CHAPTER TWELVE 



WHO'S WHO AMONG THE ANNUALS 



Too perfect for a life so brief 

 Seemed every star and bud and bell. 



Celia Thaxter. 



THE feeling that annuals do not quite "belong" 

 in the sense that the regular inhabitants of the 

 garden do is perhaps an unjust one, but to 

 this sentiment toward them I must plead guilty. Their 

 reappearance in our midst is entirely a matter of our 

 whim, while the hardy herbaceous plants, save in case of 

 death, accident, or misbehaviour, are sure to greet us 

 from their accustomed places every spring. I love the 

 gay summer visitors, but do not want too many of them 

 at once. They give to the garden a fugitive, unstable 

 quality, like that felt in cities where every one lives in 

 an apartment and moves at least once a year, and there 

 are no old families, or traditions, nor anything comfort- 

 ably familiar and just as it has always been. Many 

 annuals do their best to overcome their transitory nature 

 by sowing then* seeds broadcast, which, in the case of 

 hardy annuals, come safely through the winter and 

 are on hand with the perennials to meet the spring, not, 

 however, in their proper places, but all over the garden, 



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