Chapter 12
186
Anne out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better for you than straining your eyes over that book.(begin strikethrough)”(end strikethrough) O6
Outside in the garden (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)P6(end superscript) stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at one another over a gorgeous clump of tiger lilies.
The Barry garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which migh would have delighted Anne’s heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by large old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. (begin superscript)Q6(end superscript) There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and
LMM Notes
LMM Note O6
She reads entirely too much"—this to Marilla, as the little girls went out—"and I can't prevent her for her father aids and abets her. She's always poring over a book. I'm glad she has the prospect of a playmate—perhaps it will take her more out of doors."
LMM Note P6
which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark red firs to the west of it,
LMM Note Q6
Prim, right-angled paths, neatly bordered with clam shells, intersected it like moist red ribbons, and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot.
PHOTO ANNOTATION
"The Barry garden": Montgomery was an avid gardener, and many of the flowers mentioned here are ones she also grew herself and featured in other stories. In 1901 she said in her journal: "There is nothing in the world so sweet as a real, 'old-timey' garden. … The very breath of them is a benediction." (Complete Journals, The P.E.I. Years Volume 1, August 28, 1901, p. 20).
Montgomery's Blue and Red Scrapbooks are liberally illustrated with colourful floral clippings from seed catalogues like this one (Blue Scrapbook, p. 18. Imagining Anne, p. 35)
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