he beach, but on
either side there is a stretch of sand pocketed among the rocks, and in
the back a dune stops abruptly at the margin of wide salt meadows,
creek-fed and unctuous, as befits the natural gardens of the sea.

The other cottages lying to the eastward are gay in red-and-white
striped awnings, and porch and window boxes painted red or green are
filled with geraniums, nasturtiums, petunias,--any flowers, in short,
that will thrive in the broiling sun, while some of the owners have
planted buoy-like barrels at the four corners of their enclosures and
filled them with the same assortment of foliage plants with which they
would decorate a village lawn. This use of flowers seemed at once to
draw the coolness from the easterly breeze and intensify the heat that
vibrates from the sand.

Have you ever noticed that the sea in these latitudes has no affinity
for the brightest colours, save as it is a mirror for the fleeting
flames of sunrise and sunset?

The sea-birds are blended tints of rock, sand, sky, and water, save the
dash of coral in bill and foot of a few, just as the coral of the
wild-rose hips blends with the tawny marsh-grasses. Scarlet is a colour
abhorred even by the marshes, until late in autumn the blaze of samphire
consumes them with long spreading tongues of flame. How can people be
so senseless as to come seaward to cool their bodies, and yet so
surround themselves with scarlet that it is never out of range of the
eye?

Lavinia Cortright and the botanical Bradfords, as Evan calls them,
because though equally lovers of flowers, they go further than some for
the reason why that lies hid beneath the colour and perfume, have laid
out and are still developing a sand garden that, while giving the
cottage home the restful air that is a garden's first claim, has still
the distinct identity of the sand and sea!

To begin, with one single exception, they have drawn upon the wild for
this garden, even as you are doing in the restoration of your knoll.
Back of the cottage a dozen yards is a sand ridge covering some fairly
good, though mongrel, loam, for here, as along most of the coasts of
sounds and bays, the sea, year by year, has bitten into the soil and at
the same time strewn it with sand. Considering this as the garden
boundary, a windbreak of good-sized bayberry bushes has been placed
there, not in a stiff line, but in blended groups, enclosing three
sides, these bays being taken from a thicket of t