Robin Hood's Barn 



infinite satisfaction. But the moment that they 

 had lost their ruffled skirts and I had borne away 

 their stalks to ward off an army of small seed- 

 lings, there followed the old complaint, "I like 

 color in a garden, swads of it." 



How could one procure it? Even the gardener 

 with an unlimited acreage of seed-beds would 

 have had difficulty in satisfying so exigent a 

 critic; one who took the fields and swamps as his 

 own garden and would lead me, when I made 

 protest of my inability, to a special tangle that 

 he loved, ablaze with our own Turk's cap liUes. 

 They were often some five feet tall, towering 

 well above his shoulders as he stood among them, 

 cap in hand, in token of no mock respect. This 

 place, I think he regarded as peculiarly his own. 

 Certainly he had a scowl for each marauder, and 

 would, had he been able, have stationed as its 

 guard, an angel with a flaming sword. 



It was there that I had my inspiration. I 

 could not, to be sure, lift unharmed one of its 

 glories from this cool swamp. But might I not 

 in a smaller, less pretentious way make the fields 

 my seed-bed. Not much later and in secret, I 



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