It was Aunt Jane's motto that wherever a weed would grow a flower
would grow; and carrying out this principle of planting, her garden
was continually extending its boundaries; and denizens of the garden
proper were to be found in every nook and corner of her domain. In the
spring you looked for grass only; and lo! starting up at your feet,
like the unexpected joys of life, came the golden daffodil, the paler
narcissus, the purple iris, and the red and yellow tulip, flourishing
as bravely as in the soil of its native Holland; and for a few sunny
weeks the front yard would be a great flower garden. Then blossom and
leaf would fade, and you might walk all summer over the velvet grass,
never knowing how much beauty and fragrance lay hidden in the darkness
of the earth. But when I go back to Aunt Jane's garden, I pass through
the front yard and the back yard between rows of lilac, syringas,
calycanthus, and honeysuckle; I open the rickety gate, and find myself
in a genuine old-fashioned garden, the homely, inclusive spot that
welcomed all growing things to its hospitable bounds, type of the days
when there were no impassable barriers of gold and caste between man
and his brother man. In the middle of the garden stood a
"summer-house," or arbor, whose crumbling timbers were knit together
by interlacing branches of honeysuckle and running roses. The
summer-house had four entrances, opening on four paths that divided
the ground into quarter-sections occupied by vegetables and small
fruits, and around these, like costly embroidery on the hem of a
homespun garment, ran a wide border of flowers that blossomed from
early April to late November, shifting from one beauty to another as
each flower had its little day.
There are flower-lovers who love some flowers and other flower-lovers
who love all flowers. Aunt Jane was of the latter class. The commonest
plant, striving in its own humble way to be sweet and beautiful, was
sure of a place here, and the haughtiest aristocrat who sought
admission had to lay aside all pride of place or birth and acknowledge
her kinship with common humanity. The Bourbon rose could not hold
aside her skirts from contact with the cabbage-rose; the lavender
could not disdain the companionship of sage and thyme. All must live
together in the concord of a perfect democracy. Then if the great
Gardener bestowed rain and sunshine when they were needed, mid-summer
days would show a glorious symphony of color around the gray
farmhouse, and through the enchantment of bloom and fragrance flitted
an old woman, whose dark eyes glowed with the joy of living, and the
joy of remembering all life's other summers.
To Aunt Jane every flower in the garden was a human thing with a life
story, and close to the summer-house grew one historic rose, heroine
of an old romance, to which I listened one day as we sat in the arbor,
where hundreds of honeysuckle blooms were trumpeting their fragrance
on the air.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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