THE COUNTRY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 6996, 9 December 1909, Page 2

THE COUNTRY

GARDENS IN SUMMER. (By " Zealandia.") Gardens in summer! "What a riot of colour meets the eye! Flame-rod, yellow splashes hard by sunset pinks; mauves of every conceivable shad© heaped alongside sea-mist blues! Carnations with ragged heads bent down to kiss the brown earth; orange, scarlet, rose-pink, white tipped with saffron ! All ■ these- luxuriating one by the other; each vying in beauty for place of honour ! Over there, against the trollised way, whore the path runs like a silver riband, stretch the unrivalled roses, sprung from the yellow soil; their perfume flung out to intoxicate the senses! How proudly they sue for .admiration., like any syren of the deep. Rod against gold, salmon pink alongside the faintly tinged maiden's blush; all ranged stiffly like soldiers. at attention; full of the majesty of beauty and perfection. tip against the brown wall stands out the crimson rambler, climbing, climbing! Will it never oease its upward trail upwards towards the heavens? Such small, fragile blooms, calling for attention like their finer, showier sisters I Massed beside the. hedges bloom the sweetpeas. Harvest of glory and perfumed air—a fairy feast all the ■ way !. Again riot of colour with the shades of the sky at sunset 1 Harmony of blending and wonder of perfect nature 1 Who shall say the coun--.try in summer rivals not the sterner things of oity life—the bustle, the C commotion, with its noise and garish shoutings; the seething crowds who surge the highways and low-ways, day and night lost in each other? Who prefers not the fragrance of gardens in summer out amongst the fields and silent byways ? Air, laden with fragrance, fills the nostrils until we would fain lay our heads to.rest somewhere within its radius! To sleep and to wake with a feast of perfume to greet us; scent thrown out by flaring blooms that beckon us irresistibly to them! Oh, air, rippling with fairy breezes, what more can the soul of us desire ? ■ And, look! Yonder call the larkspurs .and cornflowers! Have wo forgotten them, they ask, nodding, nodding, as the zephyr passing gently over stirs them to tho music of summer. And beyond again, boldly erect, lined, up against wooden railings, are dahlias. Peculiarly attractive, and •with haunting beauty, we pause to admire, but for plucking shall'we lay our hands upon them? Better far to leave them to end their day in the budding garden side by side with tho hollyhocks and rhododendrons. Gardens in summer! And,; again, like soldiers at;- attention, 1 stand' the belted trees! Are they there to protect the delicate, beauteous,' things, that flower within their circle. Far in the distance, nestling hills, bathed in summer mists of pale heliotropo and rose, perfect a, beauty that nature has given us, so ■ that we stand, lost within ourselves, amazed at tho glories surrounding, us, a thousand sensations stabbing at the heart, breathing in the wonders of a richly fragrant world, marvelling at such an avalanche of glory Strange, is it then, that we hasten to the country, to its soft, dream-like allurements, and to a feast of magnificence -that we find nowhere else but there? .The week-end! Oh, busy folk, sated of city'life, turnto the country I ; See, how widely she extends her hospitable arms and welcomes us from our sickness of soul and weariness of body to the spaciousness of: her quiet resting places..