IN NORTHERN GARDENS
Away from the beaten tracks there are still by-paths where hyacinths
grow in the springtime.--ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE.
Far off in the Southland, it is in the habit of Spring to come lagging
over the land. She is a princess. You can tell it by her manner of
moving, and her fine lady ways. Often, she is greatly bored.
Under the north star it is different. Spring is a wilding horsewoman,
sweet and graceless, pirouetting a-tiptoe and waving to us kisses.
Hush! and hold you still, my merry Gentlemen. You may catch them if
you try, and they are not in the least sinful.
Goldilocks, I call her.
"A young mother," you say, "and no Columbine."
Pray thee have it so, for when this season of seven sweet suns has
begun, she is all things to all men.
What an ado there is when she calls to her flower-children and chides
them to arise and put on their dresses.
Sleepy heads! Sleepy heads!
The vi'lets peer out of their green bed and complain of the cold, and
as for the ferns, instead of expanding into fans of green, they curl
themselves into foolish fiddle heads and beg to finish their dream.
The shy anemone, with flushed face, gets her up first that she may be
with her mother. She is Spring's favourite child, but mark you, the
maiden wears a ruff of fur about her neck, and snuggles into it, just
as the pussy-willow does into his coat of grey.
Those flowers that have butter-pats to heads come on apace. Some there
are who call them dandelions but we shall call them children's gold.
Ah! if flowers would only sing.
How terribly long has been the winter with its tiresome monochrome of
white. Every vestige of colour has been bleached out of the earth like
one would bleach a tablecloth.
By way of solace, our northern Indian paints his face and wears a
scarlet sash as, by the same token, you and I wear poster coats and
purple plumes.
It was recorded a day ago that when our dogs run away from us they
always travel southward. There is no doubt in the world they are
seeking colour.
Over the way from my study-window there is a glass-house where a man
who, aforetime, taught school now grows flowers. The transition is
surely a natural one.
His is the last conservatory on this hemisphere--at least I've heard
tell it is.
He lets me walk up and down its long blossom-bordered aisles whenever I
am so minded. Here, in his floral sanctuary, one may take deep
draughts from the warm subtly-scented air till, someway or other, it is
transmuted into the alembic of the soul.
May no blight fall on his roses or his heart! May God love him and let
him live long!
This man's roses are of ivory and pink, but a few are red as if they
might be the blood of some great wounded queen.
Nearly all the roses are long-winged and heavy-headed. They could not
be otherwise when they come and go from the land where dreams are born.
Once, a poet told that the soul of a rose went into his blood. This
was how he came to write the _Idylls of the King_.
One of the gardeners ties the red roses to stakes and he will not have
it that the habit is cruel. "You may have noticed, Lady"--and here he
tightly draws the cord--"that most folk are hung by their sweethearts."
I almost hate this man.
Hath not a rose-tree organs, passions, senses? If you prick it does it
not bleed? Verily I say unto you that it hath and it does.
It is near to April before the lilies are at flood-tide. You must
needs see them before Passion Week when the gardeners cut and send them
to a large hungry place called down the line, where, in prairie
churches of tin and pine and sod, the Eastertide worshippers consider
the lily and sing songs about death and life.
Not an inch of space is lost in the long lines where, tall and lissome,
the stalks bend and curtsy to the passer-by. The glory of the lily is
short-lived, for always they are cut off in maturity. The message they
give is not one of prophecy and resurrection as the writers have ever
taught. You may hear the message if you are still enough. "There is
no second flowering time" they whisper. "Love while life doth last."
But, after all, the lilies are white like the snow outside, so that I
esteem the big purple hyacinths better, and the bobbing daffodils.
There is an osier chair in one room wherein I often sit and watch the
buyers flit from plant to plant. The women who come from the British
Isles choose primroses, while those of Ontario and the other provinces
to the south, prefer a lilac in bloom, marguerites, or
carnations--anything they knew and loved at home.
The Fraus, Madames, and Senoritas from Europe (every one must have a
blossom for Easter, else where is luck to hail from?) are better
satisfied with heliotropes, azaleas, and claret-coloured cyclamens.
Our erstwhile teacher places the Norway pines close under the palms;
the tree of shade and the tree of sun that sigh vainly for each other.
I like him for this. He knows that Titiana loved Bottom. He must know
it.
Very few care for my favourite flower--the narcissus. I always buy it,
and a fern. There are folk who despise ferns because they are nothing
but leaves but I like them for their history. They are the survival of
the fittest; types which Nature, in her great printing-press, never
breaks up. They are the old-timers of the vegetable world.
Also, I walk down the tomato avenue and take my pick--that is I do if I
have enough money, for, here, at the edge of the world, they are as
expensive as Jacob's mess of pottage. One does not dream of robbing
banks so much as stripping tomato-vines.
Tomatoes do not ripen out of doors (but you must not tell the Board of
Trade I said so) unless on a sunny slope, or by reason of some other
special dispensation.
Other vegetables thrive, and the cauliflowers attain a size and
perfection elsewhere undreamed of.
Never were there such toothsome red radishes as are grown here in the
north, large, firm, and flavorous. They are not so big, though, as the
radishes the Jews used to raise long ago of which it was said a fox and
her cubs could burrow in the hollow of one. I have, however, seen a
pumpkin large enough for a fox-warren, but candour compels the
confession that the gardener fed it daily with milk by means of an
incision which he made in its stalk.
Our strawberries are not the equal of those grown on the Pacific slope,
but are larger, sweeter and firmer than Ontario berries.
We do not sit under our own fig-tree (nor, alas, our apple-tree), but
why should we sigh when each summer the sunflower springs up to a
height of twelve or fifteen feet? It is the palm-tree of the north,
only more beautiful.
The Mormons on their exodus from Illinois to Salt Lake City sowed
sunflower seeds along the trail, and ever since it has been marked by
sunflowers. In the province of Saskatchewan, the Russian refugees
sometimes divide their fields by rows of poppies. In Manitoba, their
hedges are of sweet-peas; in British Columbia, of broom.
After awhile, when all our real-estate has been sold, and all our
companies have been promoted, we of Alberta shall have time and
inclination to consider our provincial plant.
Grant us then that it may be the sunflower!