HOME SUEEOUNDINGS. 155 



pretensions, towering to the height of thirty feet and load- 

 ed with blooms. Their growth is very rapid ; in four years 

 on poor soil, a slip rooted in a bottle will become a wide- 

 spreading tree ten feet high. Delicate vines, that will 

 hardly grow at all in the chilly North, here flourish in the 

 Avildest luxuriance, and in our milder winters do not even 

 die down to the roots, and, when they do, set to work again 

 in the spring just as if nothing had happened to them. 



It is well known that the most beautiful roses are the 

 most tender, and can not be raised in the open air at the 

 North ; but here they run riot, and not only so, but many 

 of the tea-roses that are not supposed to be runners at all 

 become regular runaways and clamber all over one's porch 

 or lattice- work ; the glorious, fragrant queen of flowers, 

 peeping out here and there, amid a mass of tangled vines 

 in such unexpected places that vague ideas of a return of 

 the days of miracles float about in one's mind, until a close 

 examination reveals the runaway rose branch hiding slyly 

 amidst the dense foliage of another plant. In fact, the 

 ways of the denizens of the vegetable w^orld in Florida 

 are full of surprises to the ignorant Northern mind, and 

 their ways eccentric to the last degree. 



Morning-glories, that grow so luxuriantly in the North, 

 are apt to become curious dwarfs here, miniature plants 

 that trail for two or three feet on the ground and bear 

 flowers proportionate in size. Cypress vines, so tender and 

 shy of growth in the North, in Florida run rampant, climb- 

 ing to the tops of fences and lattice-work, and then drooping 

 downward like beautiful feathery cascades of scarlet and 

 green, or else ramble at will over the ground in wild 

 beauty, running up to the tops of tall weeds, then down, 

 and here and there and every where. 



Tuberoses, lilies, and hyacinths, among bulbous roots, 

 do well : and there are beautiful white lilies and pink lilies 



