The Garden, You, and I

by Mabel Osgood Wright

"Yes, mem, for all Miss Marie do be fixed out, so tasty and pleasant like to everybody, and so much chicked up by the country air, she's no notion o' beaus or of troubling wid the men!"

"What do you mean, Anastasia?" said I, in perfect innocence. "Of course Miss Maria is not a young girl to go gadding about!"

"It's not gadding I mean, mem, but here on the porch, one foine night, jest before the last time Mister Blake went off fer good, they was sat there some toime, so still that, says I to meself, 'When they do foind spach, it'll be something worth hearing!'

"'Do I annoy you by staying here? Would you prefer I went elsewhere?' says he, and well I moind the words, for Oi thought an offer was on the road, and as 'twas the nearest I'd been to wan, small wonder I got excoited! Then Miss Marie spoke up, smooth as a knife cutting ice cream,—'To speak frankly,' says she, 'you do not exactly annoy me, but I'd much rather you went elsewhere!' Och, but it broke me heart, the sound of it!"

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LIST OF FLOWER COMBINATIONS FOR THE TABLE FROM BARBARA'S GARDEN BOKE

HEAVILY SCENTED FLOWERS, SUCH AS HYACINTHS, LEMON AND AURATUM LILIES, POLYANTHUS NARCISSUS, MAGNOLIAS, LILACS, AND THE LIKE, SHOULD BE AVOIDED.

• Snowdrops and pussy-willows.
• Hepaticas and moss.
• Spice-bush and shad-bush sprays.
• Trailing arbutus and sweet, white garden violets.
• Double daffodils and willow sprays.
• Crocus buds and moss.
• Blue garden scillas and wild white saxifrage.
• Black-birch catkins and wind-flowers.
• Plants of the various wild violets, according to season, arranged
  in an earthen pan with a moss or bark covering.
• Old-fashioned myrtle, with its glossy leaves, and single narcissus,
  or English primroses.
• Bleeding-heart and young ferns.
• English border primroses in small rose bowls.
• Lilies-of-the-valley, with plenty of their own leaves, and poets'
  narcissus.
• Tulip-tree flowers and leaves.
• The wild red-and-gold columbine with young white-birch sprays.
• Pinxter flower and the New York or wood fern.
• Jack-in-the-pulpit with its own leaves, in a bark or moss
  covered jar.
  
• Pink moccasin-flowers with ferns, in bark-covered jar.
• Pansies with ivy or laurel leaves, arranged in narrow dishes to
  form a parterre about a central mirror.
• Iceland poppies with small ferns or grasses.
• May pinks and forget-me-nots.
• Blue larkspurs and deutzia (always put white with blue flowers).
• Peonies with evergreen ferns, in a central jar.
• Sweet-william, arranged in separate colours for parterre effect
  or in a large blue-and-white bowl, with graceful sprays of
  honeysuckle flowers.
  
• Wild roses with plenty of buds and foliage, in blue-and-white
  bowls.
• Roses in large sprays with branches of the young leaves of copper
  beech—or masses of Chinese honeysuckle.
• Roses with short stems arranged with their own or rugosa foliage
  in blue-and-white dishes that have coarse wire netting fitted
  to the top to keep the flowers in place.
• White field daisies, clover, and flowering grasses, in a large
  bowl or jar.
• Mountain laurel with its own leaves, in central jar and parterre
  dishes.
• Nasturtiums, in cut-glass bowl or vase, with the foliage of
  lemon verbena.
• Sweet peas of five colours with a fringe of maiden-hair ferns,
  the deepest colour in a central jar, with other smaller
  bowls at corners, and small ferns laid around mirror and
  on cloth between.
• Japan lilies, single flowers, in parterre dishes with ivy leaves, and
  sprays in central vase.
• Balsams arranged in effect of set borders.
• Asters in separate colours.
  
• Spotted-leaved pipsissewa of the woods with fern border, in bark-covered
  dish.
• Red and gold bell meadow lilies, in large jar, with field grasses.
• Gladioli—the flowers separated from the stalks and arranged
  with various leaves for parterre effect, or stalks laid upon the
  cloth with evergreen ferns to separate the places at a
  formal meal.
• Sweet sultan, in separate colours, in rose bowls, with fragrant
  geranium or lemon-verbena foliage.
• Shirly poppies with grasses or green rye, in four slender vases
  about a larger centrepiece.
• Margaret or picotee carnations with mignonette, arranged loosely
  in a cut-glass vase or bowl.
• Green rye, wheat, or oats with the blue garden cornflower—or
  wild blue chickory.
• Wild asters with heavy tasselled marsh-grasses.
• Goldenrods with purple iron weed and vines of wild white
  clematis, arranged about a flat dish of peaches and pears.
• All through autumn place your central mirror on a mat made by
  laying freshly gathered coloured leaves upon the cloth.
• Wallflowers and late pansies.
• White Japanese anemonies and ferns.
• Grass of Parnassus, ladies tresses, and marsh shield ferns.
• Garden chrysanthemums, in blue-and-white jars and bowls, on a
  large mat of brown magnolia leaves.
• Sprays of yellow witch-hazel flowers and leaves of red oak.
• Sprays of coral winterberry, from which leaves have been
  removed, and white-pine tassels.
• Club-mosses, small evergreen ferns, and partridge vine with its
  red berries, in a bark-covered dish of earth.