96 THE JOY OF GARDENS 



What a wonderland of delight it is to the children 

 from the outer world, so full of mysterious hiding 

 places, ever rich in surprises of birds' nests and blossoms ! 

 It is a real fairyland, changing from day to day, and 

 should you be one of the favored friends who may pull 

 the latchstring of the gate under the arch of trumpet 

 creeper, a day is all too short to visit the blossoming 

 shrines and learn the latest tidings from the catbirds' 

 nest that has made the regions about the flowering 

 syringas forbidden ground. 



It may be that the sweetbrier will be in bud, or that 

 a single spray will have been kept for you on the pungent 

 flowering currant. Perhaps you will hear that mush- 

 rooms have come up where the meadowsweet was 

 planted, or that a real fairy ring was discovered in the 

 clover in the calycanthus bower; for surely so strange a 

 flower as this, smelling of pineapple, must bloom for 

 gnomes or brownies. 



You may be taken to the nook planted with shrubs 

 which you helped dig once upon a time in a ravine hard 

 by, and your counsel asked about the red dogwood, the 

 pussy willow, the buttonball, and hop tree, and you may 

 discover that the shadbush is in bloom and one of the 

 prettiest shrubs of all in the lacey robes of spring. 



The snowberry is not yet flowering, but already an 

 ingenious young rascal has rigged a scarecrow to warn off 

 the birds, that snowberries and moutain-ash fruit may 



