hem farther toward the
marshes.

An alley from the back porch into this enclosure is bordered on either
side by bushes of beach plum, that, when covered with feathery white
bloom in May, before the leaves appear, gives the sandy shore the only
orchard touch it knows. Of course the flowering period is over when the
usual shore season begins, though nowadays there is no off time--people
go to shore and country when they are moved; yet the beach plum is a
picturesque bush at any time, especially when, in September, it is
loaded with the red purple fruit. In the two spaces on either side the
alley the sand is filled with massed plants that, when a little more
time has been given them for stretching and anchoring their roots, will
straightway weave a flower mat upon the sand.

Down beyond the next point, one day last autumn, Horace and Sylvia found
a plantation of our one New England cactus, the prickly pear (_Opuntia
opuntia_). We have it here and there in our rocky pasture; but in
greater heat and with better underfeeding it seemed a bit of a tropical
plain dropped on the eastern coast. Do you know the thing? The leaves
are shaped like the fans of a lobster's tail and sometimes are
several-jointed, smooth except for occasional tufts of very treacherous
spikes, and of a peculiar semitranslucent green; the half-double flowers
set on the leaf edges are three inches across and of a brilliant
sulphur-yellow, with tasselled stamens; the fruit is fleshy, somewhat
fig-shaped, and of a dark red when ripe--altogether a very decorative
plant, though extremely difficult to handle.

After surveying the plantation on all sides, the tongs used by the
oyster dredges suggested themselves to Horace, and thus grasped, the
prickly pears were safely moved and pegged in their new quarters with
long pieces of bent wire, the giant equivalents of the useful hairpins
that I recommended for pegging down your ferns.

Now the entire plot of several yards square, apparently untroubled by
the removal, is in full bloom, and has been for well-nigh a month, they
say, though the individual blossoms are but things of a day. Close by,
another yellow flower, smaller but more pickable, is just now waving,
the rock rose or frostweed, bearing two sorts of flowers: the
conspicuous yellow ones, somewhat resembling small evening primroses,
while all the ground between is covered with an humble member of the
rock rose family--the tufted beach heather with its int