What has been for once a complete pleasure is the wide bed under the drawing-room window. The Ceanothus—which loves us—has been a treasure of delicate bloom; and, against it, the great old bushes of lavender have thrust their spikes in profusion. Just the right tone to harmonize. Then the Longiflorum Lilies—excellent, sturdy, conscientious darlings!—have lifted their satin shining trumpets above the Heliotrope that loves us too; and Lobelia, the one vivid line of colour, has rimmed the thick cushion of “Mrs. Sinkins’” foliage most artistically. The grey-green gives the finishing touch to a really reposeful combination. There are also two or three clumps of Nicotiana Affinis, softly mauve, and faded purple crimson. To gaze at that corner against the amethyst of the moor is a never-ending delight.
A CHAPTER OF DISASTERS
But another garden disaster has been the annihilation of all the seedlings which we sowed in the open border! It is laughable now, but sad too, to turn back the pages and read the vainglorious project of running a dazzling ribbon of Nemophila against the Dorothy Perkins hedge. ‹It might have been frightful; so perhaps Providence kindly intervened!› But that Nigella “Miss Jekyll” should have refused her mysterious and pretty presence in the Blue Border is a deep disappointment.
We are again gnashing our teeth over the Blue Border. The fact is, we suppose, it is too much to expect beauty all the year round, no matter how boastfully garden writers inform you of their artifices in that direction: how cleverly, for instance, the annual Gypsophila will bury the unsightly decay of the Iris leaves, or how you can pull branches of “Miss Mellish” down over the Delphiniums.
Why do not our Delphiniums bloom twice? Every garden book and every catalogue cheers your heart by promising a handsome second bloom to the industrious clipper-off of seed-pods. But never a Delphinium has responded to our kind attentions in that direction. Perhaps our soil does not give them strength enough for such exertion. But it is idle speculating. One must learn what one’s garden will do and what it won’t do—and make the best of it.
The greatest of all the tragedies that have befallen us lately is indubitably the passing away of poor old Tom. We are now catless!
Poor little friend! Where has that quaint, faithful, dutiful identity gone to? Juvenal says Heaven would not be Heaven to him if he were not to meet his own dogs there—a sentiment which we have, we believe, ourselves set down elsewhere. St. Francis the Poverello saw God in all His lesser creatures. It is not possible to think that we shall lose anything in a completer world.
Tom was the most conscientious of cats. He now lies beside Susan. We are going to get two little tombstones made for us by the Watts Settlement at Compton. Susan’s epitaph has already been mentioned. Nothing more to the point could be imagined:
“Here lies Susan, a good dog.” “Here lies Thomas, for eighteen years our faithful cat-comrade.”