32 AN ISLAND GARDEN 



summer, and must be watched and faithfully de- 

 stroyed. 



There is one weed, or wild plant, dodder by 

 name, which has given my island garden the 

 greatest possible trouble. It is often wrongly 

 called gold-thread, because it looks like a tangled 

 mass of amber thread, but the true gold-thread is 

 quite different. The whole plant consists of no- 

 thing but these seemingly endless brittle reddish 

 yellow stalks with bunches of small, dull, whitish 

 flowers without stems, borne at intervals, with no 

 leaves at all. It has no root in the earth, it is a 

 parasite, and not at all particular as to what it 

 fastens itself upon ; anything that comes in its 

 way will answer its purpose. It is very pretty in 

 its place, growing among the goldenrod and blue 

 skullcap at the top of the rocky little coves that 

 slope down to the water about the island, throw- 

 ing itself from plant to plant, and making a mass 

 of translucent amber color. But alas ! when it 

 gets into a civilized garden, woe, woe unto that 

 garden ! A handful of it in bloom was brought 

 to my piazza twenty years ago, and some of it 

 was accidentally thrown into the flower beds ; I 

 have been fighting it ever since. I have never 

 yet been able to get rid of it ! Next year I found 

 my Nasturtiums, Cornflowers, Marigolds, and all 

 the rest tangled together in this yellow web, a 

 mass of inextricable confusion. Year after year 

 I waged war against it, but even yet it is not en- 

 tirely exterminated. I never allow a plant of it 

 in the garden, no seeds of it ripen there, and none 

 of it grows near the place outside ; not a single 



