th between Bart and myself, and the place was anything but a bed of
sweet odours! The poor things lost the few leaves they had possessed and
really looked as if they had been haunted by the ghosts of all the
departed chickens that had gone from the fowl-house to the block. Then
we had some wet weather, followed by growing summer heat, and I did not
visit the bed for perhaps a week or more, when I rubbed my eyes and
pinched myself; for it was completely covered with a mass of vigorous
green, riotous in its profusion, here and there showing flower buds, and
ever since it is one of the places to which I go to feast my eyes and
nose when in need of garden encouragement! Another year I shall plant
the heliotrope in one of the short cross-walk borders of the old garden,
where we may also see it from the dining room, and use the larger bed
for the more hardy sweet things, as I shall probably never be able to
buy so many heliotrope plants again for so little money.

Now also I have a definite plan for a large border of fragrant flowers
and leaves. I have been on a journey, and, having spent three whole
days from home, I am able for once to tell you something instead of
endlessly stringing questions together.

We also have been to the Cortrights' at Gray Rocks, and through a whiff
of salt air, a touch of friendly hands, much conversation, and a drive
to Coningsby (a village back from the shore peopled by the descendants
of seafarers who, having a little property, have turned mildly to
farming), we have received fresh inspiration.

You did not overestimate the originality of the Cortrights' seaside
garden, and even after your intimate description, it contained several
surprises in the shape of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy
soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about which the
brick-red monarch butterflies were hovering in great flocks. Neither did
you tell me of the thistles that flank the bayberry hedge. I never
realized what a thing of beauty a thistle might be when encouraged and
allowed room to develop. Some of the plants of the common deep purple
thistle, that one associates with the stunted growths of dusty
roadsides, stood full five feet high, each bush as clear cut and erect
as a candelabrum of fine metal work, while another group was composed of
a pale yellow species with a tinge of pink in the centre set in very
handsome silvery leaves. I had never before seen these yellow thistles,
but Lavi