"That"s exactly what we want," and they took their pencils to note down any suggestions that Mr. Emerson made.
"We"ve decided on pink candytuft for the border and single pink hollyhocks for the background with foxgloves right in front of them to cover up the stems at the bottom where they haven"t many leaves and a medium height phlox in front of that for the same reason."
"You should have pink morning glories and there"s a rambler rose, a pink one, that you ought to have in the southeast corner on your back fence,"
suggested Mr. Emerson. "Stretch a strand or two of wire above the top and let the vine run along it. It blooms in June."
"Pink rambler," they all wrote. "What"s its name?"
"Dorothy--"
"Smith?"
"Perkins."
James went through a pantomime that registered severe disappointment.
"Suppose we begin at the beginning," suggested Mr. Emerson. "I believe we can make out a list that will keep your pink bed gay from May till frost."
"That"s what we want."
"You had some pink tulips last spring."
"We planted them in the autumn so that they"d come out early this spring. By good luck they"re just where we"ve decided to have a pink bed."
"There"s your first flower, then. They"re near the front of the bed, I hope. The low plants ought to be in front, of course, so they won"t be hidden."
"They"re in front. So are the hyacinths."
"Are you sure they"re all pink?"
"It"s a great piece of good fortune--Mother selected only pink bulbs and a few yellow ones to put back into the ground and gave the other colors to Grandmother."
"That helps you at the very start-off. There are two kinds of pinks that ought to be set near the front rank because they don"t grow very tall--the moss pink and the old-fashioned "gra.s.s pink." They are charming little fellows and keep up a tremendous blossoming all summer long."
""Gra.s.s pink,"" repeated Ethel, Brown, "isn"t that the same as "spice pink"?"
"That"s what your grandmother calls it. She says she has seen people going by on the road sniff to see what that delicious fragrance was. I suppose these small ones must be the original pinks that the seedsmen have burbanked into the big double ones."
""Burbanked"?"
"That"s a new verb made out of the name of Luther Burbank, the man who has raised such marvelous flowers in California and has turned the cactus into a food for cattle instead of a p.r.i.c.kly nuisance."
"I"ve heard of him," said Margaret. ""Burbanked" means "changed into something superior," I suppose."
"Something like that. Did you tell me you had a peony?"
There"s a good, tall tree peony that we"ve had moved to the new bed."
"At the back?"
"Yes, indeed; it"s high enough to look over almost everything else we are likely to have. It blossoms early."
"To be a companion to the tulips and hyacinths."
"Have you started any peony seeds?"
"The Reine Hortense. Grandmother advised that. They"re well up now."
"I"d plant a few seeds in your bed, too. If you can get a good stand of perennials--flowers that come up year after year of their own accord--it saves a lot of trouble."
"Those pinks are perennials, aren"t they? They come up year after year in Grandmother"s garden."
"Yes, they are, and so is the columbine. You ought to put that in."
"But it isn"t pink. We got some in the woods the other day. It is red,"
objected Dorothy.
"The columbine has been "burbanked." There"s a pink one among the cultivated kinds. They"re larger than the wild ones and very lovely."
"Mother has some. Hers are called the "Rose Queen,"" said Margaret.
"There are yellow and blue ones, too."
"Your grandmother can give you some pink Canterbury bells that will blossom this year. They"re biennials, you know."
"Does that mean they blossom every two years?"
"Not exactly. It means that the ones you planted in your flats will only make wood and leaves this year and won"t put out any flowers until next year. That"s all these pink ones of your grandmother"s did last season; this summer they"re ready to go into your bed and be useful."
"Our seedlings are blue, anyway," Ethel Blue reminded the others. "They must be set in the blue bed."
"How about sweet williams?" asked Mr. Emerson. "Don"t I remember some in your yard?"
"Mother planted some last year," answered Roger, "but they didn"t blossom."
"They will this year. They"re perennials, but it takes them one season to make up their minds to set to work. There"s an annual that you might sow now that will be blossoming in a few weeks. It won"t last over, though."
"Annuals die down at the end of the first season. I"m getting these terms straightened in my so-called mind," laughed Dorothy.
"You said you had a bleeding heart--"
"A fine old perennial," exclaimed Ethel Brown, airing her new information.
"--and pink candy-tuft for the border and foxgloves for the back; are those old plants or seedlings?"
"Both."
"Then you"re ready for anything! How about snapdragons?"
"I thought snapdragons were just common weeds," commented James.