IN LILAC TIDE
"Ere Man is aware
That the Spring is here
The Flowers have found it out."
--_Ancient Chinese Saying._
"A flower opens, and lo! another Year," is the beautiful and suggestive
legend on an old vessel found in the Catacombs. Since these words were
written, how many years have begun! how many flowers have opened! and
yet nature has never let us weary of spring and spring flowers. My
garden knows well the time o' the year. It needs no almanac to count the
months.
"The untaught Spring is wise
In Cowslips and Anemonies."
While I sit shivering, idling, wondering when I can "start the
garden"--lo, there are Snowdrops and spring starting up to greet me.
Ever in earliest spring are there days when there is no green in grass,
tree, or shrub; but when the garden lover is conscious that winter is
gone and spring is waiting. There is in every garden, in every
dooryard, as in the field and by the roadside, in some indefinable way a
look of spring. One hint of spring comes even before its flowers--you
can smell its coming. The snow is gone from the garden walks and some of
the open beds; you walk warily down the softened path at midday, and you
smell the earth as it basks in the sun, and a faint scent comes from
some twigs and leaves. Box speaks of summer, not of spring; and the
fragrance from that Cedar tree is equally suggestive of summer. But
break off that slender branch of Calycanthus--how fresh and welcome its
delightful spring scent. Carry it into the house with branches of
Forsythia, and how quickly one fills its leaf buds and the other
blossoms.
[Illustration: Ladies' Delights.]
For several years the first blossom of the new year in our garden was
neither the Snowdrop nor Crocus, but the Ladies' Delight, that laughing,
speaking little garden face, which is not really a spring flower, it is
a stray from summer; but it is such a shrewd, intelligent little
creature that it readily found out that spring was here ere man or other
flowers knew it. This dear little primitive of the Pansy tribe has
become wonderfully scarce save in cherished old gardens like those of
Salem, where I saw this year a space thirty feet long and several feet
wide, under flowering shrubs and bushes, wholly covered with the
everyday, homely little blooms of Ladies' Delights. They have the
party-colored petal of the existing strain of English Pansies, distinct
from the French and German Pansies, and I doubt not are the descendants
of the cherished garden children of the English settlers. Gerarde
describes this little English Pansy or Heartsease in 1587 under the name
of _Viola tricolor_:--
"The flouers in form and figure like the Violet, and for the most
part of the same Bignesse, of three sundry colours, purple, yellow
and white or blew, by reason of the beauty and braverie of which
colours they are very pleasing to the eye, for smel they have
little or none."
In Breck's _Book of Flowers_, 1851, is the first printed reference
I find to the flower under the name Ladies' Delight. In my
childhood I never heard it called aught else; but it has a score
of folk names, all testifying to an affectionate intimacy: Bird's-eye;
Garden-gate; Johnny-jump-up; None-so-pretty; Kitty-come; Kit-run-about;
Three-faces under-a-hood; Come-and-cuddle-me; Pink-of-my-Joan;
Kiss-me; Tickle-my-fancy; Kiss-me-ere-I rise; Jump-up-and-kiss-me.
To our little flower has also been given this folk name,
Meet-her-in-the-entry-kiss-her-in-the-buttery, the longest
plant name in the English language, rivalled only by Miss
Jekyll's triumph of nomenclature for the Stonecrop, namely:
Welcome-home-husband-be-he-ever-so-drunk.
[Illustration: Garden House in Garden of Hon. William H. Seward, Auburn,
New York.]
These little Ladies' Delights have infinite variety of expression; some
are laughing and roguish, some sharp and shrewd, some surprised, others
worried, all are animated and vivacious, and a few saucy to a degree.
They are as companionable as people--nay, more; they are as
companionable as children. No wonder children love them; they recognize
kindred spirits. I know a child who picked unbidden a choice Rose, and
hid it under her apron. But as she passed a bed of Ladies' Delights
blowing in the wind, peering, winking, mocking, she suddenly threw the
Rose at them, crying out pettishly, "Here! take your old flower!"
The Dandelion is to many the golden seal of spring, but it blooms the
whole circle of the year in sly garden corners and in the grass. Of it
might have been written the lines:--
"It smiles upon the lap of May,
To sultry August spreads its charms,
Lights pale October on its way,
And twines December's arms."
I have picked both Ladies' Delights and Dandelions every month in the
year.
[Illustration: Sun-dial in Garden of Hon. William H. Seward, Auburn, New
York.]
I suppose the common Crocus would not be deemed a very great garden
ornament in midsummer, in its lowly growth; but in its spring blossoming
it is--to use another's words--"most gladsome of the early flowers." A
bed of Crocuses is certainly a keen pleasure, glowing in the sun, almost
as grateful to the human eye as to the honey-gathering bees that come
unerringly, from somewhere, to hover over the golden cups. How welcome
after winter is the sound of that humming.
In the garden's story, there are ever a few pictures which stand out
with startling distinctness. When the year is gone you do not recall
many days nor many flowers with precision; often a single flower seems
of more importance than a whole garden. In the day book of 1900 I have
but few pictures; the most vivid was the very first of the season. It
could have been no later than April, for one or two Snowdrops still
showed white in the grass, when a splendid ribbon of Chionodoxa--Glory
of the Snow--opened like blue fire burning from plant to plant, the
bluest thing I ever saw in any garden. It was backed with solid masses
of equally vivid yellow Alyssum and chalk-white Candy-tuft, both of
which had had a good start under glass in a temporary forcing bed. These
three solid masses of color surrounded by bare earth and showing little
green leafage made my eyes ache, but a picture was burnt in which will
never leave my brain. I always have a sense of importance, of actual
ownership of a plant, when I can recall its introduction--as I do of the
Chionodoxa, about 1871. It is said to come up and bloom in the snow, but
I have never seen it in blossom earlier than March, and never then
unless the snow has vanished. It has much of the charm of its relative,
the Scilla.
We all have flower favorites, and some of us have flower antipathies, or
at least we are indifferent to certain flowers; but I never knew any one
but loved the Daffodil. Not only have poets and dramatists sung it, but
it is a common favorite, as shown by its homely names in our everyday
speech. I am always touched in _Endymion_ that the only flowers named as
"a thing of beauty that is a joy forever" are Daffodils "with the green
world they live in."
In Daffodils I like the "old fat-headed sort with nutmeg and cinnamon
smell and old common English names--Butter-and-eggs, Codlins-and-cream,
Bacon and eggs." The newer ones are more slender in bud and bloom, more
trumpet-shaped, and are commonplace of name instead of common. In
Virginia the name of a variety has become applied to a family, and all
Daffodils are called Butter-and-eggs by the people.
On spring mornings the Tulips fairly burn with a warmth, which makes
them doubly welcome after winter. Emerson--ever able to draw a picture
in two lines--to show the heart of everything in a single sentence--thus
paints them:--
"The gardens fire with a joyful blaze
Of Tulips in the morning's rays."
"Tulipase do carry so stately and delightful a form, and do abide so
long in their bravery, that there is no Lady or Gentleman of any worth
that is not caught with this delight,"--wrote the old herbalist
Parkinson. Bravery is an ideal expression for Tulips.
[Illustration: Lilacs in Midsummer in Garden of Mrs. Abraham Lansing,
Albany, New York.]
It is with something of a shock that we read the words of Philip
Hamerton in _The Sylvan Year_, that nature is not harmonious in the
spring, but is only in the way of becoming so. He calls it the time of
crudities, like the adolescence of the mind. He says, "The green is
good for us, and we welcome it with uncritical gladness; but when we
think of painting, it may be doubted whether any season of the year is
less propitious to the broad and noble harmonies which are the secrets
of all grand effects in art." And he compares the season to the
uncomfortable hour in a household when the early risers are walking
about, not knowing what to do with themselves, while others have not yet
come down to breakfast.
I must confess that an undiversified country landscape in spring has
upon me the effect asserted by Hamerton. I recall one early spring week
in the Catskills, when I fairly complained, "Everything is so green
here." I longed for rocks, water, burnt fields, bare trees, anything to
break that glimmering green of new grass and new Birches. But in the
spring garden there is variety of shape and color; the Peony leaf buds
are red, some sprouting leaves are pink, and there are vast varieties of
brown and gray and gold in leaf.
Let me give the procession of spring in the garden in the words of a
lover of old New England flowers, Dr. Holmes. It is a vivid word picture
of the distinctive forms and colors of budding flowers and leaves.
"At first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close against the sheltering wall
The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfolding ball.
"The golden-chaliced crocus burns;
The long narcissus blades appear;
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns
To light her blue-flamed chandelier.
"The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
By the wild winds of gusty March,
With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
Are swaying by the tufted larch.
"See the proud tulip's flaunting cup,
That flames in glory for an hour,--
Behold it withering, then look up--
How meek the forest-monarchs flower!
"When wake the violets, Winter dies;
When sprout the elm buds, Spring is near;
When lilacs blossom, Summer cries,
'Bud, little roses, Spring is here.'"
The universal flower in the old-time garden was the Lilac; it was the
most beloved bloom of spring, and gave a name to Spring--Lilac tide. The
Lilac does not promise "spring is coming"; it is the emblem of the
_presence_ of spring. Dr. Holmes says, "When Lilacs blossom, Summer
cries, '_Spring is here_'" in every cheerful and lavish bloom. Lilacs
shade the front yard; Lilacs grow by the kitchen doorstep; Lilacs spring
up beside the barn; Lilacs shade the well; Lilacs hang over the spring
house; Lilacs crowd by the fence side and down the country road. In many
colonial dooryards it was the only shrub--known both to lettered and
unlettered folk as Laylock, and spelt Laylock too. Walter Savage Landor,
when Laylock had become antiquated, still clung to the word, and used it
with a stubborn persistence such as he alone could compass, and which
seems strange in the most finished classical scholar of his day.
[Illustration: Lilacs at Craigie House, the Home of Longfellow.]
"I shall not go to town while the Lilacs bloom," wrote Longfellow; and
what Lilac lover could have left a home so Lilac-embowered as Craigie
House! A view of its charms in Lilac tide is given in outline on this
page; the great Lilac trees seem wondrously suited to the fine old
Revolutionary mansion.
[Illustration: Box-edged Garden at the Home of Longfellow.]
There is in Albany, New York, a lovely garden endeared to those who know
it through the memory of a presence that lighted all places associated
with it with the beauty of a noble life. It is the garden of the home of
Mrs. Abraham Lansing, and was planted by her father and mother, General
and Mrs. Peter Gansevoort, in 1846, having been laid out with taste and
an art that has borne the test of over half a century's growth. In the
garden are scores of old-time favorites: Flower de Luce, Peonies,
Daffodils, and snowy Phlox; but instead of bending over the flower
borders, let us linger awhile in the wonderful old Lilac walk. It is a
glory of tender green and shaded amethyst and grateful hum of bees, the
very voice of Spring. Every sense is gratified, even that of touch, when
the delicate plumes of the fragrant Lilac blossoms brush your cheek as
you walk through its path; there is no spot of fairer loveliness than
this Lilac walk in May. It is a wonderful study of flickering light and
grateful shade in midsummer. Look at its full-leaf charms opposite page
138; was there ever anything lovelier in any garden, at any time, than
the green vista of this Lilac walk in July? But for the thoughtful
garden-lover it has another beauty still, the delicacy and refinement of
outline when the Lilac walk is bare of foliage, as is shown on page 220
and facing page 154. The very spirit of the Lilacs seems visible, etched
with a purity of touch that makes them sentient, speaking beings,
instead of silent plants. See the outlines of stem and branch against
the tender sky of this April noon. Do you care for color when you have
such beauty of outline? Surely this Lilac walk is loveliest in April,
with a sensitive etherealization beyond compare. How wonderfully these
pictures have caught the look of tentative spring--spring waiting for a
single day to burst into living green. There is an ancient Saxon name
for springtime--Opyn-tide--thus defined by an old writer, "Whenne that
flowres think on blowen"--when the flowers begin to think of budding and
blowing; and so I name this picture Opyn-tide, the Thought of Spring.
For many years Lilacs were planted for hedges; they were seldom
satisfactory if clipped, for the broad-spreading leaves were always gray
with dust, and they often had a "rust" which wholly destroyed their
beauty. The finest clipped Lilac hedge I ever saw is at Indian Hill,
Newburyport. It was set out about 1850, and is compact and green as
Privet; the leaves are healthy, and the growth perfect down to the
ground; it is an unusual example of Lilac growth--a perfect hedge. An
unclipped Lilac hedge is lovely in its blooming; a beautiful one grows
by the side of the old family home of Mr. Mortimer Howell at West
Hampton Beach, Long Island. To this hedge in May come a-begging dusky
city flower venders, who break off and carry away wagon loads of blooms.
As the fare from and to New York is four dollars, and a wagon has to be
hired to convey the flowers from the hedge two miles to the railroad
station, there must be a high price charged for these Lilacs to afford
any profit; but the Italian flower sellers appear year after year.
[Illustration: Joepye-weed and Queen Anne's Lace.]
Lilacs bloom not in our ancient literature; they are not named by
Shakespeare, nor do I recall any earlier mention of them than in the
essay of Lord Bacon on "Gardens," published about 1610, where he spelled
it Lelacke. Blue-pipe tree was the ancient name of the Lilac, a reminder
of the time when pipes were made of its wood; I heard it used in modern
speech once. An old Narragansett coach driver called out to me, "Ye set
such store on flowers, don't ye want to pick that Blue-pipe in Pender
Zeke's garden?"--a deserted garden and home at Pender Zeke's Corner.
This man had some of the traits of Mrs. Wright's delightful
"Time-o'-Day," and he knew well my love of flowers; for he had been my
charioteer to the woods where Rhododendron and Rhodora bloom, and he had
revealed to me the pond where grew the pink Water Lilies. And from a
chance remark of mine he had conveyed to me a wagon load of Joepye-weed
and Boneset, to the dismay of my younger children, who had apprehensions
of unlimited gallons of herb tea therefrom. Let me steal a few lines
from my spring Lilacs to write of these two "Sisters of Healing," which
were often planted in the household herb garden. From July to September
in the low lying meadows of every state from the Bay of Fundy to the
Gulf of Mexico, can be found Joepye-weed and Boneset. The dull pink
clusters of soft fringy blooms of Joepye-weed stand up three to eight
feet in height above the moist earth, catching our eye and the visit of
every passing butterfly, and commanding attention for their fragrance,
and a certain dignity of carriage notable even among the more striking
hues of the brilliant Goldenrod and vivid Sunflowers. Joe Pye was an
Indian medicine-man of old New England, famed among his white neighbors
for his skill in curing the devastating typhoid fevers which, in those
days of no drainage and ignorance of sanitation, vied with so-called
"hereditary" consumption in exterminating New England families. His
cure-all was a bitter tea decocted from leaves and stalks of this
_Eupatorium purpureum_, and in token of his success the plant bears
everywhere his name, but it is now wholly neglected by the simpler and
herb-doctor. The sister plant, the _Eupatorium perfoliatum_, known as
Thoroughwort, Boneset, Ague-weed, or Indian Sage, grows everywhere by
its side, and is also used in fevers. It was as efficacious in "break
bone fever" in the South a century ago as it is now for the grippe, for
it still is used, North and South, in many a country home. Neltje
Blanchan and Mrs. Dana Parsons call Thoroughwort or Boneset tea a
"nauseous draught," and I thereby suspect that neither has tasted it. I
have many a time, and it has a clear, clean bitter taste, no stronger
than any bitter beer or ale. Every year is Boneset gathered in old
Narragansett; but swamp edges and meadows that are easy of access have
been depleted of the stately growth of saw-edged wrinkled leaves, and
the Boneset gatherer must turn to remote brooksides and inaccessible
meadows for his harvest. The flat-topped terminal cymes of leaden white
blooms are not distinctive as seen from afar, and many flowers of
similar appearance lure the weary simpler here and there, until at last
the welcome sight of the connate perfoliate leaves, surrounding the
strong stalk, distinctive of the Boneset, show that his search is
rewarded.
[Illustration: Boneset.]
After these bitter draughts of herb tea, we will turn, as do children,
to sweets, to our beloved Lilac blooms. The Lilac has ever been a flower
welcomed by English-speaking folk since it first came to England by the
hand of some mariner. It is said that a German traveller named Busbeck
brought it from the Orient to the continent in the sixteenth century. I
know not when it journeyed to the new world, but long enough ago so that
it now grows cheerfully and plentifully in all our states of temperate
clime and indeed far south. It even grows wild in some localities,
though it never looks wild, but plainly shows its escape or exile from
some garden. It is specially beloved in New England, and it seems so
much more suited in spirit to New England than to Persia that it ought
really to be a native plant. Its very color seems typical of New
England; some parts of celestial blue, with more of warm pink, blended
and softened by that shading of sombre gray ever present in New England
life into a distinctive color known everywhere as lilac--a color
grateful, quiet, pleasing, what Thoreau called a "tender, civil,
cheerful color." Its blossoming at the time of Election Day, that
all-important New England holiday, gave it another New England
significance.
There is no more emblematic flower to me than the Lilac; it has an
association of old homes, of home-making and home interests. On the
country farm, in the village garden, and in the city yard, the lilac was
planted wherever the home was made, and it attached itself with deepest
roots, lingering sometimes most sadly but sturdily, to show where the
home once stood.
[Illustration: Magnolias.]
Let me tell of two Lilacs of sentiment. One of them is shown on page
149; a glorious Lilac tree which is one of a group of many
full-flowered, pale-tinted ones still growing and blossoming each spring
on a deserted homestead in old Narragansett. They bloom over the grave
of a fine old house, and the great chimney stands sadly in their midst
as a gravestone. "Hopewell," ill-suited of name, was the home of a
Narragansett Robinson famed for good cheer, for refinement and luxury,
and for a lovely garden, laid out with cost and care and filled with
rare shrubs and flowers. Perhaps these Lilacs were a rare variety in
their day, being pale of tint; now they are as wild as their
companions, the Cedar hedges.
[Illustration: Lilacs at Hopewell.]
Gathering in the front dooryard of a fallen farm-house some splendid
branches of flowering Lilac, I found a few feet of cellar wall and
wooden house side standing, and the sills of two windows. These window
sills, exposed for years to the bleaching and fading of rain and sun and
frost, still bore the circular marks of the flower pots which, filled
with houseplants, had graced the kitchen windows for many a winter under
the care of a flower-loving house mistress. A few days later I learned
from a woman over ninety years of age--an inmate of the "Poor
House"--the story of the home thus touchingly indicated by the Lilac
bushes and the stains of the flower pots. Over eighty years ago she had
brought the tiny Lilac-slip to her childhood's home, then standing in a
clearing in the forest. She carried it carefully in her hands as she
rode behind her father on a pillion after a visit to her grandmother.
She and her little brothers and sisters planted the tiny thing "of two
eyes only," as she said, in the shadow of the house, in the little front
yard. And these children watered it and watched it, as it rooted and
grew, till the house was surrounded each spring with its vivacious
blooms, its sweet fragrance. The puny slip has outlived the house and
all its inmates save herself, outlived the brothers and sisters, their
children and grandchildren, outlived orchard and garden and field. And
it will live to tell a story to every thoughtful passer-by till a second
growth of forest has arisen in pasture and garden and even in the
cellar-hole, when even then the cheerful Lilac will not be wholly
obliterated.
A bunch of early Lilacs was ever a favorite gift to "teacher," to be
placed in a broken-nosed pitcher on her desk. And Lilac petals made such
lovely necklaces, thrust within each other or strung with needle and
thread. And there was a love divination by Lilacs which we children
solemnly observed. There will occasionally appear a tiny Lilac flower,
usually a white Lilac, with five divisions of the petal instead of
four--this is a Luck Lilac. This must be solemnly swallowed. If it goes
down smoothly, the dabbler in magic cries out, "He loves me;" if she
chokes at her floral food, she must say sadly, "He loves me not." I
remember once calling out, with gratification and pride, "He loves me!"
"Who is he?" said my older companions. "Oh, I didn't know he had to be
somebody," I answered in surprise, to be met by derisive laughter at my
satisfaction with a lover in general and not in particular. It was a
matter of Lilac-luck-etiquette that the lover's name should be
pronounced mentally before the petal was swallowed.
[Illustration: Persian Lilacs and Peonies in Garden of the Kimball
Homestead, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.]
In the West Indies the Lilac is a flower of mysterious power; its
perfume keeps away evil spirits, ghosts, banshees. If it grows not in
the dooryard, its protecting branches are hung over the doorway. I think
of this when I see it shading the door of happy homes in New England.
In our old front yards we had only the common Lilacs, and occasionally
a white one; and as a rarity the graceful, but sometimes rather
spindling, Persian Lilacs, known since 1650 in gardens, and shown on
page 151. How the old gardens would have stared at the new double
Lilacs, which have luxuriant plumes of bloom twenty inches long.
The "pensile Lilac" has been sung by many poets; but the spirit of the
flower has been best portrayed in verse by Elizabeth Akers. I can quote
but a single stanza from so many beautiful ones.
"How fair it stood, with purple tassels hung,
Their hue more tender than the tint of Tyre;
How musical amid their fragrance rung
The bee's bassoon, keynote of spring's glad choir!
O languorous Lilac! still in time's despite
I see thy plumy branches all alight
With new-born butterflies which loved to stay
And bask and banquet in the temperate ray
Of springtime, ere the torrid heats should be:
For these dear memories, though the world grow gray,
I sing thy sweetness, lovely Lilac tree!"
Another poet of the Lilac is Walt Whitman. He tells his delight in "the
Lilac tall and its blossoms of mastering odor." He sings: "with the
birds a warble of joy for Lilac-time." That noble, heroic dirge, the
_Burial Hymn of Lincoln_, begins:--
"When Lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd."
The poet stood under the blossoming Lilacs when he learned of the death
of Lincoln, and the scent and sight of the flowers ever bore the sad
association. In this poem is a vivid description of--
"The Lilac bush, tall growing, with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom, rising delicate with the perfume strong
I love.
With every leaf a miracle."
Thomas William Parsons could turn from his profound researches and
loving translations of Dante to write with deep sympathy of the Lilac.
His verses have to me an additional interest, since I believe they were
written in the house built by my ancestor in 1740, and occupied still by
his descendants. In its front dooryard are Lilacs still standing under
the windows of Dr. Parsons' room, in which he loved so to write.
Hawthorne felt a sort of "ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a
time-stricken and grandfatherly Lilac bush." He was dissatisfied with
aged Lilacs, though he knew not whether his heart, judgment, or rural
sense put him in that condition. He felt the flower should either
flourish in immortal youth or die. Apple trees could grow old and feeble
without his reproach, but an aged Lilac was improper.
I fancy no one ever took any care of Lilacs in an old garden. As soon
water or enrich the Sumach and Elder growing by the roadside! But care
for your Lilacs nowadays, and see how they respond. Make them a _garden_
flower, and you will never regret it. There be those who prefer grafted
Lilacs--the stock being usually a Syringa; they prefer the single trunk,
and thus get rid of the Lilac suckers. But compare a row of grafted
Lilacs to a row of natural fastigate growth, as shown on page 220, and I
think nature must be preferred.
"Methinks I see my contemplative girl now in the garden watching the
gradual approach of Spring," wrote Sterne. My contemplative girl lives
in the city, how can she know that spring is here? Even on those few
square feet of mother earth, dedicated to clotheslines and posts, spring
sets her mark. Our Lilacs seldom bloom, but they put forth lovely fresh
green leaves; and even the unrolling of the leaves of our Japanese ivies
are a pleasure.
Our poor little strips of back yard in city homes are apt to be too
densely shaded for flower blooms, but some things will grow, even there.
Some wild flowers will live, and what a delight they are in spring. We
have a Jack-in-the-pulpit who comes up just as jauntily there as in the
wild woods; Dog-tooth Violet and our common wild Violet also bloom. A
city neighbor has Trillium which blossoms each year; our Trillium shows
leaves, but no blossoms, and does not increase in spread of roots.
Bloodroot, a flower so shy when gathered in the woods, and ever loving
damp sites, flourishes in the dryest flower bed, grows coarser in leaf
and bloom, and blossoms earlier, and holds faster its snowy petals.
Corydalis in the garden seems so garden-bred that you almost forget the
flower was ever wild.
[Illustration: Opyn-tide, the Thought of Spring.]
The approach of spring in our city parks is marked by the appearance of
the Dandelion gatherers. It is always interesting to see, in May, on the
closely guarded lawns and field expanses of our city parks, the hundreds
of bareheaded, gayly-dressed Italian and Portuguese women and children
eagerly gathering the young Dandelion plants to add to their meagre
fare as a greatly-loved delicacy. They collect these "greens" in
highly-colored kerchiefs, in baskets, in squares of sheeting; I have
seen the women bearing off a half-bushel of plants; even their stumpy
little children are impressed to increase the welcome harvest, and with
a broken knife dig eagerly in the greensward. The thrifty park
commissioners, in Dandelion-time, relax their rigid rules, "Keep Off the
Grass," and turn the salad-loving Italians loose to improve the public
lawns by freeing them from weeds.
The earliest sign of spring in the fields and woods in my childhood was
the appearance of the Willow catkins, and was heralded by the cry of one
child to another,--"Pussy-willows are out." How eagerly did those who
loved the woods and fields turn, after the storm, whiteness, and chill
of a New England winter, to Pussy-willows as a promise of summer and
sunshine. Some of their charm ever lingers to us as we see them in the
baskets of swarthy street venders in New York.
Magnolia blossoms are sold in our city streets to remind city dwellers
of spring. "Every flower its own bow-kwet," is the call of the vender.
Bunches of Locust blossoms follow, awkwardly tied together. Though the
Magnolia is earlier, I do not find it much more splendid as a flowering
tree for the garden than our northern Dogwood; and the Dogwood when in
bloom seems just as tropical. It is then the glory of the landscape; and
its radiant starry blossoms turn into ideal beauty even our sombre
cemeteries.
The Magnolia has been planted in northern gardens for over a century.
Gardens on Long Island have many beautiful old specimens, doubtless
furnished by the Prince Nurseries. These seem thoroughly at home; just
as does the Locust brought from Virginia, a century ago, by one Captain
Sands of Sands Point, to please his Virginia bride with the presence of
the trees of her girlhood's home. These Locusts have spread over every
rood of Long Island earth, and seem as much at home as Birch or Willow.
The three Magnolia trees on Mr. Brown's lawn in Flatbush are as large as
any I know in the North, and were exceptionally full of bloom this year,
this photograph (shown facing page 148) being taken when they were past
their prime. I saw children eagerly gathering the waxy petals which had
fallen, and which show so plainly in the picture. But the flower is not
common enough here for northern children to learn the varied attractions
of the Magnolia.
The flower lore of American children is nearly all of English
derivation; but children invent as well as copy. In the South the lavish
growth of the Magnolia affords multiform playthings. The beautiful broad
white petals give a snowy surface for the inditing of messages or
valentines, which are written with a pin, when the letters turn dark
brown. The stamens of the flower--waxlike with red tips--make mock
illuminating matches. The leaves shape into wonderful drinking cups, and
the scarlet seeds give a glowing necklace.
[Illustration: A Thought of Winter's Snows.]
The glories of a spring garden are not in the rows of flowering bulbs,
beautiful as they are; but in the flowering shrubs and trees. The old
garden had few shrubs, but it had unsurpassed beauty in its rows of
fruit trees which in their blossoming give the spring garden, as here
shown, that lovely whiteness which seems a blending of the seasons--a
thought of winter's snows. The perfection of Apple blossoms I have told
in another chapter. Earlier to appear was the pure white, rather chilly,
blooms of the Plum tree, to the Japanese "the eldest brother of an
hundred flowers." They are faintly sweet-scented with the delicacy
found in many spring blossoms. A good example of the short verses of the
Japanese poets tells of the Plum blossom and its perfume.
"In springtime, on a cloudless night,
When moonbeams throw their silver pall
O'er wooded landscapes, veiling all
In one soft cloud of misty white,
'Twere vain almost to hope to trace
The Plum trees in their lovely bloom
Of argent; 'tis their sweet perfume
Alone which leads me to their place."
The lovely family of double white Plum blossoms which now graces our
gardens is varied by tinted ones; there are sixty in all which the
nineteenth century owes to Japan.
The Peach tree has a flower which has given name to one of the loveliest
colors in the world. The Peach has varieties with wonderful double
flowers of glorious color. Cherry trees bear a more cheerful white
flower than Plum trees.
"The Cherry boughs above us spread
The whitest shade was ever seen;
And flicker, flicker came and fled
Sun-spots between."
I do not recall the Judas tree in my childhood. I am told there were
many in Worcester; but there were none in our garden, nor in our
neighborhood, and that was my world. Orchids might have hung from the
trees a mile from my home, and would have been no nearer me than the
tropics. I had a small world, but it was large enough, since it was
bounded by garden walls.
Almond trees are seldom seen in northern gardens; but the Flowering
Almond flourishes as one of the purest and loveliest familiar shrubs.
Silvery pink in bloom when it opens, the pink darkens till when in full
flower it is deeply rosy. It was, next to the Lilac, the favorite shrub
of my childhood. I used to call the exquisite little blooms "fairy
roses," and there were many fairy tales relating to the Almond bush.
This made the flower enhaloed with sentiment and mystery, which charmed
as much as its beauty. The Flowering Almond seemed to have a special
place under a window in country yards and gardens, as it is shown on
page 39. A fitting spot it was, since it never grew tall enough to shade
the little window panes.
With Pussy-willows and Almond blossoms and Ladies' Delights, with
blossoming playhouse Apple trees and sweet-scented Lilac walks, spring
was certainly Paradise in our childhood. Would it were an equally happy
season in mature years; but who, garden-bred, can walk in the springtime
through the garden of her childhood without thought of those who cared
for the garden in its youth, and shared the care of their children with
the care of their flowers, but now are seen no more.
"Oh, far away in some serener air,
The eyes that loved them see a heavenly dawn:
How can they bloom without her tender care?
Why should they live when her sweet life is gone?"
I have written of the gladness of spring, but I know nothing more
overwhelming than the heartache of spring, the sadness of a
fresh-growing spring garden. Where is the dear one who planted it and
loved it, and he who helped her in the care, and the loving child who
played in it and left it in the springtime? All that is good and
beautiful has come again to us with the sunlight and warmth, save those
whom we still love but can see no more. By that very measure of
happiness poured for us in childhood in Lilac tide, is our cup of
sadness now filled.