The show of floral
charms was piecemeal, momentary and therefore trivial. "Don't" be
trivial!
[Illustration: "'Where are you going?' says the eye. 'Come and see,'
says the roaming line."
This planting conceals one of the alleys described on page 34. In the
alley a concrete bench built into a concrete wall looks across the
entire breadth of the garden and into the sunset.]
But a cure was easy. I had to straighten but one side of each alley to
restore the eye's freedom of perspective, and nothing more was wanting.
The American eye's freedom of perspective is one of our great liberties.
Oh, say, can you _see_--?
I made this change, of course, on the side nearest the straight,
property-division bound, where ran an invisible wire fence. Thus the bed
on that side was set between two straight parallels, while the bed on
the lawn side remained between waving parallels. This gave the best
simplicity with the least artificiality. And thus the two lanes are
open to view from end to end, yet each has two deep bays on the side
nearest the lawn, bays which remain unseen till one actually reaches
them in traversing the lane. In such a bay one should always have, I
think, some floral revelation of special charm worthy of the seclusion
and the surprise. But this thought is only one of a hundred that tell me
my garden is not a finished thing.
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