30 THE JOY OF GARDENS 



be yellow-tinged buds, and some fair morning, when you 

 awake to hear the robin in the trees, there will be golden 

 trumpets swaying to and fro, keeping time to his matin 

 song. 



Perennials are the crown jewels of gardens. It is a 

 foolish procedure to uproot and change every year. The 

 demon of novelty may beset us, and the magazines fill 

 pages with advice of this or that in good taste. It is our 

 privilege, however, to keep character in our garden, to 

 seek the bloom time has tested, and to make it all a place 

 of loveliness to keep cheer in our thoughts as time flies by. 



A little plat back of the house is an opportunity, 

 though from fence to fence it is but twenty-five feet. If 

 an unwilling city dweller looking for beauty in a resi- 

 dence locality, you probably have discovered a neighbor- 

 ing lot of this size, and have gone out of your way 

 sometimes to look through a knot hole in a high board 

 fence to find out if the dielytra is hanging out its sprays 

 of bleeding hearts at the same time the snowball bush 

 which you can see from the street is in bloom, and if the 

 peonies are still as thrifty, and if there are enough May 

 pinks along the sidewalk to give you a few for the asking. 



Next to entering into the pleasure of gardens set by 

 flower lovers gone before, is the keen satisfaction of plan- 

 ning one about a new home. Perhaps the order should be 

 reversed the new before the old or maybe there is 

 no choice at all when returns have been weighed. The 



