You may not believe it, you who read it, but it is a fact that the valley was carmine up to the balcony, indescribably shot with the fires of the West—a steaming cauldron of glory! That is the kind of vision one carries gratefully to one’s grave.
For a long time we vowed that our old age would see us, like the Scotch Dowager, steeping our being in the joys of Spring in a farmhouse outside Florence.—But now we don’t know. Villino Loki has laid hold of us; it is our real home, the rest are but dreams.
The Master of the House saw this morning a tiny Golden-crested Wren fluttering from stem to stem of the tall Darwin Tulips to pick at the Forget-me-nots below; and every time it pecked it twittered with joy, so light a thing that it scarcely swayed the slender stalks—a fairy vision.
The Hemicycle, where the grass must be allowed to grow lush, because of the bulbs, until the leaves “ripen off,” is none the less attractive on that account. There are eight little square beds, each containing a weeping standard—“Dorothy Perkins” or “Stella”—thickly planted below with Forget-me-nots and Bybloemen Tulips. Between the beds there is a large red pot also filled with Forget-me-nots and Bybloemen. The Tulips have a kind of wild grace, coming out of the long grass; and Myosotis, darling little creature, accommodates herself in every surrounding. There is a pretty, stemmed fountain, or rather bird-bath; in its centre, where, in a basin shaped like a spreading lotus flower, a sturdy putto astride a dolphin blows soundless blasts. This half-circle of vivid beauty, with the young green grass, the swaying Tulips, the blue of the Forget-me-nots against the moor is good to look upon.
Beyond the Hemicycle, the Azalea Glade runs down now in lines of orange-rose and creamy-salmon, bordered too with Forget-me-nots. Up against it the cool silver of a great Service-tree comes just where it makes a perfect background; and beyond that again the rivulets of blue in the Reserve Garden lie deep below.
TRANSIENT COLOUR GLORIES
This is the hour of our garden’s glory. No Delphinium muster, no spreading garlands of Roses, can equal the exquisite freshness, the fulness of life of this May world. With the Brooms, white and yellow; with the pink foam of the Floribunda trees, the incomparable gold and green of the Beech and Birch, one wants to put one’s arms round the little place and kiss it.
“So much work, so long and great a travail of nature,” said a friend to us to-day; “ever since November, preparing for this wonderful revelation of bloom ... and all for so short a span! All this beauty scarce reaches its climax but it is already on the wane!”