They were all bushy plants, all hardy, and would bloom steadily through the summer and autumn.
A basket of scabious--lady's pincushions--arriving from the Master while I was planting out were also worked into my scheme, and worked in well. The dark round balls of reds, browns, blues, with tiny white pin-points, did not disturb the yellow harmony. Eventually I was proud of those beds.
When first planted they did look slightly new and stalky, but they filled out daily. His Reverence only remarked, "Well, well, have it your own way; I suppose it is æsthetic! But my idea was more cheerful."
Griggs frankly said "yeller" was never his fancy. "Now, them 'janiums, that gives a bit o' colour."
And I quite forgave the Young Man his past for his present admiration was unbounded. He had been quite unable to think, he explained.
Griggs's geraniums turned out one or two good dark reds among the magenta hues, and these were put in the two old stumps that hitherto had been given over to mere ramping nasturtiums, and my superior seedlings of those useful flowers were encouraged to fall over the edge and ramp downwards.
An old oil cask, cut in two, burnt out and painted green--Jim and I and the Young Man enjoyed that artistic work very much--formed two capacious tubs and were filled with more geraniums, the best and pinkest, and they brightened up the shrubbery corner where the daffodils had shone.
Stocks and other geraniums--even the mauvy-tinted ones looked quite well away from all touch of red--with a border of lobelia, were placed under the study window in a narrow bed running along the front of the house, thus helping his Reverence to realise _his_ ideal. Then by degrees we arranged all the contents of my nursery, some in clumps, some in rows, down the herbaceous border, and others in the front border, the border which had looked so dismal and unpromising on that November day when I first took my garden in hand. There had been a brushing up of old inhabitants--Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums--but much was still left to be desired.
You cannot do everything in the first year. It is no use thinking you can.
One day, at the very beginning of June, I visited the potting-shed, our one and only shed, which held a collection such as may be imagined after the reign of Griggs for twenty years. In a dark corner I came across some queer-looking roots sprouting away in a most astoundingly lively fashion.