Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 4, 2024
Then came the turn of the fat lady to be laughed at; but out she had to go and get kissed like the rest of us. Before the close of the evening, Billy was made as jealous as his parents and I were surprised to see Daniel in close conversation with Miss Pilgrim among the geraniums and fuschias of the conservatory. "A regular flirtation," said Billy, somewhat indignantly.
They bloom on every hand; and wherever there is a bit of ground or lawn in front of a house there you will see plants or flowers in blossom. Fuschias attain the height of ten feet in some places and are magnificent in the colour and beauty of their flowers. The heliotrope climbs up its support with eagerness and its blossoms vie in hue with the blue skies.
The old buildings matted with roses, honeysuckles, and jessamines, broken only by the pretty out-door room which Lucy called her greenhouse; the pile of variously tinted geraniums in front of that prettiest room; the wall garlanded, covered, hidden with interwoven myrtles, fuschias, passion-flowers, clematis, and the silky blossoms of the grandiflora pea; the beds filled with dahlias, salvias, calceolarias, and carnations of every hue, with the rich purple and the pure white petunia, with the many-coloured marvel of Peru, with the enamelled blue of the Siberian larkspur, with the richly scented changeable lupine, with the glowing lavatera, the dark-eyed hybiscus, the pure and alabaster cup of the white Oenothera, the lilac clusters of the phlox, and the delicate blossom of the yellow sultan, most elegant amongst flowers; all these, with a hundred other plants too long to name, and all their various greens, and the pet weed mignionette growing like grass in a meadow, and mingling its aromatic odour amongst the general fragrance all this sweetness and beauty glowing in the evening sun, and breathing of freshness and of cool air, came with such a thrill of delight upon the poor village maiden, who, in spite of her admiration of London, had languished in its heat and noise and dirt, for the calm and quiet, the green leaves and the bright flowers of her country home, that, from the very fulness of her heart, from joy and gratitude and tenderness and anxiety, she flung her arms round her brother's neck and burst into tears.
Patches of cultivated land were filled with sugar cane, banana plants, and orange trees. Palms and cacti appeared in many varieties. Flowers bloomed on every side. Geraniums, fuschias, and heliotropes were of enormous size. Camelias, lilies, and nasturtiums grew in profusion.
It was also a great pleasure to witness the true and happy life of my friend. I saw there the highest ideas of duty, usefulness, and benevolence carried into daily practice. Miss Martineau took us one morning to see the poet Wordsworth. He lived in a low, old-fashioned stone house, surrounded by laurels, and roses, and fuschias, and other flowers and flowering shrubs.
The streets are regularly laid out and lined with shade trees of tropical luxuriance as well as the live-oaks. Pretty lawns, green and well kept, are in front of many of the houses in the residence part of the city, and here the eye has a continual feast in gazing on flowers in bloom, fuschias, verbenas, geraniums and roses especially.
The delicate tamarind and the feathery algaroba intermingled their fragile grace with the dark, shiny foliage of the South Sea exotics, and the deep red, solitary flowers of the hibiscus rioted among dear familiar fuschias and geraniums, which here attain the height and size of large rhododendrons. Few of the new trees surprised me more than the papaya. It is a perfect gem of tropical vegetation.
And if its inner recesses took on too much gloomy portent one could always fly to the big yard where grew monarch elms and maples and a row of formal spruces; where the lawn on one side was bordered with beds of petunias and fuschias, tiger-lilies and dahlias; where were a great clump of white lilacs and many bushes of yellow roses; a lawn that stretched unbrokenly to the windows of the next big house where lived the gentle stranger with the soft, warm little voice who had chosen the good name of Lillian May.
These are well stocked with dahlias, roses, hortensias, begonias, cowslips, sweet williams, wall-flower, and other old-fashioned flowers, and the bloom-covered fuschias carried one's thoughts back to pleasant days spent in Devonshire dales. From the lawns sweet-smelling violets perfumed the air.
You drive up to the house through a shrubbery of laurels, and roses, and fuschias, and other plants, young trees and flowers, to the beautiful little porch, covered with honeysuckles and creeping plants.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking