THE SECOND SUMMER 283 



barring out this one or attracting that to a specially 

 contrived honey-jar. Bee, fly, wasp, butterfly are 

 welcome to come and enjoy with the flowers this 

 evening of plenty. 



The queen of the August garden is assuredly the 

 phlox. It has not been hurried into the thousand 

 shades of the rose or the sweet-pea, partly because 

 it cannot be budded or annually selected from seed, 

 partly because it is of more constant nature. Never- 

 theless, its hues are well varied, none of them striking 

 us as unphlox-like, all looking well in the cellular 

 bunches of unbroken colour that make the flower so 

 distinctive. We like those without very distinct eyes 

 best, and best of all, we think, the white. But a long 

 avenue of pink or "scarlet" or salmon colour is as 

 fair an epitome of the August garden as heart of man 

 could desire. At the risk of repetition we would 

 assert here that a large part of our love for the phlox 

 is accounted for by the miraculous way in which its 

 blossoms annually appear at the ends of the apparently 

 barren shoots. In July you could swear that never 

 a bud will come between those two close- pressed 

 leaves that end the shoot. And then there comes 

 bristle after bristle, like angels standing on the point 

 of a needle, and a bunch of bloom that you could not 

 encompass with two hands. 



And there stand the tall hollyhocks (or should it 

 be holly-oaks ?) plastered with rosettes of colour that 

 last day after day without fading, a never-ending feast 

 for the humble-bees a joy to the gardener. We 

 have written that with a little hesitation. The holly- 

 hock stands on the verge of banishment from many 

 gardens. Its memories do not appeal to us in the 



