d along the
yellowing rows a few ears of corn, tender enough and sweet enough for
the table, with not quite the flavor of July, perhaps, but with
something that appeals as much to the imagination, that belongs with the
spectral sunlight, the fading stalks and vines, and carries the memory
back to that first day of April planting. To bring in a basket, however
scanty, of those odds and ends and range them side by side on the
kitchen table affords a gratification that is not entirely material, I
believe, for there is a sort of pensive sadness in it that I have been
told is related to poetry.

* * * * *

I have said little of our flowers, but they were a large part--sometimes
I think the largest part--of our happiness. Going back through the
summers now, I cannot quite separate those of that first year from those
of the summers that followed. It does not matter; sooner or later we had
all the old-fashioned things: hollyhocks in clusters and corners, and on
the high ground in a long row against the sky; poppies and
bleeding-heart, columbine and foxglove, bunches of crimson bee-balm and
rows of tall delphinium in marvelous shades of blue. And we had banks of
calliopsis and sunflowers--the small sunflowers of Kansas, that bloom a
hundred or more to a stalk--and tall phlox whose fragrance carries one
back to some far, forgotten childhood. Then there were the roses--the
tea-roses that one must be careful of in winter and the hardy
climbers--the Dorothy Perkins and ramblers clambering over the walls. As
I look back now through the summers I seem to see a tangle of color
stretching across the years. It is our garden--our flowers--always a
riot of disorder, always a care and a trial, always beloved and
glorious.

One year I planted some canterbury-bells--the blue and the white. They
are biennials, and bloom the second year. The blue ones came
wonderfully, but the white ones apparently failed. I did not plant them
again, for I went in mainly for perennials that, once established, come
year after year. I tried myosotis, too, but that also disappeared after
the second year. Our garden, such as it was, was a hardy garden, where
only the fittest survived.

There was an accompaniment to our garden. It was the brook. Nearly
always, as I dug and planted, I could hear its voice. Sometimes it rose
strong and insistent--in spring, when rains were plenty; sometimes in
August when the sky for weeks had been