CHAPTER VIII 

 MIDSUMMER BLUE 



Blue! gentle cousin of the forest green, 

 Married to green in all the sweetest flowers. 



— Keats. 



WHEN I say blue I hope not to be taken too literally, 

 for it is difficult not to drift into bluish violet or 

 toward that cool company of lavender-blues to 

 which so many of the so-called blue flowers of garden books 

 and catalogues belong. No colours are so confused as to 

 nomenclature, and I think we should be grateful to Dr. 

 Ridgeway, who, in his splendid "Colour Standards and 

 Colour Nomenclature" gives us the opportunity to be 

 definite if we so choose. 



There are comparatively few truly blue flowers; that is, 

 blue after the cerulean manner of the Anchusa, or in the 

 baby way of the Forget-me-not. But with the long blue 

 days of summer comes a tide of colour to the garden, blue 

 in feeling and in effect and grateful to the eyes because of 

 its coolness of aspect in the trying heat and amidst the ever- 

 increasing riot of gay colours. 



These blues are of many tones. The Campanulas mani- 

 fest a range that may be characterized as "dim." They 



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