COLOUR IN MY GARDEN 



light put softly out, and the garden stands tender and 

 wistful in second mourning colours — purple and lavender 

 and gray, but showing here and there a mutinous spark of 

 brilliant colour. 



A walk about the garden in November is productive of a 

 sort of mournful ecstasy. There have been many hard frosts, 

 and all but the most faithful plants are gone, and these seem 

 far more precious than all the beauties of the summer. It 

 is Indian Summer and within my sheltering garden walls 

 many a plant is tricked by the "blue and gold mistake" 

 and ventures a timid resurrection. Beside me where I sit 

 upon the sun-warmed garden steps, wrapped in the golden 

 warmth — "almost myself deceived," a little Corydalis in 

 the wall has burst forth in a springlike flowering above a 

 gay colony of purple and white Horned Violets assembled 

 in the path. Nepeta flowers again delicately from a low 

 wall top and a single apricot-coloured Poppy sways above 

 it. China Roses bloom undismayed, and a great white 

 Rugosa Rose, like the ghost of June, presses its wan cheek 

 against the sunny wall. 



Perhaps all summer I have not paused to notice Sweet 

 Marjoram, but now how grateful I am for its warm purplish- 

 pink spread and spicy fragrance. Aconitum autumnale 

 still flowers — a chill-appearing presence, rising above the 

 cold rounds of Chrysanthemum nipponicum. One border 

 verge is quite freshly blue and white where Salvia Blue- 

 beard and Sweet Alyssum riot unharmed. Snapdragons 

 and California Poppies gleam here and there in sheltered 

 corners, and in a stone jar Petunias, bizarre and careless, 



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