OUR COUNTRY HOME 



with its bluish white fruit; the red-osier dogwood which also has 

 the white berry but bright reddish purple stems; the alternate- 

 leaved too, which grows into a tree; but the beautiful large flower- 

 ing dogwood is too delicate for our northern climate. 



Along the roadway to the house we spread samples as it were 

 to tempt the visitor to further explorations into the woods beyond. 

 The clumps of maidenhair fern took most kindly to the open road, 

 and even the old-fashioned American elder, finding itself high and 

 dry on the hillside, took heart of grace and consented to blossom 

 and put forth its purple berries. 



At the farther end of the lawn where the pergola stops, the 

 white Japanese astilbe, which looks so much like a hardhack, grows 

 in profusion bordered by the rich blue sal via; then come the 

 white cascades of the spiraea Van Houteii, loveliest of the shrubs 

 of Spring. Beside it is the gray foliage of the wild olive contrast- 

 ing with the rich green of the purple-flowering raspberry, while 

 next it spread the long branches of forsythia, both intermedia and 

 suspensa, then hardy hydrangea before the high honeysuckle 

 bushes which edge the forest. A mass of syringas, both fragrant 

 (Philadelphus lemoinei and coronarius) and scentless (gordonianus 

 and grandiflorus) ; with yellow lilies on one side and low Japanese 

 barberries on the other, balances the big lilac plantation, consisting 

 of Marie le Grey, Princess Alexandra, Charles X, Louis Van 

 Houteii, Emile Lemoine, the villosa, and sorbifolia and of course 

 the common white and violet, flanked by spiraea aruncus and privet 



and the quick-growing wild senna with a profusion of cherry and 



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