44 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 



The same thing happened with a blue lupine. It wouldn't 

 budge until I applied pickax and crowbar. I tried the same 

 forcible argument on a blue Veronica spicata that was given 

 temporary shelter in a pink bed until the pink tenants got 

 better established. So far the Veronica has won every round; 

 its position is impregnable and I am alternately divided be- 

 tween my determination to use dynamite if necessary, or to 

 capitulate with the Veronica and decide that a little bright 

 blue is not criminal in a pink bed. As the season advances 

 and the bloom is past, and it is incontinently shedding its un- 

 reachable seeds in every direction, I think I shall resort to ex- 

 plosives. Rocks are great institutions for permanent residents. 



My various operations have included many compromises. 

 I came across one stone that took two straining men and a 

 stout work horse to slide it down into a deep hole, where it was 

 covered up to remain until Judgment Day. Then I found 

 others that all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't 

 stir, and they still maintain their positions by sheer force of 

 character. One of these I walked around so much, trying to 

 decide what could be done with it, that I wore a little path. 

 The big stone and the little path looked so very Japanese that 

 I came to accept it on those terms, and by dint of rough stone 

 steps leading up to the little path, a clematis trained up as an 

 entrance gate to it, and a rustic vine-covered fence beyond, I 

 have a queer anomalous corner filled with a succession of blue 

 flowers that quite delights my heart, for I can see it through a 

 window as I sit at my desk every day. To-day the blue flowers 

 are mostly gone with only the Liatris and Michaelmas daisies 

 still to come: but by accident a native white aster by the rustic 

 fence has shot up several stalks seven feet high, with a crown 

 of bloom several feet across, and framing it about as a halo, I 

 see pale pink, deep rose pink and cardinal red hollyhocks 

 which grow in beds beyond it. It is needless to say that this 



