Within the petals of a rose,
A sleeping love I spied.”
Coleridge.
I wandered round the garden some ten days later. It was July, the Queen of Summer in the North. I heard the swish of the mowers’ scythes, as wave after wave of blossoming grass fell beneath their feet. As I looked, I noticed that the trees had taken a darker, fuller shade of green, and that the apple and emerald tints which delighted me so much in budding June, had fled before the fierce days of full summer heat. Although the lawns were still verdant, and such as you could only see where the summer rainfall is great, all traces of spring were gone. The polyanthus and cowslips’ umbels were crowned with seeds, and the narcissi in the grass had almost vanished. Birds, that a few weeks ago were funny little fluffy creatures, with orange, gaping throats, were now strong on the wing. Tramp and Tartar pursued one day a thrush across the lawn. I ran out of the house to save him, but found, to my relief, that he could take good care of himself. With a triumphant scream he flew to the top of the high yew hedge. In vain the two little terriers leapt and whimpered below, and besought him to come down and be killed. For all he was young, he was wise, and continued to sit on a twig, and to look down on their efforts with complacent indifference.
MOSS ROSES IN BLOOM
When I went into the walled garden, I found the moss roses in full blossom. They are most beautiful, the most delicate, perhaps, of all the roses. There was an old-fashioned pink, such as one used to see at Covent Garden Market years ago.
I had in my row Blanche Moreau, an exquisite paper white, Maître Soisons, another beautiful white, and the crested and deep purple Deuil de Paul Fontaine. How delicious they all were! Just a little sticky, perhaps, but very sweet; especially an old cottage pink variety that I was given from a garden at Harley, and the name of which I have never known. The kind donor, an old dame, I remember, told me, when she gave me a cutting and I pressed for the name, that it hadn’t no name as far as she knew, but that she called it her “double sweetness,” for it was to her nose, she affirmed, “honey and candy in one.”
Then I noted, bursting into bloom on the other side of the path, rows of Chinese Delphiniums of all colours, that Burbidge had raised from some seed sent to me from a lovely Scotch garden in the far north. The blossoms were of all colours. There were some of an exquisite watery tender turquoise blue, some deep blue de Marie, and others, a faint and celestial tint, as of the sky on soft February days. Besides these there were opal twilights, and darkest indigoes.
I paused and looked down the Ercal gravel path, and stood gazing at my forests of peonies. The English ones were over, but round the clematises were masses of the Chinese sorts. They were of all colours—crimson, carmine, white, purple, cream, pink, rose. How wonderfully beautiful they were, what satiny pinks, what splendid roses, what creamy whites!
In the borders I noticed a few plants of the beautiful tree or Moutan peony, the most glorious kind of all, but which had flowered rather earlier. My plants as yet were small, but “Elisabeth” had had one blossom of deepest scarlet. And I was led to hope that Athlete, Comte de Flandres, and Lambertiana would be strong enough next year to be allowed to flower.