Insubordination is contagious. And I found after a while that my asters were not running true; queer things were happening among the sweet peas, and in the ranks of the hollyhocks all was not as it should be. And the last charge was made upon me by the children’s gardens. Children know not color-schemes. What they demand is flowers, flowers—flowers to pick and pick, flowers to do things with. Snapdragon, for instance, is a jolly playmate, and little fingers love to pinch its cheeks and see its jaws yawn wide. But snapdragon tends dangerously toward the magenta. Then there was the calendula—a delight to the young, because it blooms incessantly long past the early frosts, and has brittle stems that yield themselves to the clumsiest plucking by small hands. But calendula ranges from a faded yellow, through [pg 112] really pretty primrose shades, to a deep red-orange touched with maroon.
And, finally, there was the portulaca. Children love it, perhaps, best of all. It offers them fresh blossoms and new colors each morning, and it is even more easy to pick than the calendula. Who would deny them portulaca? Yet if this be admitted, one may as well give up the battle. For, as we all know, there is absolutely no color, except green, that portulaca does not perpetrate in its blossoms. It knows no shame.
In short, I am giving up. I am beginning to say with conviction that color-schemes are the mark of a narrow and rigid taste—that they are born of convention and are meant not for living things but for wall-papers and portières and clothes. Moreover, I am really growing callous—or is it, rather, broad? Colors in my garden that would once have made my teeth ache now leave them feeling perfectly comfortable. I find myself looking with unmoved flesh—no creeps nor withdrawals—upon a bed of mixed magentas, scarlets, rose-pinks, and yellow-pinks. I even look with pleasure. I begin to think there [pg 113] may be a point beyond which discord achieves a higher harmony. At least, this sounds well. But, again, I find it hard to explain to some of my friends.
Indoors, it is another story. When I bring in the spoils of the garden I am again mistress and bend all to my will. Here I’ll have no tricks of color played on me. Sunshine and sky, perhaps, work some spell, for as soon as I get within four walls my prejudices return; scarlets and crimsons and pinks have to live in different rooms. I must have my color-schemes again, and perhaps I am as narrow as the worst. Except, indeed, for the children’s bowls; here the pink and the magenta, the lamb and the lion, may lie down together. But it takes a little child to lead them.
* * * * *
Out in my garden I feel myself less and less owner, more and more merely steward. I decree certain paths, and the phlox says, “Paths? Did you say paths?” and obliterates them in a season’s growth, so that children walk by faith and not by sight. I decree iris in one corner, and the primroses say, “Iris? Not at all. This is our bed. Iris indeed!” [pg 114] And I submit, and move the iris elsewhere.
And yet this slipping of responsibility is pleasant, too. So long as my garden will let me dig in it and weed it and pick it, so long as it entertains my friends for me, so long as it tosses up an occasional rock so that Jonathan does not lose all interest in it, so long as it plays prettily with the children and flings gay greetings to every passer-by, I can find no fault with it.
The joys of stewardship are great and I am well content.