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CHAPTER IV 

 TULIPS AND BLOSSOMS 



Tall tulips lift in scarlet tire 

 Brimming the April dusk with fire. 



— LlZETTE WOODWORTH REESE. 



"Y GARDENING life began with a prejudice against 

 Tulips. My experience of them was confined to 

 what I had seen of their geometrical array in the 

 parks and squares of the city of Baltimore — stiff and 

 flamboyant precursors of the Cannas and Coleus to come — 

 and I had no desire to repeat these scenes in my first little 

 garden that was destined to be the home of only the most 

 gracious and beauteous flowers. 



But late one April afternoon, when taking a walk, I 

 paused to peer over a white picket fence into an old and 

 neglected garden. The tangled area, swept neat by winter's 

 fiercely tidying regime, was presided over by an ancient 

 Apple-tree that seemed, with every twig wreathed in 

 fragrant bloom, to stand lost in an ecstatic dream of its 

 departed youth. Beneath it in the fresh grass, crowding 

 between the crimson Peony shoots, were swaying hosts of 

 little scarlet Tulips. 



"Brimming the April dusk with fire." 

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