In the front of the picture, just under the red rose, is a patch of Mimulus, one of the larger variations of the brilliant little M. cardinalis. All the kinds like a cool, strong soil; they are really bog plants, and revel in moisture. The old Sweet Musk, so favourite a plant in cottage windows, likes a half-shady place at the foot of a cool wall. Many a dull, sunless yard might be brightened by this sweet and pretty plant. The Welsh Poppy, with its bright pale-green leaves and good yellow bloom, is also excellent for the same use, but is best sown in place from a just-ripened pod.
ABBEY LEIX
In a picturesque, but little-known district in Queen’s County, Ireland, lies Abbey Leix, the residence of Lord de Vesci. It is a land of vigorous tree-growth and general richness of vegetation. Hedge-rows show an abundance of well-grown ash timber, and the park is full of fine oaks, a thing that is rare in Ireland, and that makes it more like English parkland of the best character. This impression is accentuated in spring-time when the oaks are carpeted with the blue of wild Hyacinths, and when the broad woodland rides are also rivers of the same Blue-bells.
In this favoured land the common Laurel is a beautiful tree, thirty feet high; the mildness of the winter climate allowing it to grow unchecked. Only those who have seen it in tree form in the best climates of our islands, or in Southern Europe, know the true nature of the Laurel’s growth, or the poetry and mystery of its moods and aspects. The long grey limbs shoot upward and bend and arch in a manner almost fantastic. Sometimes a stem will incline downwards and run along the ground, followed by another. In the evening half-light they might be giant silver-scaled serpents, writhing and twisting and then springing aloft and becoming lost to sight in the dim masses of the crowning foliage. Seen thus one can hardly reconcile its identity with that of the poor, tamed, often-clipped bush of every garden. The Laurel is so docile, so easily coerced to the making of a quickly-grown hedge or useful screen, that its better qualities as an unmutilated tree in a mild district are usually lost sight of.
The house at Abbey Leix is a stone building of classical design of the middle of the eighteenth century. On the northern front is the entrance
ABBEY-LEIX
FROM THE PICTURE IN THE POSSESSION OF
Sir James Whitehead, Bart.