Mabel Osgood Wright - The Garden, You, and I
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Mabel Osgood Wright >> The Garden, You, and I
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I expected to do nothing with it this season until one day Larry, the
departed, in a desire to use some of the domestic guano with which the
rough cellar of the old building was filled, carted away part of it, and
supplying its place with loam, dug over and straightened out the
irregular space, which is quite six feet wide by thirty long.
The same day, on going to a near-by florist's for celery plants, I found
that he had a quantity of little heliotropes in excess of his needs,
that had remained unpotted in the sand of the cutting house, where they
had spindled into sickly-looking weeds. In a moment of the horticultural
gambling that will seize one, I offered him a dollar for the lot, which
he accepted readily, for it was the last of June and the poor things
would probably have been thrown out in a day or two.
I took them home and spent a whole morning in separating and cutting off
the spindling tops to an even length of six inches. Literally there
seemed to be no end to the plants, and when I counted them I found that
I had nearly a hundred and fifty heliotropes, which, after rejecting
the absolutely hopeless, gave me six rows for the bed.
For several weeks my speculation in heliotropes was a subject of much
mirth between Bart and myself, and the place was anything but a bed of
sweet odours! The poor things lost the few leaves they had possessed and
really looked as if they had been haunted by the ghosts of all the
departed chickens that had gone from the fowl-house to the block. Then
we had some wet weather, followed by growing summer heat, and I did not
visit the bed for perhaps a week or more, when I rubbed my eyes and
pinched myself; for it was completely covered with a mass of vigorous
green, riotous in its profusion, here and there showing flower buds, and
ever since it is one of the places to which I go to feast my eyes and
nose when in need of garden encouragement! Another year I shall plant
the heliotrope in one of the short cross-walk borders of the old garden,
where we may also see it from the dining room, and use the larger bed
for the more hardy sweet things, as I shall probably never be able to
buy so many heliotrope plants again for so little money.
Now also I have a definite plan for a large border of fragrant flowers
and leaves. I have been on a journey, and, having spent three whole
days from home, I am able for once to tell you something instead of
endlessly stringing questions together.
We also have been to the Cortrights' at Gray Rocks, and through a whiff
of salt air, a touch of friendly hands, much conversation, and a drive
to Coningsby (a village back from the shore peopled by the descendants
of seafarers who, having a little property, have turned mildly to
farming), we have received fresh inspiration.
You did not overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside
garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several
surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy
soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about which the
brick-red monarch butterflies were hovering in great flocks. Neither did
you tell me of the thistles that flank the bayberry hedge. I never
realized what a thing of beauty a thistle might be when encouraged and
allowed room to develop. Some of the plants of the common deep purple
thistle, that one associates with the stunted growths of dusty
roadsides, stood full five feet high, each bush as clear cut and erect
as a candelabrum of fine metal work, while another group was composed of
a pale yellow species with a tinge of pink in the centre set in very
handsome silvery leaves. I had never before seen these yellow thistles,
but Lavinia Cortright says that they are very plentiful in the dry
ground back of the marshes, where the sand has been carried in drifts
both by wind and tide.
The table and house decorations the day that we arrived were of thistles
blended with the deep yellow blossoms of the downy false foxglove or
Gerardia and the yellow false indigo that looks at a short distance like
a dwarf bush pea.
We drove to Coningsby, as I supposed to see some gay little gardens,
fantastic to the verge of awfulness, that had caught Aunt Lavinia's eye.
In one the earth for the chief bed was contained in a surf-boat that had
become unseaworthy from age, and not only was it filled to the brim, but
vines of every description trailed over the sides.
A neighbour opposite, probably a garden rival of the owner of the boat
but lacking aquatic furniture, had utilized a single-seated cutter
which, painted blue of the unmerciful shade that fights with everything
it approaches, was set on an especially green bit of side lawn,
surrounded by a heavy row of conch shells, and the box into which the
seat had been turned, as well as the bottom of the sleigh itself, was
filled with a jumble of magenta petunias and flame-coloured nasturtiums.
After we had passed down a village street a quarter of a mile long,
bordered on either side by floral combinations of this description, the
sight began to pall, and I wondered how it was possible that any flowers
well watered and cared for could produce such a feeling of positive
aversion as well as eye-strained fatigue; also, if this was all that the
Cortrights had driven us many miles to see, when it was so much more
interesting to lounge on either of the porches of their own cottage, the
one commanding the sea and the other the sand garden, the low dunes, and
the marsh meadows.
"It is only half a mile farther on," said Aunt Lavinia, quick to feel
that we were becoming bored, without our having apparently given any
sign to that effect.
"It! What is _it_?" asked Bart, while I, without shame it is confessed,
having a ravenous appetite, through outdoor living, hoped that _it_ was
some quaint and neat little inn that "refreshed travellers," as it was
expressed in old-time wording.
"How singular!" ejaculated Aunt Lavinia; "I thought I told you last
night when we were in the garden--well, it must have been in a dream
instead. _It_ is the garden of Mrs. Marchant, wholly of fragrant things;
it is on the little cross-road, beyond that strip of woods up there,"
and she waved toward a slight rise in the land that was regarded as a
hill of considerable importance in this flat country.
"It does not contain merely a single bed of sweet odours like Barbara's
and mine, but is a garden an acre in extent, where everything admitted
has fragrance, either in flower or leaf. We chanced upon it quite by
accident, Martin and I, when driving ourselves down from Oaklands,
across country, as it were, to Gray Rocks, by keeping to shady lanes,
byways, and pent roads, where it was often necessary to take down bars
and sometimes verge on trespassing by going through farmyards in order
to continue our way.
"After traversing a wood road of unusual beauty, where everything broken
and unsightly had been carefully removed that ferns and wild shrubs
might have full chance of life, we came suddenly upon a white picket
gate covered by an arched trellis, beyond which in the vista could be
seen a modest house of the real colonial time, set in the midst of a
garden.
"At once we realized the fact that the lane was also a part of the
garden in that it was evidently the daily walk of some one who loved
nature, and we looked about for a way of retracing our steps. At the
same moment two female figures approached the gate from the other side.
At the distance at which we were I could only see that one was tall and
slender, was dressed all in pure white, and crowned by a mass of hair to
match, while the other woman was short and stocky, and the way in which
she opened the gate and held it back told that whatever her age might be
she was an attendant, though probably an intimate one.
"In another moment they discovered us, and as Martin alighted from the
vehicle to apologize for our intrusion the tall figure immediately
retreated to the garden, so quickly and without apparent motion that we
were both startled, for the way of moving is peculiar to those whose
feet do not really tread the earth after the manner of their fellows;
and before we had quite recovered ourselves the stout woman had advanced
and we saw by the pleasant smile her round face wore that she was not
aggrieved at the intrusion but seemed pleased to meet human beings in
that out-of-the-way place rather than rabbits, many of which had
scampered away as we came down the lane.
"Martin explained our dilemma and asked if we might gain the highway
without retracing our steps. The woman hesitated a moment, and then
said, 'If you come through the gate and turn sharp to the right, you can
go out across the apple orchard by taking down a single set of bars,
only you'll have to lead your horse, sir, for the trees are set thick
and are heavy laden. I'd let you cross the bit of grass to the drive by
the back gate yonder but that it would grieve Mrs. Marchant to see the
turf so much as pressed with a wheel; she'd feel and know it somehow,
even if she didn't see it.'
"'Mrs. Marchant! Not Mrs. Chester Marchant?' cried Martin, while the
far-away echo of something recalled by the name troubled the ears of my
memory.
"'Yes, sir, the very same! Did you know Dr. Marchant, sir? The minute I
laid eyes on you two I thought you were of her kind!' replied the woman,
pointing backward over her shoulder and settling herself against the
shaft and side of Brown Tom, the horse, as if expecting and making ready
for a comfortable chat.
"As she stood thus I could take a full look at her without
intrusiveness. Apparently well over sixty years old, and her face lines
telling of many troubles, yet she had not a gray hair in her head and
her poise was of an independent landowner rather than an occupier of
another's home. I also saw at a glance that whatever her present
position might be, she had not been born in service, but was probably a
native of local importance, who, for some reason perfectly satisfactory
to herself, was 'accommodating.'
"'Dr. Marchant, Dr. Russell, and I were college mates,' said Martin,
briefly, 'and after he and his son died so suddenly I was told that his
widow was mentally ill and that none could see her, and later that she
had died, or else the wording was so that I inferred as much,' and the
very recollection seemed to set Martin dreaming. And I did not wonder,
for there had never been a more brilliant and devoted couple than Abbie
and Chester Marchant, and I still remember the shock of it when word
came that both father and son had been killed by the same runaway
accident, though it was nearly twenty years ago.
"'She was ill, sir, was Mrs. Marchant; too ill to see anybody. For a
long time she wouldn't believe that the accident had happened, and when
she really sensed it, she was as good as dead for nigh five years. One
day some of her people came to me--'twas the year after my own husband
died--and asked if I would take a lady and her nurse here to live with
me for the summer. They told me of her sickness and how she was always
talking of some cottage in a garden of sweet-smelling flowers where she
had lived one happy summer with her husband and her boy, and they placed
the house as mine.
"'Her folks said the doctors thought if she could get back here for a
time that it might help her. Then I recollected that ten years before,
when I went up to Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just
as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't
look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my
grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all
sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks
came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't
sold so much in shops in those days as they are now, and so this place
came to be called the Herb Farm. After that it was sold off, little by
little, until the garden, wood lane, and orchard is about all that's
left.
"'I was lonesome and liked the idea of company, and besides I was none
too well fixed; yet I dreaded a mournful widow that wasn't all there
anyway, according to what they said, but I thought I'd try. Well, sir,
she come, and that first week I thought I'd never stand it, she talked
and wrung her hands so continual. But one day what do you think
happened? I chanced to pick a nosegay, not so much fine flowers perhaps
as good-smelling leaves and twigs, and put it in a little pitcher in her
room.
"'It was like witchcraft the way it worked; the smell of those things
seemed to creep over her like some drugs might and she changed. She
stopped moaning and went out into the garden and touched all the posies
with her fingers, as if she was shaking hands, and all of a sudden it
seemed, by her talk, as if her dead were back with her again; and on
every other point she's been as clear and ladylike as possible ever
since, and from that day she cast off her black clothes as if wearing
'em was all through a mistake.
"'The doctors say it's something to do with the 'sociation of smells,
for that season they spent in my cottage was the only vacation Dr.
Marchant had taken in years, and they say it was the happiest time in
her life, fussing about among my old-fashioned posies with him; and
somehow in her mind he's got fixed there among those posies, and every
year she plants more and more of them, and what friends of hers she
ever speaks of she remembers by some flowers they wore or liked.
"'Well, as it turned out, her trustees have bought my place out and
fixed it over, and here we live together, I may say, both fairly
content!
"'Come in and see her, won't you? It'll do no harm. Cortright, did you
say your name was?' and before we could retreat, throwing Brown Tom's
loose check-rein across the pickets of the gate, she led us to where the
tall woman, dressed in pure white, stood under the trees, a look of
perfectly calm expectancy in the wonderful dark eyes that made such a
contrast to her coils of snow-white hair.
"'Cortright! Martin Cortright, is it not?' she said immediately, as her
companion spoke the surname. 'And your wife? I had not heard that you
were married, but I remember you well, Lavinia Dorman, and your city
garden, and the musk-rose bush that ailed because of having too little
sun. Chester will be so sorry to miss you; he is seldom at home in the
mornings, for he takes long walks with our son. He is having the first
entire half year's vacation he has allowed himself since our marriage.
But you will always find him in the garden in the afternoon; he is so
fond of fragrant flowers, and he is making new studies of herbs and
such things, for he believes that in spite of some great discoveries it
will be proven that the old simples are the most enduring medicines.'
"As she spoke she was leading the way, with that peculiar undulating
progress, like a cloud blown over the earth's surface, that I had
noticed at first. Then we came out from under the shade of the trees
into the garden enclosure and I saw borders and beds, but chiefly
borders, stretching and curving everywhere, screening all the fences,
approaching the house, and when almost there retreating in graceful
lines into the shelter of the trees. The growth had the luxuriance of a
jungle, and yet there was nothing weedy or awry about it, and as the
breeze blew toward us the combination of many odours, both pungent and
sweet, was almost overpowering.
"'You very seldom wore a buttonhole flower, but when you did it was a
safrano bud or else a white jasmine,' Mrs. Marchant said, wheeling
suddenly and looking at Martin with a gaze that did not stop where he
stood, but went through and beyond him; 'it was Dr. Russell who always
wore a pink! See! I have both here!' and going up to a tea-rose bush,
grown to the size of a shrub and lightly fastened to the side of the
house, she gathered a few shell-like buds and a moment later pulled
down a spray of the jasmine vine that festooned a window, as we see it
in England but never here, and carefully cut off a cluster of its white
stars by aid of a pair of the long, slender flower-picking scissors that
hung from her belt by a ribbon, twisted the stems together, and placed
them in Martin's buttonhole almost without touching it.
"Having done this, she seemed to forget us and drifted away among the
flowers, touching some gently as she passed, snipping a dead leaf here
and arranging a misplaced branch there.
"We left almost immediately, but have been there many times since, and
though as a whole the garden is too heavily fragrant, I thought that it
might suggest possibilities to you."
As Aunt Lavinia paused we were turning from the main road into the
narrow but beautifully kept lane upon which the Herb Farm, as it was
still called, was located, by one of those strange freaks that sometimes
induces people to build in a strangely inaccessible spot, though quite
near civilization. I know that you must have come upon many such places
in your wanderings.
Of course my curiosity was piqued, and I felt, besides, as if I was
about to step into the page of some strange psychological romance, nor
was I disappointed.
The first thing that I saw when we entered was a great strip of
heliotrope that rivalled my own, and opposite it an equal mass of
silvery lavender crowned by its own flowers, of the colour that we so
frequently use as a term, but seldom correctly. There were no flagged or
gravel walks, but closely shorn grass paths, the width of a lawn-mower,
that followed the outline of the borders and made grateful footing.
Bounding the heliotrope and lavender on one side was a large bed of what
I at first thought were Margaret carnations, of every colour combination
known to the flower, but a closer view showed that while those in the
centre were Margarets, those of the wide border were of a heavier
quality both in build of plant, texture of leaf, and flower, which was
like a compact greenhouse carnation, the edges of the petals being very
smooth and round, while in addition to many rich, solid colours there
were flowers of white-and-yellow ground, edged and striped and flaked
with colour, and the fragrance delicious and reminiscent of the clove
pinks of May.
Mrs. Puffin, the companion, could tell us little about them except that
the seed from which they were raised came from England and that, as
she put it, they were fussy, troublesome things, as those sown one
season had to be lifted and wintered in the cold pit and get just so
much air every day, and be planted out in the border again in April.
Aunt Lavinia recognized them as the same border carnations over which
she had raved when she first saw them in the trim gardens of Hampton
Court. Can either you or Evan tell me more of them and why we do not see
them here? Before long I shall go garden mad, I fear; for after grooming
the place into a generally decorative and floriferous condition of
trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, etc., will come the hunger for specialties
that if completely satisfied will necessitate not only a rosary, a lily
and wild garden, a garden--rather than simply a bed--of sweet odours,
and lastly a garden wholly for the family of pinks or carnations,
whichever is the senior title. I never thought of these last except as a
garden incident until I saw their possibilities in Mrs. Marchant's space
of fragrant leaves and flowers.
[Illustration: A BED OF JAPAN PINKS.]
The surrounding fences were entirely concealed by lilacs and syringas,
interspersed with gigantic bushes of the fragrant, brown-flowered
strawberry shrub; the four gates, two toward the road, one to the
barn-yard, and one entering the wood lane, were arched high and covered
by vines of Wisteria, while similar arches seemed to bring certain beds
together that would have looked scattered and meaningless without them.
In fact next to the presence of fragrant things, the artistic use of
vines as draperies appealed to me most.
The border following the fence was divided, back of the house, by a
vine-covered arbour, on the one side of which the medicinal herbs and
simples were massed; on the other what might be classed as decorative or
garden flowers, though some of the simples, such as tansy with its
clusters of golden buttons, must be counted decorative.
The plants were never set in straight lines, but in irregular groups
that blended comfortably together. Mrs. Marchant was not feeling well,
Mrs. Puffin said, and could not come out, greatly to my disappointment;
but the latter was only too glad to do the honours, and the plant names
slipped from her tongue with the ease of long familiarity.
This patch of low growth with small heads of purple flowers was
broad-leaved English thyme; that next, summer savory, used in cooking,
she said. Then followed common sage and its scarlet-flowered cousin
that we know as salvia; next came rue and rosemary, Ophelia's flower of
remembrance, with stiff leaves. Little known or grown, or rather
capricious and tender here, I take it, for I find plants of it offered
for sale in only one catalogue. Marigolds were here also, why I do not
know, as I should think they belonged with the more showy flowers; then
inconspicuous pennyroyal and several kinds of mints--spearmint,
peppermint, and some great plants of velvet-leaved catnip.
Borage I saw for the first time, also coriander of the aromatic seeds,
and a companion of dill of vinegar fame; and strangely enough, in
rotation of Bible quotation, cumin and rue came next.
Caraway and a feathery mass of fennel took me back to grandmother's
Virginia garden; balm and arnica, especially when I bruised a leaf of
the latter between my fingers, recalled the bottle from which I soothe
the Infant's childish bumps, the odour of it being also strongly
reminiscent of my own childhood.
Angelica spoke of the sweet candied stalks, but when we reached a spot
of basil, Martin Cortright's tongue was loosed and he began to recite
from Keats; and all at once I seemed to see Isabella sitting among the
shadows holding between her knees the flower-pot from which the
strangely nourished plant of basil grew as she watered it with her
tears.
A hedge of tall sunflowers, from whose seeds, Mrs. Puffin said, a
soothing and nourishing cough syrup may be made, antedating cod-liver
oil, replaced the lilacs on this side, and with them blended boneset and
horehound; while in a springy spot back toward the barn-yard the long
leaves of sweet flag or calamus introduced a different class of foliage.
On the garden side the border was broken every ten feet or so with great
shrubs of our lemon verbena, called lemon balm by Mrs. Puffin. It seemed
impossible that such large, heavily wooded plants could be lifted for
winter protection in the cellar, yet such Mrs. Puffin assured us was the
case. So I shall grow mine to this size if possible, for what one can do
may be accomplished by another,--that is the tonic of seeing other
gardens than one's own. Between the lemon verbenas were fragrant-leaved
geraniums of many flavours--rose, nutmeg, lemon, and one with a sharp
peppermint odour, also a skeleton-leaved variety; while a low-growing
plant with oval leaves and half-trailing habit and odd odour, Mrs.
Puffin called apple geranium, though it does not seem to favour the
family. Do you know it?
Bee balm in a blaze of scarlet made glowing colour amid so much green,
and strangely enough the bluish lavender of the taller-growing sister,
wild bergamot, seems to harmonize with it; while farther down the line
grew another member of this brave family of horsemints with almost pink,
irregular flowers of great beauty.
Southernwood formed fernlike masses here and there; dwarf tansy made the
edging, together with the low, yellow-flowered musk, which Aunt Lavinia,
now quite up in such things, declared to be a "musk-scented mimulus!"
whatever that may be! Stocks, sweet sultan, and tall wands of evening
primrose graded this border up to another shrubbery.
Of mignonette the garden boasts a half dozen species, running from one
not more than six inches in height with cinnamon-red flowers to a tall
variety with pointed flower spikes, something of the shape of the white
flowers of the clethra bush or wands of Culver's root that grow along
the fence at Opal Farm. It is not so fragrant as the common mignonette,
but would be most graceful to arrange with roses or sweet peas. Aunt
Lavinia says that she thinks that it is sold under the name of Miles
spiral mignonette.
Close to the road, where the fence angle allows for a deep bed and the
lilacs grade from the tall white of the height of trees down to the
compact bushes of newer French varieties, lies the violet bed, now a
mass of green leaves only, but by these Aunt Lavinia's eye read them out
and found here the English sweet wild violet, as well as the deep purple
double garden variety, the tiny white scented that comes with
pussy-willows, the great single pansy violet of California, and the
violets grown from the Russian steppes that carpeted the ground under
your "mother tree."
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