578 



AN OLD CITY GARDEN. 



late in the mellow October days ; and between them were 

 many and delicious kinds. Never, even in California's 

 fruit-valleys, have I seen them equaled. 



In among the peach trees were arbors of grape- 

 vines — here a Concord, there a Diana, a Delaware or a 

 Rogers No. 19. At the corner of the garden, next to the 

 house, was a Rogers No. 9, whose history will come later. 



There was room, too, for many a flower. A Jacque- 

 minot rose-bush stands in honored old age to remind us 

 of past glory. There was a little group of old-fashioned 

 pink roses with tightly curled petals and a spicy fra- 

 grance. Japan quinces and flowering - almonds came 

 early in the blooming time. For many spring days the 

 ground was starred with white periwinkle, peeping above 

 its shaded leaves. Blue periwinkle filled the borders that 

 were not sacred to red geraniums, cannas, cactuses, lan- 

 tanas, etc., for the man at the helm doted on red flowers. 

 Farther down were white roses, and against the 

 lower fences morning-glories hung their bells. 



The peach trees and the rose-bushes have all 

 died. Even with lavish fertilizing new growths 

 refused to develop. An apple tree of New York 

 state stock has grown and grown, until, with a 

 smaller brother and a veteran pear tree that has ~ 

 outlasted everything else, it makes an archin 

 mass of green. How we watch for the pink- 

 touched snow of bloom ! What a rare carpet it 

 makes as it falls ! But the fruit is worse than the 

 fox's sour grapes, for the apples not only hang 

 high, but they are also truly sour. 



The modest corner grape-vine that shared 

 honors with a wine-grape and a white Can- 

 ada grape 15 years ago is now queen of the 

 garden. In its waving, curling, wind 

 lengths it embowers the entire back of the 

 house, and stretches to the end of a long 

 third-story back building. Far down the 

 garden it has grown, too, supported by a 

 trellis as irregular and slender as its own 

 branches. Yet these branches spring from 

 a trunk like a tree's in thickness. The 

 grapes, borne luxuriantly in irregular clus- 

 ters, even though the vine shoots are 

 not disciplined as they ought to be 

 with the pruner's steel, are rich, red 

 and sweet. What feasts the spar- 

 rows have ! On the ripest and sweet- 

 est berries of every bunch these noisy 

 garden friends grow fat and saucy. 



These little warrior birds, and the 

 growing city around us, have driven away most of our 

 old-time spring visitors — the robins, orioles and wild 

 canaries — and with them have gone the fireflies of the 

 summer evenings. Two springs ago an owl rested for a 

 day or two in the apple tree. It was an odd sight, with 

 its great eyes bewildered by the light and the city it had 

 strayed into. I have often wondered over the fate of 

 Minerva's protege after it left our sheltered nook. 



The most beautiful bit of the garden to me now is not 



its roof of green, with flickering shade on the grass below ; 

 not the long grass, grown gracefully wild and high dur- 

 ing the last few springs ; not the fleeting glory of apple- 

 bloom, nor the broad patches of violets which have long 

 ignored their original bounds ; not the tiny white straw- 

 berries, with a perfume like 

 some rare essence, which still 

 reward a search under their 

 sheltering leaves; not the 

 peonies, the hollyhocks and 

 the honeysuckle that have 

 taken t h e place of useful 

 vegetables in the bot- 

 tom of the yard ; but 

 a tall thorn-locust tree 

 that stands alone at 

 the foot of the garden 



" The grape- 

 vine's WINDING 

 LENGTHS NOW REACH 

 A THIRD-STORY WINDOW." 



The trunk rises straight and solid to the height of the 

 fence, and from here upward the branches stretch out on 

 all sides their feathery tips. Against a warm June sky 

 the tiny leaves tremble in the soft wind, the tender red 

 shoots tint the outline of the tree almost like blossoms, 

 and one thinks that nothing, in a city garden at least, 

 could be more lovely. And yet in a rare sunset time, 

 when the eastern cloud reflections pale and deepen again 

 into the more mysterious tones of night, and the silvery 



