My Ambition Grows 35 
bloom. Some take a year or two to get established after being 
transplanted; others, just as they are about to bloom, get 
some infantile disease like the blight of the larkspur, and all 
is up with them for that year. I pray and water those beds 
with my tears, but supplication is in vain. Theoretically my 
arrangement last summer was perfect; but what can one re- 
sort to when larkspurs fail, when the Japanese iris is all leaf 
(it used to have glorious crowns of bloom before it was trans- 
planted), the Siberian iris multiplies, but otherwise balks, the 
two-year-old Penistemon grandiflorus remains an obstinate 
little green clump, the Catananche and Wahlenbergia follow 
the Pentstemon’s bad example, the Lobelia sy philitica is eaten 
down by a cutworm, and the blue and purple asters get 
caught between the upper and nether stone of the annual 
drought. What avails it that the lovely white Physostegia, 
Chrysanthemum maximum, meadow rue, infant’s breath, wild 
carrot, achillea, garden heliotrope, Hes peris matronalis, peren- 
nial white phlox, all planted as accessories to give grace and 
airiness to the heavier blue tones, do their part bravely—the 
bed is distinctly white, not blue, save for early blue spring 
flowers gone by June, monkshood and campanula of July, 
the Veronica spicata of July and August, and the lilac Physos- 
tegia, Liatris and Michaelmas daisies of August and Septem- 
ber. I love these plants, and want to get a definite color effect 
through them, and I do not want to compromise by substitut- 
ing quantities of annuals; cornflower, nigella, anchusa, nemo- 
phila, annual larkspur, Phacelia, Eutoca viscida, just because 
they are arich blue. ‘To arrange blue perennials, so that they 
will present a succession of bloom from May to October in the 
same bed, is the high ideal I aim to reach, and I seem likely to 
give my remaining years to thestudy. Incidentally I find com- 
binations that are beautiful such as white Physostegia Vir- 
giniana and Veronica spicata ; German Iris and white col- 
