"But if so much came into the garden from the field, Señora, did nothing ever go out?"
Ah, yes, yes—the land is gracious; there was mustard of course, and pepper grass and horehound, blessed herb, which spread all over the west with healing. The pimpernel, too, crept out of the enclosing wall, and the tree mallow which came from the Channel Islands by way of the gardens and has become a common hedge plant on the sandy lands about the bay of San Francisco. Along streams which ran down from the unfenced gardens of the Americanos, callas had domesticated themselves and lifted their pure white spathes serenely amid a tangle of mint and wild blackberries and painted cup. The almond, the rude stock on which the tender sorts were grafted, if allowed to bear its worthless bitter nuts would take to hillsides naturally. It is not, after all, walls which hold gardens but water. This is all that constrains the commingling of wild and cultivated species; they care little for man, their benefactor. Give them water, said Dona Ina, and they come to your door like a fed dog, or if you like the figure better, like grateful children. They repay you with sweetness and healing.
A swift darted among the fig, marigolds, and portulacca of the inevitable rock-work which was the pride of the old Spanish gardens. Great rockets of tritoma flamed against the wall, on the other side of which traffic went unnoted and unsuspecting.
"But we, Dona Ina, we Americans, when we make a garden, make it in the sight of all so that all may have pleasure in it."
"Eh, the Americanos ..." she shrugged; she moved to give a drink to the spotted musk, flowering in a chipped saucer; the subject did not interest her; her thought, like her flowers, had grown up in an enclosure.
THE GOLDEN GATE AND BLACK POINT, FROM HYDE STREET, SAN FRANCISCO. (SITE OF THE PANAMA EXPOSITION, 1915)