Portulaca Corner

As I am a boarder, and can have no garden of my own, I have to content my spirit with looking at other people’s gardens, and fortunately my windows have usually given on some pretty spot of earth unwittingly made beautiful for my delight.

As I write now, I can glance from the window by my desk upon a green lawn bounded by a wooden picket fence, left in the soft, silvery gray-brown of native wood, and riotously covered by a thick, well-clipped grape-vine with its purpling clusters, through which the pickets peep out here and there. Beyond the fence is a charming, dim vista of lawn and shrubbery and old trees, the leaves ruffling in the wind, and, by dint of sunshine and deep shade, running every tint in the gamut of green, — the whole, though in no great space, hinting of a sylvan charm, half revealed and half concealed. Amid the glancing shrubbery I see a bevy of fluttering, white-robed nymphs, beckoning me from between the trees. That I know them to be but some snowy linen blowing on a hidden line, makes the illusion no less exquisite; and what indeed were the world without illusions, which by a sweet paradox are the truest things we know.

Last month my scat at table commanded a view of the riotous old-fashioned garden of a neighbor, — a perfect delight of color and of informality. Woodbine ran thickly up the outside brick chimney nearly to the top; trumpet vines covered wall and latticed porch; heavy clusters of ripening blue grapes hung amid their serrate leaves over an old arbor; along the fence-line and against the white and green of the house, stood those tall, regal sentinels, the gay hollyhocks; and great bushes of single wild roses, beds of cool fern, and feathery clouds of high asparagus, only half hid the dear child-blossoms, who in white frocks and gay sashes were playing in the sunshine.

One of the greatest, effects in a garden is that of vista, and it can be had in a surprisingly small space, by the use of shrubbery and trees, — a winding in and out, a leading of the eye along from mystery to mystery of enchanting foliage,— the brilliant borders of blossoms just a hint here, just showing there, and defying you to make them out angular or straight or definite. Yes, even a small plot of ground can be made to appear as if there were depths and lengths and heights for your exploring!

But there is one special garden-plot that I came upon only yesterday, which is the real spur to my writing. Like the vistaed garden, I fetch a devious compass to come by degrees to the chief beauty.

If ever any one came upon a sudden glad surprise where one could be least expected, I did! And if I can make others who have similar small plots create such glad surprise for weary travelers on life’s highway, I shall be satisfied. Ever since I saw them they have been flashing

Only, my heart has been dancing, not with the daffodils, but with the portulacas, — nothing but plain, ordinary portulaeas.

I was riding on an electric car in a noisy, brick-walled, stone-floored city, and was obliged to get a transfer from the conductor in order to take another car-line at a certain corner. Here the trolleys were running in all directions every minute; high buildings were on every side, hard sidewalks and dusty pavements under foot, and yet, as I got off the car, I almost cried out and rubbed my eyes to make sure I was not a-dream. The charm of the unexpected enhanced the intrinsic charm of the happy inspiration that had led some householder to bring a bit of sweet, untrammeled nature into the heart of those city streets.

On this corner was a high brownstone dwelling. In front was a bit of ground perhaps fifteen feet wide, from the house to the inner edge of the sidewalk, and about thirty feet long, the length of the house-front. Other bits of ground like it, in front of other houses, were either walled areas or bare ground, or at most a turf of grass. A stone curbing edged this plot along the inner edge of the sidewalk, and a light, open-work black-iron fence was set in the curb.

The whole of this ground thus inclosed, this precious fifteen by thirty feet, had been sown with portulaca as one would sow grass. And lo! there was a little meadow in the midst of the hard iron city, — a little meadow literally filled with a natural riot of blossoms blowing and rippling in the wind, — not ever a clover-field in the open country-side so pretty! They were not sown in grass, but sown thick, thick, instead of grass; and the succulent, spriggy stems, with their small, thick leaves, formed the delicate green setting for these little jewel-like, flame-like flowers. They ran a gamut of color, from deep crimson to pure white, in all shades of reds and paler reds and pinkish whites; and scattered throughout were the same sweet blossoms in pure topaz and clear lemon-yellow and pale amber, — a vivid, living carpet of blending hues.

I had never found portulaeas set in a bed or in a hanging-basket especially attractive, but here they were transformed to things of beauty. Hundreds of these little roselets blowing and bending in the light breeze, and a-burn in the brilliant sunshine, made a thrill of joyance run through every beholder.

Every one who got off a car at that city corner went to the railing as if it were a magnet, and looked and smiled, and could not look enough, and smiled at every one else—cold strangers in a noisy city street.

They simply had to smile back at such a loving, unexpected smile from out great Nature’s heart, — so true it is that ‘ One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin.’