Yours very truly,
Juliana Horatia Ewing.
To the Rev. J. Going.
October 11, 1883.
Dear Mr. Going,
I append a rough plan of my small garden. We do not stand dead E. and W., but perhaps a little more so than the arrows show. We are very high and the winds are often high too! The walls are brick—and that south bed is very warm. I mean to put bush roses down what is marked the Potato Patch—it is the original soil with one year's potato crop where I am mixing vegetables and flowers. The borders are given up to flowers—mixed herbaceous ones. And on my south wall I have already planted a Wistaria, a blue Passion-flower—and a Rose of Sharon! I am keeping a warm corner for "Fortune's Yellow"—and now looking forward with more delight and gratitude than I can express to "Cloth of Gold"!
I have sent to order the "well-rotted"—and the Gardener for Saturday morning!
Now will you present my grateful acknowledgments to Mrs. Going, and say that with some decent qualms at my own greediness—I "too-too" gratefully accept her further kind offers. I deeply desire some "Ladders to Heaven"—(does she know that old name for Lilies of the Valley?)—and I am devoted to pansies and have only a scrap or two. A neighbour has given me a few Myosotis—but I am a daughter of the horse-leech I fear where flowers are concerned, and if you really have one or two to spare I thankfully accept. The truly Irish liberality of Mrs. Going's suggestions—emboldens me to ask if you happen to have in your garden any of the Hellebores? I have one good clump of Xmas Rose—but I have none of those green-faced varieties for which I have a peculiar predilection.
(I do not expect much sympathy from you! In fact I fear you will think that any one whose taste is so grotesque as to have a devotion for Polyanthuses—Oxlips—Green Hellebores—every variety of Arum (including the "stinking" one!)—Dog's-tooth violets—Irises—Auriculas—coloured primroses—and such dingy and undeveloped denizens of the flower garden—is hardly worthy to possess the glowing colours and last results of development in the Queen of flowers!)
But I do appreciate roses I assure you.