Stranica 450 [450]
Ene; Prize DMON ?T «SEC T:LON
The wide stretches of velvety grass are shaded with fruit and
mimosa trees, and interspersed with flower-beds, so long and wide
that you wonder how enough flowers to fill them are ever planted.
Fortunately, however, very little planting is now necessary, for, in
between the crepe myrtles and lilacs, flowering shrubs and roses,
the transient flowers sow their own seeds with the assistance of
the wind, and come up every spring with no less grace because
planted “by an Unseen Hand.’’ ‘They represent, surely, those
‘‘flowery beds of ease” spoken of in the old hymn.
If the garden-viewer has spent her youth in the mountains, as
I have, and then had to live away from them, she will only vaguely
realize the garden at first, because she will have to sit down in the
summer-house and not merely look at the mountains, but let the
sight of them sink into her soul until she is satisfied. For the view
is the great feature which individualizes this garden, and makes tt
the most beautiful of all others, and the most beloved by me.
In the tropical garden, described in ““The Garden of Allah,"
the beholders looked out over the wall at a marvelous view of the
desert, and neither the flowers nor Larbi’s flute could lure them
away from it. There is no wall to the Bloomfield garden, and the
hedge is low on this side; the adjoining country spreads out kindly
below in rolling hills and homesteads, the latter only recognizable
by position, for that miniature cluster of trees, with the big gable
peeping out, is the stately Spring Hill—where my grandmother's
grandfather lived when Bloomfield was built.
Above, the Blue Ridge range, extending from one side of the
horizon to the other, with its huge ragged outline against the sky,
is a sight to leave one breathless. The dim-blue mountains lie in
the distance, the slate-colored and soft-greys nearer, while the few
in the foreground are a shaggy dark-green; white clouds floating
over them make shadows in strange shapes. A winding trail of
smoke—but, no! it is all too dreamily delicious to describe! Words
only wn-naturalize a beautiful impression.
Unlike most old places, whose gardens were in their prime
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