"JOY OF A GARDEN."

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21153, 9 April 1932, Page 4 (Supplement)

"JOY OF A GARDEN."

By VIVIENNR GREY, 20. Bolton Street. Wellington (used 34 years). I love my garden. It is only a little garden, but, oh ! the beauty of it, on an autumn evening, when the-wind is still and the great round moon is walking with orange-sandalled feet over the tall head of the pohutukawa tree. There is a stretch of green lawn which the moonbeams stitch with gold, except where the shadows lie like tho dark pools of a raupo swamp. The paths are stone, crazy pattern with moss in the crevices,' and tho garden beds arc edged with stone's. Most of the borders arc pansies —snow-white pansies, blue-eyed pansies, bracken-gold pansies and pansies of sunset red. But now the autumn has come they are finished and cut back, and sweetscented mignonette is rioting round the tired-looking stumps and laughing at the young aquilegia plants. The aquilegias are especially early this year, and every curled leaf is full of tho promise of pink and yellow and blue skirted dancing flowers. We always call them columbines. '* All night long she dnncea Where fairy lanterns Rhine; _ All day long, with folded wings, On a stalk she sits and swings— Columbine. Must you still 1.0 waiting For the moon to shine? Couldn't you for once by day Spread your wings and fly away— Columbine ?" There are still some sweet peas left—mauve ones, tawny orange ones, white ] ones, flushed-pink ones'' such shining colours that it looks as if some of the lovely jewelled butterflies from the South American marshlands have settled on the greenery bv our garage wall and along our grey paling fence. 1 lovo to take my lessons out into the garden and study by tho gnarled old trunk of the pohutukawa tree. U'he world seems shut out there, the air is more peaceful and the wind fragrant and full of the breath of tho sea. If I climb into the branches I can see the sea, and the ships and ihe hills across tho harbour. Lessons are much nicer in the great company of the garden. When lam saying again and again—" Dominus, doiuine, dominum . . ." tho hollyhocks talk to each other about me, and their voices are high and airy. A riro-riro has nested for three seasons now in the bush along the. road, and every day ho sings in our pohutukawa tree. 1 have heard it said that his is the song of death, but to me, in the golden noon-day it is the sung of shady green nikaus over a crystal mountain creeks. Our tree often has "strange tenants. The other night, when the moon was looking over its shoulder, I heard the wierd, lonely cry of lhn mopoke. I have often heaid it front the lulls, but never before in a ' s11";:i 1 town garden. i I have just been hosing the garden, and i [ho air is' full of the scent of new-washed j earth. I like best to hose it just at sunset. when the reflect ion of sun on the hills turns the water to rainbows. Ihe flowers are so thirsty after the hot day they spread wide their petals to catch every drop of water, and the breeze cari lies their " thank you " to me. I crushed some balm by accident a little while ago, and the sweetness of it still lingers; an old-world sweetness, a sweetness as of lavendar and rosemary. Now the night-winds are dancing on gully and hill, and 1 must leave my gardi n, for Down through the gulfs of starry gloom, With its prow foiever lifting. The little frail yellow cauoo of the moon Goes drifting, drifting, drifting.