As to ourselves in the role of gardeners—­there were not two greener greenhorns when we first resolved to stay in California; we still are, though I think I do J——­ an injustice in classing him with me.  We can make geraniums grow luxuriantly, but we don’t want to.  I wish they would pass a law in Southern California making the growing of red geraniums a criminal offense.  So many people love to combine them with bougainvillia and other brilliant pink or purple flowers, and the light is hard enough on eyes without adding that horror.  We are resolved to progress from the geranium age to the hardy perennial class, and are industriously studying books and magazines with that end in view.  The worst of garden literature is that it is nearly all written for an Eastern climate.  Once I subscribed for a garden magazine, lured by a bargain three months’ offer.  Never again!  At the end of the time, when no regular subscription came in from me, letters began to arrive.  Finally one saying, “You probably think this is another letter urging you to subscribe.  It is not; it is only to beg that you will confidentially tell us why you do not.”  I told him that all our conditions here are so different from those in the East.  People want Italian and Spanish gardens, and there is the most marvellous choice of flowers, shrubs, and vines with which to get them, but we want to be told how, and added to this, it is heart-breaking to love a fountain nymph in the advertisements and to find that her travelling expenses would bankrupt you.

One marvellous opportunity we have—­the San Diego Exposition, whose gardens are more lovely than ever, though soldiers and sailors are feeding the pigeons in the Plaza de Panama instead of tourists.  The real intention of that exposition was to show people in this part of the world what they could do with the great variety of plants and shrubs that thrive here.

I used to wonder why so little has been written about gardeners when there are shelves and shelves of volumes on gardens.  There are no famous gardeners in literature that occur to me at the moment except Tagore’s, and the three terrified ones in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, who were hurriedly painting the white roses red.  I should love to read the diary of the one who trimmed the borders while Boccaccio’s gay company were occupying that garden; or to hear what the head gardener of the d’Este’s could tell us, but I know now why it is so.  With the best of intentions I haven’t been able to avoid the pitfall myself.

[Illustration]

THORNS