AN INCIPIENT GARDEN 



S I have related, the indiscriminate spotting of the 

 lawn with flower beds big, little, long, round and 

 square continued during several seasons, and I 

 look upon it as the Dark Ages, during which flori- 

 culture made no progress. I wearied of the narrow limitations 

 imposed by a few shrubs. I hungered for flowers and color, 

 though each new experience convinced me of the wisdom of 

 confining myself to durable nasturtiums, marigolds, and 

 ever more nasturtiums they being the only flowers that 

 survived the droughts that yearly doomed us. That sin- 

 gle wizened aster decided me that asters were not for me, 

 nor cosmos, poppies, cornflowers and many other hard- 

 ridden favorites. 



Then there came a pause in a peculiarly severe winter that 

 housed us for months, that piled the snow almost to the tops of 

 certain windows, a winter which cut one off from all past ex- 

 periences and left him like a new-born babe, open to new in- 

 fluences. At first when the wind roared down the chimneys, 

 and rattled our doors and windows, and made merry with 

 drifting the snow still higher toward the eaves, I took refuge 

 in the atlas. Thumbed were the pages bearing the maps of 

 semi-tropical countries; worn were the margins where pink 

 and yellow sun-kissed islands bask in turquoise seas. I was 

 on intimate terms with a hundred sheltered nooks in many 

 climes, and all open to a southern exposure. Adam confided 

 to me that he hoped by another winter that we could go to the 

 Equator where he meant to have a house right on the Line, 



