100 HOME AND GARDEN 



cases it must be, it is better that its details should be 

 all easy and pretty, rather than stiff and awkward and 

 unsightly. 



The sunny side of my small rock-garden has 

 long groups of Othonnopsis, and the woolly-leaved Hicra- 

 ceum villosum and Prophet-flower (Arnebia), and good 

 stretches of Achillea umhellata and of Iris cristata, with- 

 out doubt one of the loveliest among the smaller 

 members of its beautiful family, and of the flowers 

 that bloom in May. This little Iris is only five inches 

 high, and the flowers are two and a half inches across, 

 so that they look large for the whole size of the plant. 

 When placed as it likes best, on a sunny rock-shelf in 

 nearly pure leaf-mould, it shows its appreciation of 

 kind treatment by free growth and abundance of bloom. 

 The leaves, at blooming time only four inches high, 

 though much taller afterwards, are in neat flat little 

 sheaves of from three to five, one leaf always taking a 

 prominent lead. The clear lilac-blue of the flower has 

 a daintily-clean look that is very charming, and taken 

 in the hand I always delight in the delicate beauty of 

 the raised and painted ornament of the lower petals. 

 In the middle of the broadest part is a white pool with 

 a strong purple edging ; the white turns to yellow, and 

 runs in a lane an eighth of an inch wide down into 

 the throat, between two little whitish rocky ridges. 

 The yellow stripe is also decorated with a tiny raised 

 serpent wriggling down its middle line, and with a few 

 fine short strokes of reddish-brown. 



