28 THE GARDEN OF A 



sional visit to father, I hesitatingly offered her a 

 great bunch of rose, apple, and nutmeg geranium, 

 annual wall flower, lemon verbena, mignonette, and 

 lavender sprigs. 



When mother was here, we never had a real gar- 

 dener. She came from a tranquil, old-time home 

 of simpler days, the last child of all ; and though 

 her miniature makes her very lovely, a flower her- 

 self, father insists that to paint her expression would 

 have been impossible. She brought with her the 

 will and skill of garden craft as well as many plants 

 that modern gardeners ignore, though through their 

 beauty, combined with their persistent permanence, 

 their names are appearing once more in the seed 

 catalogues. 



The garden helper in her brief time was a cheer- 

 ful man of all work who dug and delved as she 

 guided him, and so much of herself radiated from 

 her nook under the Mother Tree, with its vista 

 down the long walk on either side of which the 

 flowers were planted, and was so wrought into the 

 soil, that it still remains after a lapse of twenty 

 years of more or less motiveless experiment, to give 

 the keynote to the garden of my life. 



Though I was very young, I remember perfectly 

 the eagerness with which she watched for the seed 



