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Updated: June 28, 2025
He would doze off to the murmuring of his thoughts and the familiar sensations of the monotonous provincial days that marched so slowly by: the great half-empty house, only part of which they occupied: the vast and dreadful barns and cellars: the mysterious closed rooms, the fastened shutters, the covered furniture, veiled mirrors, and the chandeliers wrapped up: the old family portraits with their haunting smiles: the Empire engravings, with their virtuous, suave heroism: Alcibiades and Socrates in the House of the Courtezan, Antiochus and Stratonice, The Story of Epaminondas, Belisarius Begging.... Outside, the sound of the smith shoeing horses in the smithy opposite, the uneven clink of the hammers on the anvil, the snorting of the broken-winded horses, the smell of the scorched hoofs, the slapping of the pats of the washerwomen kneeling by the water, the heavy thuds of the butcher's chopper next door, the clatter of a horse's hoofs on the stones of the street, the creaking of a pump, or the drawbridge over the canal, the heavy barges laden with blocks of wood, slowly passing at the end of the garden, drawn along by a rope: the little tiled courtyard, with a square patch of earth, in which two lilac-trees grew, in the middle of a clump of geraniums and petunias: the tubs of laurel and flowering pomegranate on the terrace above the canal: sometimes the noise of a fair in the square hard by, with peasants in bright blue smocks, and grunting pigs.... And on Sunday, at church, the precentor, who sang out of tune, and the old priest, who went to sleep as he was saying Mass: the family walk along the station road, where all the time he had to take off his hat politely to other wretched beings, who were under the same impression of the necessity of going for a walk all together, until at last they reached the sunny fields, above which larks soared invisible, or along by the still mirror of the canal, on both sides of which were poplars rustling in line.... And then there was the great provincial Sunday dinner, when they went on and on eating and talking about food learnedly and with gusto: for everybody was a connoisseur: and, in the provinces, eating is the chief occupation, the first of all the arts.
She placed the uncovered box where the moths waited with folded wings, in the open window. Up from the garden came a soft breeze sweet with the breath of the roses and petunias. There was a stir, a rustle, a waving of dusky wings, and the box was empty. So Greeny and Blacky and Sly-boots "took their wings and flew away," and the boys saw them no more.
So Alice proposed to walk out to meet them, and, as Sam did not say no, they went forth together. Down the garden, faint with the afternoon scents of the flowers before the western sun, among petunias and roses, oleander and magnolia; here a towering Indian lily, there a thicket of scarlet geranium and fuschia.
Parting into groups, they dotted the drawing-room with the gorgeousness of peacock blue and jade green, the joyousness of petunias and the melancholy of orchids, or the pale, intermelting tints of rainbows seen through the spangle of a shower. Some, unfurling fans before their bosoms, sank down upon the chairs and sofas.
Drooping plants are desirable to trail over the sides of the box, and add that touch of grace which is characteristic of all vines. Plants that bloom freely throughout the season should be chosen in preference to shy and short-season bloomers. Geraniums, Petunias, Verbenas, Fuchsias, Salvias, Heliotropes, Paris Daisies all these are excellent.
Why should not the dining-room and parlor be all winter connected by a spot of green and flowers, with plants, mosses, and ferns for the shadowy portions, and such simple blooms as petunias and nasturtiums garlanding the sunny portion near the windows?
They are frankly bad the single ones, dry and thin with their savage burning, their breath from some deep-concealed place of decay. The double poppies are more dreadful born of evil thoughts, blackness blent with their reds. Petunias try to appear innocent, but the eye that regards them as the conclusion in decorative effect, has very far to come.
'Be hanged if it's anything remotely resembling a woman; and if you begin to talk like that, I'll hire a red-brick studio with white paint trimmings, and begonias and petunias and blue Hungarias to play among three-and-sixpenny pot-palms, and I'll mount all my pics in aniline-dye plush plasters, and I'll invite every woman who maunders over what her guide-books tell her is Art, and you shall receive 'em, Torp, in a snuff-brown velvet coat with yellow trousers and an orange tie.
Every evening they each had a pick-a-back up the narrow stairs to their fat old Nanny. Yes, he supposed it was a poky little house. A little white house with blue curtains and a window-box of petunias. William met their friends at the door with "Seen our petunias? Pretty terrific for London, don't you think?"
Beverly explained it to me in a couple of minutes. 'Ha! he jovially exclaimed, on my entering his office on Monday morning; 'you want to know about Petunias. They opened at 85 I see. He then ran the tape from the ticker through his clean strong hands. 'Here they are again. Five thousand sold at 83. Now, if they go to 70, I'll very likely take ten thousand more for mother.
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