EVA'S GARDEN.
Just off St. Albans lane a big gate leads past an antique-looking house into a quaint garden. It is Januaiy, and the parks and roads outside are dried up with the droughts that have prevailed irom Otago m the south to Auckland in the north. But the drought seems to have stayed outside this garden. After a cool rest in one of those dear, old, >ak-panelled rooms that one reads aLout m v grandmother's books and a delicious cup of . tea, we are led by Eva—a girl with long 1 dark hair, whose soul lights up her eyes — into her gaiden. The first thing that meets us is the shade of a giant walnut tiee. with great branches spreading all over the lawn, and walnuts on them as big as your fist. What walnuts they weie' And what, plums were on the tree beyond it! And what pears a.id apples and peaches ranged round and about the plum tree is more than can be told. But there we were in a garden that was at once an avenue and an orchaid. Nor was it all avenue: the pear tree was so laden with fruit that its branches trailed on the ground amongst the big broad leaves of the creeping marrow plants —and that led us into j mother world. Bows upon rows of potato j plants in full flower; rows upon rows of Thubarb, with their voluptuous leaves shielding their tender stalks from the sun that was striving, and not in vain, to kiss their rosy roots. Just on the turn between the orchard and the "boys' workshop" —an ivycovered shed 1 of many mysteries —we came on the children's garden. /Eva laughed as she ', told us liow the " little ones " —Eva was just 3-foot nothing in her dainty tan shoes, and j boasted of 12 whole summers —grew potatoes j here and sold them to " father." " Oh, it's only a kitchen garden! " we hear someone saying. Yes, so far it is only a kitchen garden, but none the less beautiful for that. I There is no dividing fence in the Master's . garden, and Eva knew this when she pointed ( out where the scarlet blossom was giving > place to the long, tempting French beans and to the symmetrical mairows yellowing in the ] sun. These could be beautiful as well as • ttseful. Through a gap between the laurel i hedge and the tangled mass of creepers that | covered the fernery lay the path to Eva's ' garden proper. Such a garden it was! There wasn't room enough in it for all the rare i and beautiful things to grow singly, so they ! just tangled themselves amongst hedges of j woodbine and hawthorn and sweetbriar and all the rest of it till if you wished to pull a flower you didn't know which stem to bieak. Beneath such a tangle of them y. as | 'the sanctuary of the fern Ferns know ju=t j exactly in what tempeiature and light to grow, and here with both they seemed per- j fectjy satisfied. Dainty fronds spread them- ' selves, hid themselves, curled themselves, or I rested themselves in a profusion of caieless- I ness and beauty that was restful to behold ,' Beyond the fernery lay the v-iolet path. ' There are no violets in January, to be sure; but Eva remembered them in such a wav and with such loving eiithu=i-asm that all their scent and beauty came back in memory. ( A labyiinth of paths seemed to lead eveiv- j where," but wherevei they went there was something beautiful. Under the ihododendrons the foxglove bloomed, rou L. the lilac carnations clustered. Eva. in passirg deplored the fact that tarnations were out of fashion —as if anything so graceful and sweet could be out of fashion! Dahlias and daisies :>nd poppies were "everywhere in piofusion It was a maze of beauty, from the gra-ceful sumach, with its conical maroon flowers standing out around its peaky green leaves like red parapets on a Chinese pagoda, to the clematis that climbed over the maerocarpa hedge into the th>me bed= . In due cour=e we rested and liad tea and cake in an old-fathioned ivy nook, and bade goodbye to Eva, the licher for an immense basket of flowers, and the naemorv of -a delightful visit. BLOXDEL.
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Otago Witness, Issue 2814, 19 February 1908, Page 83
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717EVA'S GARDEN. Otago Witness, Issue 2814, 19 February 1908, Page 83
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