“They have such nice names,” said Stella, “especially the Japanese iris–Kimi-no-megumi, Shirataki, Momochiguma! The tulips are nice, too. Here is Ariadne and Kate Greenaway hobnobbing with Professor Rauwenhoff! What’s the use of having plants that aren’t named? We must show them as much respect as Antony and Cleopatra, or Epictetus and Luella!”
We also experimented with lilies–lemon lilies for the shady north side of the house, tigers for the border beyond the pool, and two or three of the expensive Myriophyllums, just to show that we, too, could go in for the exotic, like our neighbours on the big estates.
When the bulbs came, in October, we looked at the boxes sadly.
“Whew!” said Stella, “you can’t be lazy and have a garden, can you?”
“I don’t work to-morrow, I guess,” said I. “Shall we ask Mike’s Joe to help us?”
“Never!” said my wife. “We’ll put these bulbs in ourselves. If I had any help, I should feel like the Eckstroms, which God forbid!”
So the next day at seven-thirty we began. We ringed the pool with German and Japanese iris, alternated for succession, and planted a few Japanese both below and above the pool, close to the brook. We set the Narcissus poeticus bulbs where, if they grew, the flowers could look at themselves in the mirror below the dam. The Empress narcissus we placed on both sides of the pool just beyond the iris. On each side of the bench we placed a bulb of our precious Myriophyllums, and put the tigers into the borders close to the shrubbery on both sides. The hyacinths went into the sundial beds, the Darwins into the beds at the base of the rose aqueduct, a few crocuses into the sundial lawn, and the daffodils here and there all over the place, where the fancy struck us and the ground invited.
“Now, I’m going to label everything, and put it on a map besides,” cried Stella, “except the daffodils. I want to forget where they are. I want surprises in the spring. Oh, John, do you suppose they’ll come up?”
“Yes, I suppose they will,” I laughed, “some of them. But do you suppose we’ll ever get the kinks out of our backs?”
“I’m willing to go doubled up the rest of my life, for a garden of daffodils all my own,” she cried.