House and Garden 
the old trees; and many of the pears are gone; 
but there is still enough bloom of pear and 
cherry to make the little place smell orchardy 
in late April and early May. But its grape 
flowers scent the air more heavily and sweetly. 
There are many grape vines, wine grapes 
as well as Concords—you may trust the Ger¬ 
mans for that. Later come the scent of 
catalpa and the 
various fragrances 
of the hosts of old- 
fashioned flowers. 
Come home 
with me some 
June evening two 
hours earlier than 
sunset, so that no 
pomp and glory 
of the skies may 
distract your at¬ 
tention from the 
sweet homeliness 
of the place. 1 he 
wood-robins have 
sung to us through 
our quarter-mile 
of woodland, the bluebird of the lane has 
gurgled to us his “purity, purity,” and 
as we are nearing the house now birds 
are noisy on all quarters. I am distracted 
as to whether to first call your attention 
to the meadow-lark in the grass field west¬ 
ward, the tanager in the oak over head or 
the three wood-robins singing antiphonally 
from woodland and roadside and our own 
Sheldon pear-tree. But I shall begin showing 
you the place bit by bit. First, over the white¬ 
washed three-board fence is the seed bed for 
flowers, between the road and the lilac 
bushes. It is but just planted with wall¬ 
flower and sweet-william, with phlox and fox¬ 
gloves, with Canterbury-bells and hollyhocks. 
Then come salad patch, sticked peas and 
grape vines, and on the far side of the arbor 
the strawberries. You are sniffing the air 
now, wondering what is the sweetness of the 
grape flowers, and the next moment you are 
drinking deep of their delicious scent. But 1 
hurry you on past the house and lead you 
to the little front porch, endangering your 
clothes as you brush by the sweetbriar in 
bloom at the house-corner. Woodbines and 
grape combine the scents of their flowers 
as they twist together up the porch posts, 
but you hardly notice them as you look at 
the bushy rhododendron in full bloom at the 
furthest corner of the bed that bends half 
round the porch to the south. 1 he irises 
have dropped now, but the old red lilies lift 
their cups of content as hospitably as ever, 
and there are many warm-hearted white 
roses between you 
and the rhododen¬ 
dron. This way 
you looked first; 
now you turn to 
look across the 
trim lawn, broken 
by old pear-trees 
and a Wistaria 
bush. Behind the 
sweetbriar to the 
left, whose leaves 
you have instinc¬ 
tively been crush¬ 
ing in your fingers, 
you have caught 
glimpses of fox¬ 
gloves, purple and 
white and pink, spiking up their heads as 
high as your own. Now you move so that 
you can see completely the large bed of 
them extending along the south fence until 
it meets the raspberries that carry the low 
bank of greenery back as far as the house. 
Back of the foxgloves hollyhocks are pushing 
up; in front of them great masses of sweet- 
william stand close marshalled, white and 
red and pink; and low in front of the sweet- 
william and next the fine grass of the lawn 
garden pinks send up tufts of spicy bloom. 
Your eyes move across to the right, where 
again, in the far corner of the place, are tall 
foxgloves and, nearer, columbines and holly¬ 
hocks where the spirea hedge ends and reveals 
the whitewashed paling fence that cuts off 
the place from the quiet lane. 
Or will you come home with me of an 
October afternoon when our sassafras trees 
are red and gold, or dark red, or deep yellow, 
as the year may have painted them, and the 
woods are arustle with falling leaves ? Or 
shall it be at still winter sunset, when you will 
thrill with the fires on the hill westward that 
die away in reds and golds banded above an 
earth a full foot deep with snow ? 1 hen you 
Flower Beds at the Wood’s Edge 
24I 
