146 Hardy Plants for Cottage Gardens 
Nothing is more interesting, than to observe the key-note of 
any given garden, and nothing is more significant as an inter- 
pretation of the owner’s taste. There may be hundreds of 
varieties and many colors, yet at a distance all are blended 
into some particular composite tone which dominates, and 
too often it is a vicious purplish red, better known as solferino, 
or magenta. 
For some inexplicable reason, most garden effects remind 
me of an old book of household wisdom belonging to my 
grandmother. In it were recipes for cookies, pastry and pud- 
dings; homely remedies for croup, typhoid fever and rickets; 
infallible cures for spavin, thrush and sprung knees, and use- 
ful hints about the care of young calves; instruction in domes- 
tic economy and the management of servants—a veritable re- 
pository of human knowledge. But the versatility of the 
writer did not end here. Being something more than a mere 
housewife and free dispensary, she prudently shut the door 
upon the material domain by inserting two blank pages as an 
insulator, and then launched upon the difficult questions of 
esthetics. She gave carefully prepared and authoritative re- 
cipes for painting skies, water, moonlight, fountains, trees. 
These were rescued from the blundering instincts of artists, 
and once for all chromatics was placed within the easy reach 
of the multitude. For years I used to hover over this compen- 
dium like a bee about a honey pot, and then look wistfully at 
a southwestern sky, when it presented a certain ineffable tone 
that was neither blue, nor gray, nor yellow, and wondered 
whether it was composed of gamboge, Venetian red, ultra- 
marine blue, Naples yellow, or what, heightened by white— 
all the recipes generously allowed for “heightening,” what- 
ever that might mean. I never reached any decision on this 
question; for, to my deep regret, a southwestern sky was not 
mentioned in the Book of Wisdom; so I finally concluded that 
