An Incipient Garden 15 
ranged the magical names upon diagrams until frequent era- 
sures compelled fresh ones—and all the time I was learning 
a little about flowers. 
Impatiently did I wait for the tardy coming of spring, and 
the subsidence of the snow was marked by Mount Ararat ap- 
pearing in its usual place on a slope about fifty feet from the 
house. As the snow melted, I made a painful discovery. It 
was true that the spot I selected and diagramed at least 
twenty times had a protecting stone wall, also, apple-trees 
overhanging, also—a grape-vine—also it was not the smooth 
inviting hollow my fancy had pictured, but a dump heap for 
boulders and rocks, big and little, that had been unloaded 
there for years with a view to filling up the swale that lay be- 
tween the two slopes, one of which fell away from the house, 
the other rising across this natural runway; also—countless 
wild blackberry and red raspberry bushes, hardhack and 
other tough shrubby growths that had become deep rooted 
among the rocks. This crescendo of difficulties lacked noth- 
ing to complete my discomfiture. When the snow lay five feet 
deep it was a smooth undulating stretch. How had I hap- 
pened to forget these insuperable conditions? I grew lower 
in mind, but said nothing. One bright Sunday morning when 
the sun shone as all suns should shine on prospective gardens, 
I bade Adam go forth with me. Isat him down on the bank 
still soggy with the winter storms, and said, as collectedly 
as I could: “Well, what do you think of it?” 
“Think,” he repeated slowly, a way he has when he wants 
to gain time and is about to say something that he knows will 
be disagreeable to me. 
“Yes,” said I a trifle impatiently, recognizing how gently 
he was about to slay my pet plan, and anxious to have it over. 
“This is the spot I have chosen for the garden. What do you 
think of it?” 
