OCTOBER 227 



why should it encourage a masquerade of 

 flowers ? 



Pansies are incomparably finer now than 

 they have been since early May, and the sweet- 

 scented purple violets are again in bloom. 

 Tiny seedlings of ladies' delights are beginning 

 to bloom, and young English daisies have de- 

 cided that they cannot wait for their first spring 

 to know how it feels to offer the guardian sun a 

 little garland of their white and pink blossoms. 

 It is yet possible to gather a handful of the 

 cornflowers, and perhaps the mignonette may 

 still have blossoms to give away. 



There is an old-fashioned flower which I 

 long to see restored to its old place in October 

 gardens, and that is the white and purple 

 gomphrena. It is one of the many flowers 

 known as bachelor's button, and because of the 

 stiff bractlets which protect the life organs of 

 the plant it is often called a strawflower. 

 The white heads have a nacre-like purity which 

 I have not seen in any other blossoms, and the 

 crimson-purple ones cover cheerful little bushes 

 with very prettily graded balls. They were 

 much esteemed in the good old days of genuine 

 country parlours, where stiff bunches of these 



