The Solitary Summer | Page 3

fluttering through such a bath of
scent, with the real stars above and the pansy stars beneath, and
themselves so fashioned that even if they wanted to they could not
make a noise and disturb the prevailing peace. A great deal that is
poetical has been written by English people about May Day, and the
impression left on the foreign mind is an impression of posies, and
garlands, and village greens, and youths and maidens much
be-ribboned, and lambs, and general friskiness. I was in England once
on a May Day, and we sat over the fire shivering and listening blankly
to the north- east wind tearing down the street and the rattling of the
hail against the windows, and the friends with whom I was staying said
it was very often so, and that they had never seen any lambs and
ribbons. We Germans attach no poetical significance to it at all, and yet
we well might, for it is almost invariably beautiful; and as for garlands,
I wonder how many villages full of young people could have been
provided with them out of my garden, and nothing be missed. It is
to-day a garden of wallflowers, and I think I have every colour and sort
in cultivation. The borders under the south windows of the house, so
empty and melancholy this time last year, are crammed with them, and
are finished off in front by a broad strip from end to end of yellow and

white pansies. The tea rose beds round the sun-dial facing these borders
are sheets of white, and golden, and purple, and wine-red pansies, with
the dainty red shoots of the tea roses presiding delicately in their midst.
The verandah steps leading down into this pansy paradise have boxes
of white, and pink, and yellow tulips all the way up on each side, and
on the lawn, behind the roses, are two big beds of every coloured tulip
rising above a carpet of forget-me-nots. How very much more
charming different-coloured tulips are together than tulips in one colour
by itself! Last year, on the recommendation of sundry writers about
gardens, I tried beds of scarlet tulips and forget-me-nots. They were
pretty enough; but I wish those writers could see my beds of mixed
tulips. I never saw anything so sweetly, delicately gay. The only ones I
exclude are the rose-coloured ones; but scarlet, gold, delicate pink, and
white are all there, and the effect is infinitely enchanting. The
forget-me-nots grow taller as the tulips go off, and will presently
tenderly engulf them altogether, and so hide the shame of their decay in
their kindly little arms. They will be left there, clouds of gentle blue,
until the tulips are well withered, and then they will be taken away to
make room for the scarlet geraniums that are to occupy these two beds
in the summer and flare in the sun as much as they like. I love an
occasional mass of fiery colour, and these two will make the lilies look
even whiter and more breathless that are to stand sentinel round the
semicircle containing the precious tea roses.
The first two years I had this garden, I was determined to do exactly as
I chose in it, and to have no arrangements of plants that I had not
planned, and no plants but those I knew and loved; so, fearing that an
experienced gardener would profit by my ignorance, then about as
absolute as it could be, and thrust all his bedding nightmares upon me,
and fill the place with those dreadful salad arrangements so often seen
in the gardens of the indifferent rich, I would only have a meek man of
small pretensions, who would be easily persuaded that I knew as much
as, or more than, he did himself. I had three of these meek men one
after the other, and learned what I might long ago have discovered, that
the less a person knows, the more certain he is that he is right, and that
no weapons yet invented are of any use in a struggle with stupidity. The
first of these three went melancholy mad at the end of a year; the
second was love-sick, and threw down his tools and gave up his

situation to wander after the departed siren who had turned his head;
the third, when I inquired how it was that the things he had sown never
by any chance came up, scratched his head, and as this is a sure sign of
ineptitude, I sent him away.
Then I sat down and thought. I had been here two years and worked
hard, through these men, at the garden; I had done my best to learn all I
could and make it beautiful; I had refused to