132 MY GROWING GARDEN 



which each year gives us a cluster of rich orange 

 blooms with a notable green stripe. 



Not far from where the tiger lilies are passing 

 away are, or were, some plants that I found I could 

 spare with pleasure, but which had no intention of 

 leaving me, it seems. I planted the much-adver- 

 tised and catalogue-lauded Anchusa italica, "Drop- 

 more variety," in a prominent place in the bed 

 intended to be confined primarily to blue flowers, 

 and in which my delphiniums have been for several 

 years giving me increasingly splendid bloom ser- 

 vice. The anchusa, raised from seed, grew easily, 

 and lustily, and pervadingly; and it bloomed, too. 

 Instead of the "gentian-blue flowers that make it 

 one of the most desirable of all perennials," accord- 

 ing to the catalogue, there came fusty little pink 

 and blue blobs on the end of a coarse, hairy stem, 

 arising out of leaves that were not nearly so attrac- 

 tive as those of a burdock ! And the thing crowded 

 my lavender, insulted a perfectly good platycodon, 

 and slopped over on some plants of the really 

 pleasing stokesia. By September, one plant rotted 

 at its heart, disgustingly, and I dug it out, as well 

 as its fellows, concluding that would be about all 

 from Mr. Dropmore Anchusa. But next year it 

 came along just the same, each bit of root left 

 in the ground evidently having the adventitious 



