THE LAST MAY DAYS 
125 
coarse, ragged appearance, and begins to look like 
the velvet swaths at Nestly Heights. The colum- 
bines, the annual phlox, the irises, and the wild 
flowers of the wood-border, with the shrubs and the 
swelling rosebuds, keep us in a state of expectancy. 
Everything that we have planted has the notion of 
blooming well fixed in its head. The little quaker- 
ladies have, it is true, lost their blue blossoms, but 
their small leaves still cling like moss about the 
crescent bed. Mr. Percy was right in thinking 
that we could transplant them successfully. 
So far, I have said very little about the moist 
point of the triangle, except that the grackles held 
carnival there ; and that it was there we had planted 
the irises through the grass. This is one of the 
places from which we have great expectations. 
The seeds of the cardinal-flowers that Joseph 
sowed early in the window-boxes, and which were 
so slow in showing themselves that we thought they 
were dead, have now this last of May been trans- 
planted to this moist bit of ground. After they 
once started in the boxes, they grew well. Finally, 
Joseph had nearly fifty seedlings. He planted them 
wherever he chose in the point of the triangle, about 
six inches apart. It will be August before they 
can be expected to bloom, so we shall have another 
long spell of waiting for them. So far, I do not 
think their green stalks inspiring. They have a 
weedy look as they lift themselves up through the 
grass. Still, I must wait and see their flowers be- 
