ricate branches,
reminding one more of a club-moss than a true flowering plant. Not a
scrap of sand in the enclosure is left uncovered, and the various plants
are set closely, like the grasses and wild flowers of a meadow, the sand
pinweed that we gather, together with sea lavender, for winter bouquets
much resembling a flowering grass.

The rabbit-foot clover takes kindly to the sandy soil, and, as it
flowers from late May well into September, and holds its little furry
tails like autumn pussy-willows until freezing weather, makes a very
interesting sort of bed all by itself, and massed close to it, as if
recognizing the family relationship, is the little creeping bush clover
with its purplish flowers.

Next, set thickly in a mass representing a stout bush, comes the fleshy
beach pea with rosy purple flowers. When it straggles along according to
its sweet will, it has a poor and weedy look, but massed so that the
somewhat difficult colour is concentrated, it is very decorative, and it
serves as a trellis for the trailing wild bean, a sand lover that has a
longer flowering season.

A patch of a light lustrous purple, on closer view, proves to be a mass
of the feathered spikes of blazing star or colic-root, first cousin of
the gay-feather of the West, that sometimes grows six feet high and has
been welcomed to our gardens.

On the opposite side of the beach-plum alley, the Bradfords have made
preparations for autumn glory, such as we always drive down to the marsh
lands from Oaklands not only to see but to gather and take home. Masses
of the fleshy tufted seaside goldenrod, now just beginning to throw up
its stout flowerstalks, flank a bed of wild asters twenty feet across.
Here are gathered all the asters that either love or will tolerate dry
soil, a certain bid for their favour having been made by mixing several
barrels of stiff loam with the top sand, as an encouragement until the
roots find the hospitable mixture below.

The late purple aster (_patens_) with its broad clasping leaves, the
smooth aster (_laevis_) with its violet-blue flowers, are making good
bushes and preparing for the pageant. Here is the stiff white-heath
aster, the familiar Michaelmas daisy, that is so completely covered with
snowy flowers that the foliage is obliterated, and proves its hold upon
the affections by its long string of names,--frostweed, white rosemary,
and farewell summer being among them,--and also the white-wreath aster,
wit