MAY IN THE GARDEN 73 



about with traditions of magic that we quite stand in 

 awe of the simple plant. 



" Enchanting Lunarie here lies, 

 In sorceries excelling." 



It is a pretty thing growing about eighteen inches tall, 

 with large dusty -looking leaves and flowers of shining 

 white, or various shades of purple. It is biennial, but 

 self-sows, so may be kept in the garden with little 

 trouble. In our garden two other old-fashioned plants 

 grow with it and form a friendly group: white Spiderwort, 

 with its strange three-cornered blossoms, and Jacob's 

 Ladder, with spikes of light blue-lavender flowers. 

 Maeterlinck spoke of such plants as these as having "a 

 long human past behind them, a large array of kind and 

 consoling actions; those which have lived with us for 

 hundreds of years and which form part of ourselves since 

 they reflect something of their grace and their joy of life 

 in the soul of our ancestors." 



Belonging also to this old-fashioned company, but 

 blooming later in the month, are Sweet Rocket and 

 Garden Heliotrope. The first, Hesperis matronalis, has 

 starlike flowers, white, or in shades of pale purple 

 and violet, and gives forth to the night a most delicious 

 fragrance which it quite withholds from the day. Per- 

 haps it is a bit too free a seeder to be admitted to very 

 choice gardens, but treated as bienniels, the old plants, 

 which grow lax and straggling, pulled out and thrown 



