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Show GARDENS By THOMAS ARKL.E CLARK Drnn of Mn, University of Illinois. I HAD never seen Mrs. Uixon's garden gar-den until last spring. We had met her tip in WWIsconslii where Nancy n ml 1 were spending the summer, mid had found a community of Interest In discussing the subject of gr.rdens. . She knew a lot about ilowers, and .apparently found a source of the keen-,est keen-,est enjoyment In their cultivation. ' Mrs. Uixon herself was n very talkative talk-ative little woman and rather a showy one. Her talk was fluent rather than well organized. "Sho rushed from one subject to another without announcement announce-ment or reason, and yet she always made a pood effect. Her reading had been wide but n little shallow, but she could always make n showing of what she knew. Her dress always carried a Hash of color. Even when she wore Mack she would have n scarlet flower at her waistline or her shoulder, or a bright-figured scarf thrown over her shoulders, or an ornament glittering In her hair. She always stood out In a crowd. When I saw her garden I recognized at once how very much she and It were alike. It covered a wide expanse ex-panse with opportunity for great variety va-riety of planting, and everywhere there was color. There bad been great masses of daffodils and crocuses in the earlier spring, but now that these were gone, poppies ran riot, purple pur-ple verbenas flashed their color In your face, wide borders of petunias and giant zinnias were blooming luxuriantly. luxu-riantly. But there was no order, no plan apparent; things were growing as Mrs. Dixou talked without regard for order or coherence. The garden was like the woman who created It, as children are like their parents. I should have been sure it was hers If I had been taken to it blindfolded, and the blind taken off without my knowing know-ing where I was. Eowe's hobby is his garden, and Rowe is a bachelor who wears spats and carries a cane and gloves, and sees the world through eyeglasses which are attached to a wide ribbon that hangs over his ears. There is nothing out of order In Rowe's garden. Everything is In its place. There Is no crowding, no clashing of colors, no mixture of flowers which do not get on well together. Xo weed would dare to find its way into Rowe's garden, gar-den, and even a human being uninvited unin-vited would feel out of place and embarrassed em-barrassed lest he disturb the meticulous metic-ulous orderliness of the place. A plucked flower might disarrange the plan. It is a beautiful garden, but not a friendly, comfortable one like Mrs. Dixon's. Mrs. Sweet's ancestors, so she alleges,- came over on the Mayflower with that horde of adventurers of whom we read so much in our school histories. She belongs to the Daughters Daugh-ters of the American Revolution and sie traces her ancestry back almost to Adam. She, too, has a garden. Nothing mongrel comes Into it She examines carefully the ancestry of every seed or plant before it finds a place In her garden. Blood and breeding breed-ing are of great moment with her, and she will have none of it, if a flower flow-er cannot present an acceptable genealogy. ; All of which suggests that gardens take on the character of those who till them. (. 19 27. Western Newspaper Union.) |