Stranica 452 [452]
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give the impression of individual flowers so much as a profusion of
color—color that fills the artist in you with delight! Beds of
indigo and topaz; masses of orange, shading to cream; beds filled
with branching candelabra of red gold. Carpets of pansies, purple
and mauve; white clematis above, waving its star-sprinkled sprays
with the wind, and thorny vines with vermilion buds tangling
behind white lilies; immense hydrangeas, tinted like diatoms; long
avenues of pink gladioli stretching away to the west.
On days like these, the hazy mountains look perfectly enormous
and give you a strange uplifting-of-the-spirit sensation. An hour
later I drag my eyes away from them, for the advance of the morn¬
ing brings many important occupations. There are my old friends,
the fruit trees, that must be visited; to dispute the bees’ title to the
softest seckel pears, to find the first ripe figs, to waylay ‘‘Kritty,’’
the pretty octoroon, as she passes through with a tray of purple
grapes—and to eat of these fruits under the mimosa tree. [here
are three of these mimosas, a large young one, which is the daugh¬
ter of this older, and a tiny one, surely its grandchild. Every year
I plan to adopt the grandchild mimosa and carry it home to Rich¬
mond to raise—but it is there still.
Finally, the garden-builder herself comes out to join me, ac¬
companied now like the delightful Elizabeth in her German garden,
by three babies, their laughter tinkling through the box-bushes even
before they appear. A moment later, perhaps, with dimpled arms
outstretched and squeals of excitement, they chase, toddle and
tumble after, but never overtake, the bright-hued butterflies, flying
in and out among the flowers, while the mother sits down to her
knitting by me.
Nothing can surpass the Bloomfield garden now! A few
locusts may be singing, ‘Good-bye, Summer’’; a dead leaf falling
may remind the rest they will not be here always—but “‘let their
loveliness fade as it will,’ for this immediate moment it is flawless,
no flower fears the frost and every vine ‘‘entwines itself verdantly
still.”’ NAN Maury LIGHTFOOT.
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