PLANTING OF ALL SORTS 67 



form and color and season are not at all necessarily 

 expensive, as I found when I saw them in Mr. 

 Hunt's great trial-garden last season. I have 

 planted to naturalize the bulbs in several favor- 

 able places where they can fight the grass at their 

 pleasure, and appear incidentally in it in later 

 years. It is evident that the narcissi are to be 

 pleasing features of this growing garden, unless all 

 signs fail. The driveway crescent border glows 

 now in Emperor, with here and there the dainty 

 Rugulosus. This crescent must always glow, if I 

 can so manage. 



If there is anything more worth getting wet in 

 than a warm April rain, I do not know about it. 

 It is quite comfortable, thank you, to the normal 

 outdoor human, and it is seemingly exciting to 

 most plant growth. I have been standing under 

 the big Norway maple at the west end of the 

 formal garden, seeing things happen, and inhaling 

 the intensified sweetness that this sort of shower 

 brings out. The maple blooms overhead literally 

 drip fragrance, and wherever in the borders the 

 dainty arabis is planted, there is a spot of white, 

 faintly odorous. The yellow perennial alyssum 

 is like a spot of sunshine in the rain, while the 

 bells of the convallaria — a name so much easier 

 to say than lily-of -the- valley ! — have each a crystal 



