August 6.—The Lime avenue is pleasanter than ever now, on these bright afternoons when the low sun strikes amber shafts through the branches, and light shadows lie on the parquet of brown and yellow leaves beneath. With every breeze hundreds of the winged sea-vessels, like queer little teetotums, come twirling down. The wrens are busy with their second or third nests—without counting the cock-nests at the beginning of the season; the porch swallows are thinking of a second brood, and scatter straws of hay and patches of wet mud untidily upon the stones underneath their nests; thrushes go about the lawn followed by two or three great awkward young ones (their third family this season), too foolish to pick up worms for themselves. As for the sparrows, they are hard at work with probably the sixth or seventh nest of their series. Roses are coming on in their second bloom; low bushes and standards of La France show large buds and attar-scented blossoms; while crimson Roses of many names glow in richest bloom here and there all over the garden. Precious as are these late Roses, the chord of colour has changed so much since Roses were in their prime, that fresh pink or crimson seem almost misplaced among the fiery reds and scarlet. White Roses are seldom so beautiful as one feels they ought to be; but a small plant of the Japanese Rosa Rugosa, in its first season with us, has been a great pet this summer, with its large white petals; the Macartney also is welcome, flowering as it has for the first time in its life here. The buds have hitherto always fallen off, without an attempt at unclosing, and it has only kept its place on the wall for the sake of the lovely evergreen leaves and yearly promise of abundant bloom. But the only perfect white Rose, the White Moss, remains still for me a dream and nothing more. There are tall old bluish-pink Roses at the back of the Beechen close which have been blooming in almost rank luxuriance. They, with a few Cabbage Roses and Maiden’s Blush, and a yellow Banksia, were all of Roses the garden had when first we came here, eleven years ago. At that time they were thought too ugly almost to live, and were banished to the outskirts. But time has brought them round to the front again; and now these relics of a bygone Rose age are beloved for their redundant and perfumed bloom, and for their most uncommon colour, the red in them being so largely mixed with cold blue. The York and Lancaster Rose—long lost and long coveted—will, I hope, ere next season be established with us. For the other day in Somersetshire we found one growing near a ghostly house in a deserted garden, and from this plant we have some healthy suckers. I cannot keep pace with the new Roses; they are mostly too large and heavy. They seem to run too far from the flatness of a really typical Rose type.
We have not made pot pourri this summer; but the Lavender harvest is gathered in, with spikes unusually fine. I am not sure that they smell much the sweeter for their great size. It is a pleasant time when the Lavender is laid out in trays, and the house is full of the sweetness of it. On these bright windy mornings the Broad Walk looks its best. Looking up from south to north, the end of the walk, framed in with trees, is bounded by a low Quickset hedge, beyond which lies meadow-land, with glimpses of yellow corn-fields. Beyond all is the soft blue of distant wood. Along the Yew hedge, on one side, are long borders in the turf of single Dahlias, in succession to Sweet-williams (Bearded pink); and the other side under the wall is enriched with scarlet, the scarlet of those tall Lychnis which the children call “Summer Lightning” (Lychnis chalcedonia, flower of Bristow and Constantinople). And there are sheaves of finely dyed rose-red Phloxes, pyramids of blue and white Campanula, and clumps of dark blue Salvia; grey and feathery Gypsophila Paniculata also—priceless for the setting off of delicate Poppies and other refined and frail kinds when cut. Yet the mass of colour would be far more brilliant but for the bulbs which lie hidden under the earth. They must not be disturbed by planting in amongst them, so all that is in the border has its place there perennially.
Spaces in the wall behind—where the ancient Pear trees may have perished from old age—are sometimes dressed in spreading Vines. Last month a tall blue Larkspur, near one of these Vines, was caught by the wandering tendrils, and so they grew together, the Larkspur upheld by her friend the Vine with a strong and tender grasp. Green streamers of this Vine also wreathe the head of an iron gate empurpled with intermingling Clematis. Here also, close to the old wall, at regular intervals, are our Sunflowers; some of them grow to nearly ten feet in height. After many trials of other spots, we think they seem to do best planted thus. The shelter saves them all conflict with wind and rain, and they are tall, and straight, and full, having no cares of weather to divert their gradual growth to beauty. There was a time when I did not love Sunflowers. Their constant repetition as a kind of æsthetic badge can scarcely fail to tire. In those days they had no place in the garden, or only in some out-of-the-way obscure corner. But once I found a little song of William Blake’s, and ever since, for the music of it, the Sunflower has been beloved, with the feeling that to know her is to give her your heart.
“Ah, Sunflower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the sun,
Seeking after that sweet golden prime
Where the traveller’s journey is done,
Where the youth pined away with desire,
And the pale virgin, shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire