story of 

 the Shirley Poppies is one of magic, that a flower- 

 loving clergyman who in 1882 sowed the seed of 

 one specially beautiful Poppy which had no black 

 in it, and then sowed those of its fine successors, 

 produced thus a variety which has supplied the world 

 with beauty. Rev. Mr. Wilks, their raiser, gives 

 these simply worded rules anent his Shirley Pop- 

 pies : 



u I, They are single; 2, always have a white base; 

 3, with yellow or white stamens, anthers, or pollen ; 4, and 

 never have the smallest particle of black about them." 



The thought of these successful and beautiful 

 Poppies is very stimulating to flower raisers of mod- 

 erate means, with no profound knowledge of flowers ; 

 it shows what can be done by enthusiasm and appli- 

 cation and patience. It gives something of the same 

 comfort found in Keats's fine lines to the singing 

 thrush : 



" Oh ! fret not after knowledge. 

 I have none, and yet the evening listens." 



