At the end of the rose-shaded path leading from the front door stood a summer house, bowered in the white-blossomed Madeira vine and set in a thick bed of blue-flowered periwinkle, which I never quite dared to invade, lest it harbor a snake. California children were taught never to step where they could not see. Under the seat in this little shelter were kept the mallets and balls for the croquet set. I wonder if others found the mallets attractive crutches, I believe it was as much fun playing lame as it was playing legitimate croquet.
Beyond the summer house was the large brick cistern and the old well. When Mr. Temple first made a garden he provided the necessary water by using a ram in the river below the hill. In those days there was much water below the hill for the Los Angeles and San Gabriel united their waters and poured them into the lowland from which there was no good opening into the sea. As a result the bottom lands were wooded and swampy. Then about 1860 floods came that washed open a channel into the ocean, and another great storm caused the river to divide, sending most of its water through what is now known as New River which crosses the Alamitos further east and reaches the sea some ten miles from the old mouth. These changes, together with the increased use of water for vineyards and orchards in Los Angeles, lowered the river level so Don Temple dug a well, circular, six feet in diameter, and sixty feet deep. His Indians drew the water by means of a long well-sweep. Little folk were duly impressed with the danger of the old well, but there wasn’t enough fear to prevent an occasional peering into its black depths, and the dropping of a stone that took so long to reach the water below. The empty cistern could be entered by ladders without and within and afforded a diversion from time to time.
When the Americans came the breezes of the sky were summoned to pump the water from a new well outside the fence, and prosaic pipes carried it from the tank under the windmill to all parts of the garden.
All along the fence grew locust trees, whose blossoms are like white wisteria, and at their feet bloomed the pink Castilian roses brought to California by the Spanish padres. Over beyond the croquet ground there was much anise among those roses—anise, the greenest, most feathery growing thing, and withal affording sweet seeds.
In the center of the far side, shading the small gate that led to the wool barn was a very large pepper tree into whose branches we could climb, and near it grew many lilacs. Two of the walks held little bricked islands in which towered old Italian cypresses, whose smooth, small cones my cousin George assured the younger children were bat eggs. That seemed reasonable—there must be some source for the many bats that swooped about at night.
On a certain south-east corner grew the Sweetwater grape, the first to ripen, and directly across the path from it was a curious green rose, one of the rare plants of the place. The blossoms were of the same quality as the leaves, though shaped like petals. They were not pretty, just odd. The pink roses nearby were lovely, and so were the prickly yellow Scotch roses. We loved the rich red of the Gloire de Rosamonde,—isn’t that a more attractive name than Ragged Robin, or is it after all too imposing for the friendly, familiar rose? The best one of all was the Chromatella whose great yellow buds hung over the pale green balustrade of the upper balcony, like the Marecial Niel, but larger and more perfect.
In spring, spreading beds of iris were purple with a hundred blossoms and the white ornithogalums, with their little black shoe-buttons delighted us, while, later in the year, there were masses of blue agapanthus and pink amaryllis and scarlet spikes of red-hot-poker. There were no single specimens of flowers, but always enough for us to pick without censure.
The garden did not contain even one palm tree, or a bit of cactus, nor do I remember a eucalyptus tree, a variety belonging to a later importation. There were two large bunches of pampas grass and two old century plants, which we desecrated in the usual child fashion by scratching names and pictures on the gray surface. There were no annuals.
Orange blossoms, honey-suckle, lilac, and lemon verbena, roses, oleander and heliotrope made a heaven of fragrance. For years the bees had stored their treasure in the wall of grandfather’s room, which, being a wooden addition to the house, offered a hollow space; the odor of the honey mingled with that of the old leather bindings of his books in the room, and with the flowers outside. The linnets, friendly, and twittering, built about the porch, and the swallows nested under the eaves; the ruby-throated and iridescent humming birds darted from flower to flower and built their felt-like nests in the trees, and great lazy, yellow and black butterflies floated by.
And children wandered here and played, or climbed the spreading tree for the heavy figs bursting with their garnered sweetness, or picked crimson kernels from the leathery pomegranates, or lying under the green roof of the low-spread grape vines, told fairy stories while feasting. There seemed no limit to our capacity for eating fruit, and I never knew any one to suffer. One morning at an eating race I won with thirty-two peaches, not large ones, fortunately.