AN ISLAND GARDEN 5 



the little flower patch I cultivate in summer, or 

 the window gardens that bloom for me in the 

 winter ; " I can never make my plants blossom 

 like this ! What is your secret ? " And I answer 

 with one word, " Love." For that includes all, 

 the patience that endures continual trial, the con- 

 stancy that makes perseverance possible, the 

 power of foregoing ease of mind and body to 

 minister to the necessities of the thing beloved, 

 and the subtle bond of sympathy which is as im- 

 portant, if not more so, than all the rest. For 

 though I cannot go so far as a witty friend of 

 mine, who says that when he goes out to sit in 

 the shade on his piazza, his Wistaria vine leans 

 toward him and lays her head on his shoulder, I 

 am fully and intensely aware that plants are con- 

 scious of love and respond to it as they do to 

 nothing else. You may give them all they need 

 of food and drink and make the conditions of 

 their existence as favorable as possible, and they 

 may grow and bloom, but there is a certain in- 

 effable something that will be missing if you do 

 not love them, a delicate glory too spiritual to be 

 caught and put into words. The Norwegians 

 have a pretty and significant word, " Opelske," 

 which they use in speaking of the care of flowers. 

 It means literally " loving up," or cherishing them 

 into health and vigor. 



Like the musician, the painter, the poet, and 

 the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not 

 made. And he is born to happiness in this vale 

 of tears, to a certain amount of the purest joy that 

 earth can give her children, joy that is tranquil, 



