The Garden, You, And I Part 10

3. Rosa Damascena Rose colour.

Triginitipela.

_Rugosa_

The tribe of j.a.panese origin, conspicuous as bushes of fine foliage and handsome shape, as well as for the large single blossoms that are followed by seed vessels of brilliant scarlet hues.

4. Agnes Emily Carman. Flowers in cl.u.s.ters, "Jacqueminot"

red, with long-fringed golden stamens.

Continuous bloomer. Hardy and perfect.

5. Rugosa alba. Pure white, highly scented.

6. Rugosa rubra. Single crimson flowers of great beauty.

7. Chedane Guinoisseau. Flowers, satin pink and very large.

Blooms all the summer.

Now, Mary Penrose, having made up your mind to have a rosary, cause garden line and shovel to be set in that side lawn of yours without hesitation. Do not wait until autumn, because you cannot plant the hardy roses until then and do not wish to contemplate bare ground. This sight is frequently wholesome and provocative of good horticultural digestion.

You need only begin with one-half of Evan's plan, letting the pergola enclose the walk back of the house, and later on you can add the other wing.

If the pergola itself is built during the summer, you can sit under it, and by going over your list and colour scheme locate each rose finally before its arrival. By the way, until the climbers are well started you may safely alternate them with vines of the white panicled clematis, that will be in bloom in August and can be easily kept from clutching its rose neighbours!

By and by, when you have planted your roses, tucked them in their winter covers, and can sit down with a calm mind, I will lend you three precious rose books of mine. These are Dean Hole's _Book about Roses_, for both the wit and wisdom o't; _The Amateur Gardener's Rose Book_, rescued from the German by John Weathers, F.R.H.S., for its common sense, well-arranged list of roses, and beautiful coloured plates, and H.B. Ellw.a.n.ger's little treatise on _The Rose_, a competent chronology of the flower queen up to 1901, written concisely and from the American standpoint. If I should send them now, you would be so bewildered by the enumeration of varieties, many unsuited to this climate, intoxicated by the descriptions of Rose-garden possibilities, and carried away by the literary and horticultural enthusiasm of the one-time master of the Deanery Garden, Rochester, that, like the child turned loose in the toy shop, you would lose the power of choosing.

Lavinia Cortright lost nearly a year in beginning her rosary, owing to a similar condition of mind, and Evan and I long ago decided that when we read we cannot work, and _vice versa_, so when the Garden of Outdoors is abed and asleep each year, we enter the Garden of Books with fresh delight.

Have you a man with quick wit and a straight eye to be the spade hand during the Garden Vacation? If not, make haste to find him, for, as you have had Barney for five years, he is probably too set in his ways to work at innovations cheerfully!

VIII

A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell)

_June 21._ The rosary has been duly surveyed, staked according to the plan, and the border lines fixed with the garden line dipped in whitewash, so that if we only plant a bed at a time, our ambition will always be before us. But as yet no man cometh to dig. This process is of greater import than it may seem, because with the vigorous three-year-old sod thus obtained do we purpose to turf the edges of the beds for hardy and summer flowers that border the squares of the vegetable garden. These strips now crumble earth into the walks, and the slightest footfall is followed by a landslide. We had intended to use narrow boards for edging, but Bart objects, like the old retainer in Kipling's story of _An Habitation Enforced_, on the ground that they will deteriorate from the beginning and have to be renewed every few years, whereas the turf will improve, even if it is more trouble to care for.

At present the necessity of permanence is one of the things that is impressing us both, for after us--the Infant! Until a year ago I had a positive dread of being so firmly fixed anywhere that to spread wings and fly here and there would be difficult, but now it seems the most delightful thing to be rooted like the old apple tree on the side hill, the last of the old orchard, that has leaned against the upland winds so many years that it is well-nigh bent double, yet the root anchors hold and it is still a thing of beauty, like rosy-cheeked old folk with snowy hair. I do not think that I ever realized this in its fulness until I left the house and came out, though but a short way, to live with and in it all.

You were right in thinking that Barney would not encourage innovations,--he does not! He says that turf lifted in summer always lies uneasy and breeds worms.

This seems to be an age for the defiance of horticultural tradition, for we are finding out every day that you can "lift" almost anything of herbaceous growth at any time and make it live, if you are willing to take pains enough, though of course transplanting is done with less trouble and risk at the prescribed seasons.

The man-with-the-shovel question is quite a serious one hereabouts at present, for the Water Company has engaged all the rough-and-ready labourers for a long season and that has raised both the prices and the noses of the wandering accommodators in the air. Something will probably turn up. Now we are transplanting hardy ferns; for though the tender tops break, there is yet plenty of time for a second growth and rooting before winter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAST OF THE OLD ORCHARD.

Copyright, 1903, H. Hendrickson.]

Meanwhile there is a leisurely old carpenter who recently turned up as heir of the Opal Farm, Amos Opie by name, who is thinking of living there, and has signified his willingness to undertake the pergola by hour's work, "if he is not hustled," as soon as the posts arrive.

The past ten days have been full of marvellous discoveries for the "peculiar Penroses," as Maria Maxwell heard us called down at the Golf Club, where she represented me at the mid-June tea, which I had wholly forgotten that I had promised to manage when I sent out those P.P.C.

cards and stopped the clocks!

It seems that the first impression was that financial disaster had overtaken us, when instead of vanis.h.i.+ng in a touring car preceded by tooting and followed by a cloud of oil-soaked steam, we took to our own woods, followed by Barney with our effects in a wheelbarrow. It is a very curious fact--this attributing of every action a bit out of the common to the stress of pocket hunger. It certainly proves that advanced as we are supposed to be to-day as links in the evolutionary chain, we have partially relapsed and certainly show strong evidences of sheep ancestry.

Haven't you noticed, Mrs. Evan, how seldom people are content to accept one's individual tastes or desire to do a thing without a good and sufficient reason therefor? It seems incomprehensible to them that any one should wish to do differently from his neighbour unless from financial incapacity; the frequency with which one is suspected of being in this condition strongly points to the likelihood that the critics themselves chronically live beyond their means and in constant danger of collapse.

If this was thought of us a few weeks ago, it seems to have been sidetracked by Maria Maxwell's contribution to, and management of, the golf tea. She is said not only to have compounded viands that are ordinarily sold in exchange for many dollars by New York confectioners, but she certainly made more than a presentable appearance as "matron" of the receiving committee of young girls. Certainly Maria with a music roll, a plain dark suit, every hair tethered fast, and common-sense shoes, plodding about her vocation in snow and mud, and Maria "let loose," as Bart calls it, are a decided contrast. Except that she has not parted with her sunny common-sense, she is quite a new person. Of course I could not have objected to it, but I was afraid that she might take it into her head to instruct the Infant in vocal music after the manner of the locustlike sounds that you hear coming over the lowered tops of school windows as soon as the weather grows warm, or else take to practising scales herself, for we had only known the technical part of her calling. In short, we feared that we should be do-re-mi-ou'd past endurance. Instead of which, sc.r.a.ps of the gayest of ballads float over the knoll in the evening, and the Infant's little shrill pipe is being inoculated with real music, _via_ Mother Goose melodies sung in a delightfully subdued contralto.

From the third day after her arrival people began to call upon Maria. I made such a positive declaration of surrender of all matters pertaining to the household, including curiosity, when Maria took charge,--and she in return promised that we should not be bothered with anything not "of vital importance to our interests,"--that, unless she runs through the housekeeping money before the time, I haven't a ghost of an excuse for asking questions,--but I do wonder how she manages! Also, to whom the shadows belong that cross the south piazza at night or intercept the rays of the dining-room lamp, our home beacon of dark nights.

In addition to the usual and convenient modern s.h.i.+rt-waist-and-skirt endowment, Maria had when she came but two gowns, one of black muslin and the other white, with improvised hats to match,--simple, graceful gowns, yet oversombre.

But lo! she has blossomed forth like a spring seed catalogue, and Bart insists that I watched the gate with his field-gla.s.s an hour the afternoon of the tea, to see her go out. I did no such thing; I was looking at an oriole's nest that hangs in the elm over the road, but I could not help seeing the lovely pink flower hat that she wore atilt, with just enough pink at the neck and streamers at the waist of her dress to harmonize.

I visited the larder that evening for supper supplies,--yes, we have become so addicted to the freedom of outdoors that for the last few days Bart has brought even the dinner up to camp, waiting upon me beautifully, for now we have entirely outgrown the feeling of the first few days that we were taking part in a comedy, and have found ourselves, as it were--in some ways, I think, for the first time.

Anastasia seemed consumed with a desire for a dish of gossip, but was not willing to take the initiative. She chuckled to herself and tried several perfectly transparent ways of attracting my attention, until I took pity on her, a very one-sided pity too, for, between ourselves, Anastasia is the domestic salt and pepper that gives the Garden Vacation a flavour that I should sadly miss.

"Miss Marie," she exclaimed, "do be the tastiest creaytur ever I set me eyes on." (She refused absolutely to call her Maria; that name, she holds, is only fit for a settled old maid, "and that same it's not sure and fair to mark any woman wid being this side the grave.")

Then I knew that I only had to sit down and raise my eyes to Anastasia's face in an att.i.tude of attention, to open the word gates, and this I did.

"Well, fust off win she got the invite ter sing at the swarry that tops off the day's doings down to that Golf Club, she was that worried about hats you never seen the like! She wus over ter Bridgeton, and Barney swore he drove her ter every milliner in the place, and says she ter me, pleasant like, that evenin', when returned, in excuse fer havin' nothin'

to show, 'Oh, Annie, Annie, it would break yer heart to see the little whisp of flowers they ask five dollars for; to fix me hats a trifle would part me from a tin-dollar bill!'"

(The sentiments I at once perceived might be Maria's, but their translation Anastasia's.)

"Now Miss Marie, she's savin' like,--not through meanness, but because she's got the good Irish heart that boils against payin' rint, and she's h.o.a.rdin' crown by s.h.i.+llin' till she kin buy her a cabin and to say a pertaty patch for a garden, somewhere out where it's green! Faith! but she'll do it too; she's a manager! Yez had orter see the illigant boned turkey she made out o' veal, stuck through with shrivelled black ground apples, she called 'puffles'! an glued it up foine wid jelly. Sez I, 'They'll never know the difference,' but off she goes and lets it out and tells the makin' uv it ter every woman on the hill,--that's all I hev agin her. She's got a disease o' truth-telling when there's no need that would anguish the saints o' Hiven theirselves!

"'I kin make better 'n naturaler-lookin' hats fer nothin', here at home, than they keep in N' York,' she says after looking out the back window a piece. 'And who'll help yer?' says I, 'and where'll yer git the posies and what all?'

"'I bought some bolts o' ribbon to-day,' says she, smilin'; 'and fer the rest, the garden, you, and I will manage it together, if you'll lend me a shelf all to meself in the cold closet whenever I need it!' Sure fer a moment I wuz oneasy, fer I thought a wild streak run branchin' through all the boss's family!"

(At the words Garden, You, and I, there flashed through me the thought of some telepathic influence at work.)

"'The garden's full o' growin' posies that outshames the flower-makers; watch out and see, Anastasia!'

"Well and I did!! This mornin' early she picks a lot o' them sticky pink flowers by the stoop, the colour o' chiny sh.e.l.ls, wid spokes in them like umbrellas, and the thick green leaves, and after leavin' 'em in water a spell, puts 'em in me cold closet, a small bit o' wet moss tied to each stem end wid green sewin' silk! A piece after dinner out she comes wid the hat that's covered with strong white lace, and she c.o.c.ks it this way and pinches it that and sews the flowers to it quick wid a big thread and a great splas.h.i.+n' bow on behind, and into the cold box agin!

"'That's fer this afternoon,' says she, and before she wore it off (a hat that Eve, mother o' sin, and us all would envy), she'd another ready for the night! 'Will it spoil now and give yer away, I wonder?' says I, anxious like.

"'Not fer two hours, at least; and it'll keep me from stayin' too long; if I do, it'll wither away and leave me all forlorn, like Cinderella and her pumpkin coach!' she said a-smilin' kind uv to herself in me kitchen mirror, when she put the hat on. 'But I'm not insultin' G.o.d's flowers tryin' to pa.s.s them off for French ones, Annie,' says she. 'I'm settin'

a new garden fas.h.i.+on; let them follow who will!' and away wid her! That same other is in here now, and it's no sin to let yer peep, gin it's ye own posies and ye chest they're in." So, throwing open the door Anastasia revealed the slate shelf covered by a sheet of white paper, while resting on an empty pickle jar, for a support, was the second hat, of loosely woven black straw braid, an ornamental wire edging the brim that would allow it to take a dozen shapes at will. It was garlanded by a close-set wreath of crimson peonies grading down to blush, all in half bud except one full-blown beauty high in front and one under the brim set well against the hair, while covering the wire, caught firm and close, were glossy, fragrant leaves of the wild sweetbrier made into a vine.

Ah, well, this is an unexpected development born of our experiment and a human sort of chronicle for The Garden, You, and I.

One of the most puzzling things in this living out-of-doors on our own place is the reversal of our ordinary viewpoints. Never before did I realize how we look at the outdoor world from inside the house, where inanimate things force themselves into comparison. Now we are seeing from outside and looking in at ourselves, so to speak, very much like the robin, who has his third nest, lop-sided disaster having overtaken the other two, in the old white lilac tree over my window.