Farm life -- Fiction; Love stories; New England -- Fiction
"Not if it's the right scarlet," I replied. "But it's not the colour
I'm going to copy. Neither is it the moon bridges in this other temple
garden. It's the simplicity. Out here south of this room is my lawn
and garden. Now I want it to be a real garden, but I don't want it
to dwarf the landscape. I don't want it to look as if I'd bought a
half acre of Italy and deposited it in the middle of Massachusetts,
either. I've never seen a picture of a real Japanese garden yet that
didn't look as much like a natural Japanese landscape as a garden. I
want my garden to be an extension of my south room which will somehow
frame the real landscape beyond."
We went through the glass door, and I showed her where the grape arbour
was to be, at the western side of the lawn, and how a lane of hollyhocks
would lead to it from the pergola end, screening the kitchen windows and
the yet-to-be-built hotbeds.
"Now," said I, "I'm going to build a rambler rose trellis along the
south; there's your red against the lavender of the far hills at sunset!
But how shall the trellis be designed, and where shall the sundial be,
and where the flower beds?"
The girl clapped her hands. "Oh, the fun of planning it all out from
the beginning!" she cried. "My, but I envy you."
"Please don't envy; advise," said I.
"Oh, I can't. I don't know anything about gardens."
"But you know what you like! People always say that when they are
ignorant, don't they?"
"Don't be nasty," she replied, running down the plank from the terrace
to the lawn, and walking out to the centre. "I'd have the sundial
right in the middle, where it gets all the sun," she said, "because
it seems to me a dial ought to be in the natural focus point of the
light. Then I'd ring it with flowers, some low, a few fairly tall, all
bright colours, or maybe white, and the beds not too regular. Then,
right in line with the door, I'd have an arch in the trellis so you
could see through into the farm. Oh, I know! I'd have the trellis all
arches, with a bigger one in the centre, and it would look like a Roman
aqueduct of roses!"
"A Roman aqueduct of roses," I repeated, my imagination fired by the
picture, "walking across the end of my green lawn, with the farm and the
far hills glimpsed beneath! 'Rome's ghost since her decease.' Miss
Goodwin, you are a wonder! But can you build it?"
"No," she sighed, "I can only give you the derivation of 'aqueduct'
and 'rose'."
"Come," said I, "we will consult Hard Cider."
"Heavens!" she laughed. "Is that anything like Dutch courage?"
Hard grunted, and came with us to the line of stakes where the rose
trellis was to be. I sketched roughly the idea I wanted--a reproduction
in simple trellis work, as it were, of High Bridge, New York.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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