_Burglar-proof_
That strain in the New England make-up which manifests itself in "taking
care of things" ran in the blood of the dear Lady.
Her provident forbears--intent upon "getting the best" of any burglar
bent upon the acquisition of the family silver--had protected many of
the first floor windows with prison-like bars of iron. Later on, when
the "Conservatory," with its long southern exposure of glass, had been
added to the Mansion, there arose the necessity of some invincible
protection of _that_ quarter from midnight prowlers.
To this end, Jacobs--the family carpenter--was called in. This good man
having constructed six stout wooden trellises--all precisely alike--they
were set along the southern flower border, giving upon the exposed glass
stretch of conservatory.
In front of these trellises were planted six thrifty young _"Akebia
Quinata" vines_--funereal of flower, and dense and clover-like in
foliage. These greedy feeders, gradually crowding out the more dainty
flowering perennials, were ultimately joined by a tangled growth of
coarse encroaching shrubs and vigorous self-sown saplings, the whole
interlaced by a strong poison-ivy vine.
Meantime, the outer door of the conservatory had but the protection of a
common lock, at which, as we all know, any enterprising burglar would
derisively snap his capable fingers. Be that as it may, the dear Lady
found in this leafy barricade her chief defense against midnight
robbery.
Now that the conservatory was to be widened and made into a
piazza--early one May morning, during the "Third Son's" week of
vacation, he put his capable shoulder to the wheel, along with that of
the "Man with the Hoe"--who, like the Sexton in Cock Robin, equipped
with "his little spade and shovel," fell upon this tangled border.
Although in most respects a very lion of valor, the "Man" would run like
a frighted girl from a troop of Yellow Jackets--and before Poison Ivy he
"shook in his shoes."
So work was delayed while he went for his pruning gloves, and thus armed
and equipped, came stoutly to the onset.
And now carefully removing the few bulbs of Japan Lily that year after
year found strength to hold their own on the outskirts of this jungle,
the two fell mightily on the trellised vines, the shrubs, the young
trees, and the insidious ivy, and when the town clock that day told the
hour of noon, the "burglar barricade" was among the things that _had
been_, and were _not_; and the unharmful ashes of poison ivy lay
blackened on its funeral pyre. Since the dear Lady had gone where the
burglar ceases from troubling, we held it no disrespect to her honored
memory to demolish the "barricade" preparatory to the widening of the
old conservatory, and the turning of the whole into a roomy
piazza--where, all summer long, one may take after-dinner coffee and
naps, may read, write, and sew, have afternoon tea with friend or
neighbor--breathing, meantime, invigorating out-door air.
And now began the earnest work of "putting to rights" the entire garden;
and if in this little account of that undertaking (without adding one
iota to the reader's botanical knowledge) I may furnish some useful
hints to the amateur, and may, incidentally, entertain with such various
bits of information in regard to the works and ways of flowering plants,
the origin and fitness of their names, and their relations to human
life, as come of the "reading of many books," and so encourage in my
fellow-woman that habit of spending much time "with body and with
spirit," in "God's out-of-doors," which is one of Van Dyke's beautiful
steps "in the footpath of peace," my end in making this book will be
well attained.