THE SWEET O’ THE YEAR 
49 
have stayed with us, for their abdication is a sensible 
miss that has more than once furnished forth a sad 
problem for the improvident. I myself—but I have 
learned wisdom since, and refuse to be haunted by un¬ 
fruitful bygones. 
Soon, very soon, some of the beds and borders where 
they grew will show discreetly gay with closely-serried 
ranks of the poor man’s orchid, the dainty Spanish iris; 
while others are to be thickly peopled with certain 
annuals. The bulbs will be lifted and left to ripen, or, 
as the old country phrase has it, to “harvest them¬ 
selves,” in that especial plot of ground which has been 
set apart for a tulip hospital, and their places filled with 
whatever one may find best in their stead. As for in¬ 
stance, I have planned some very pleasant harmonies in 
rose and white, in white and blue and purple, and in 
white and lavender, to flower presently in the form of 
asters. Some are delicately striped, like old dimity; 
some wear their petals with a difference, but incurved, 
plumed, paeony-flowered, or quilled—all are delightful 
and well worth the growing. 
If, however, one does not like to wait, it were best 
to have done some judicious underplanting in late 
autumn, or very early spring, of auriculas, say, or violas, 
or Iceland poppy. It is almost as hard a task in the 
midst of autumn to have faith in spring, or in spring¬ 
time to prefigure the fall, as for youth and eld to believe 
in one another ; but if only you act upon blind belief in 
the late year you will reap your reward when you and 
your garden are at one once more. In this golden hour 
of the great rapprochement it were all but impossible to 
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