Florin

“ They loved best to cross the meadows in front of the house, to a forest, where the woods were more open, and where trees of every variety, cast their shadows upon the green turf, and wild flowers grew upon every hillock, and peeped out from every mossy glade. There were little wildernesses of honey-suckles, too, scattered through the woods, and long, pale green fern leaves, fit for a fairy to sway to and fro upon; and there were vines of wild grapes, with branches so strong, that they often made swings of them. ”

“ With the return of the sun and lengthening days and the new awakening of life in the spring, a delicate bloom overspreads the landscape, the dark wintry woodlands burst into blossoms and clouds of foliage, taking every tint, from the palest green to delicate amber and red; while the meadows show the rich moist green of new springing grass, embroidered with flowers, yellow, white, and blue; and the blue sky seems to repeat itself in the copses where the hyacinths grow. ”

“ To be sure, there are spots of green where fruit-trees have been planted and water from the river or from some irrigation ditch is led in and out through the orchard. But to one who has seen the beauty of an eastern landscape, before whose eyes comes a vision of stately trees and luxuriant meadows and babbling brooks of clear, cold water, those little dabs of green in the midst of wide stretches of dreariness awaken pity and not admiration. ”

“ Flora felt that someone was watching them: not God perhaps, but a great Spirit less a stranger to the earth, which enjoyed her confusion—the moon was its hard eye. Through a thousand lilac leaves, the lamps of the house signaling to her: a vague audience of those who loved her, before whom she had to do the right thing. Through the maple leaves overhead, the stars, like lamps of another house. ”

“ The stately trees take every form of beauty and foliage, and, now in their autumn garb, are of every hue and tint. The everlasting green of the holly forms a dense under-growth, contrasting with the gay colours, and making some of the paler robed trees stand out as if they were endowed with the power of motion. ”

“ I forsook human life for floral, and in my renouncing I gained much. In my garden there grew a single fragile flower, orchid-like in glory, but of a species quite different to any I had ever chanced upon before. ”

“ One may fancy the clouds themselves are plants, springing up in the sky-fields at the call of the sun, growing in beauty until they reach their prime, scattering rain and hail like berries and seeds, then wilting and dying.
The mountain live oak, common here and a thousand feet or so higher, is like the live oak of Florida, not only in general appearance, foliage, bark, and wide-branching habit, but in its tough, knotty, unwedgeable wood. ”

“ Everybody has a favourite flower, I suppose—the white Iris is mine—the Fleur-de-lys of France—the lily of Florence. Nothing can be more refined and lovely than the thin, translucent petals. To see these flowers at their best, one must get up and go into the garden at five o’clock on some fine morning at the end of May. I did it once, and as I walked beside their shining rows in the clear daylight, I felt there were no such pearly shadows, nor any such strange purity in the whiteness of other flowers. ”

“ I have never seen it myself, but friendly beasts have told me that they have stood on the shore of the river and looked across at the plant in the gold flower-pot and seen hundreds of flowers, of all sorts and sizes, blossom upon it in quick succession. It is said that if one picks the flowers while they are in bloom they will remain perfect for a long time, but if they are not picked they soon disappear and are replaced by other flowers. ”

“ The blue sky, the emerald lawns, the dull red earth, the many-hued masses of foliage, from the dark copper beech to the light greys of the limes and poplars, mingle their broad effects upon their outspread canvas of Nature, and in the foreground a thousand flowers glow warmly from the well-kept gardens or the fertile meadow-side. ”

“ The young foliage, of a clear brilliant green, is gayly decked with the long clusters of peculiarly fresh pink blossoms, which seem like the very incarnation of the spirit of Spring, producing a certain eblouissement, which quickens our sense into an anticipation of beauty on every side. ”

“ Many a time I have traced streams of grass to their fresh fountains, where jets of tender foliage and bubbles of tinted flowers welled up from dark, rich earth, and flowed away, with a velvet rustle and a ripple like blown floss, to break and recoil and eddy against the dark shadows of a distant grove. ”

“ Our North-country "mosses" are indeed temples to the flower-lover, by virtue both of the rarer species that inhabit them, and of the unbroken succession of beautiful plants that they maintain, from the rich gold of the globe-flower in early summer to the exquisite purity of the grass of Parnassus in autumn. ”

“ But if you had wings like the Birds of Paradise, and could fly over the tops of the trees that make the forest, and look down into a leafy meadow instead of up into a leafy sky, then you would see the most gloriously beautiful flowers growing in that meadow, just as the daisies and buttercups grow in the meadows that you run over, here. For flowers love the light of the sun, and they struggle up into it through the leaves that keep it out. ”

“ The many-colored shadows of the fairest flowers played on the pure white walls, and fountains sparkled in the sunlight, making music as the cool waves rose and fell, while to and fro, with waving wings and joyous voices, went the smiling Elves, bearing fruit and honey, or fragrant garlands for each other's hair. ”

“ Here I am in the Floridas, thought I, a country that received its name from the odours wafted from the orange groves, to the boats of the first discoverers, and which from my childhood I have consecrated in my imagination as the garden of the United States. A garden, where all that is not mud, mud, mud, is sand, sand, sand; where the fruit is so sour that it is not eatable, and where in place of singing birds and golden fishes, you have a species of ibis that you cannot get when you have shot it, and alligators, snakes, and scorpions. ”

“ Miss Florence—yes, I knew you would feel so, mother. Does it not make your head feel better to see such a beautiful flower? Now you will not look so longingly at the flowers in the market, for we have a rose that is handsomer than any of them. Why, it seems to me it is worth as much to us as our whole little garden used to be. Only see how many buds there are! ”

“ Myriads of blossoms, white and yellow, red and purple and blue, sprang up from their nests of dainty green grasses and leaves, to swing in the passing breeze and shake the perfume from their petals with which to scent the balmy air. Roses and lilies, violets and daisies, pinks and cowslips, and a thousand other flowers made the hedges and gardens and meadows and forests appear gay and beautiful and very sweet. ”

“ The forest was all made of frozen ferns and seaweed and feathers, like the white images on the glass. It stretched far, far away in alleys of fantastic sparkling fronds and glittering branches. How thick the strange, beautiful things grew! He had been once told that, if he was a good boy, when he died a white angel would come and take him to a place where he would never be sad or hungry any more. ”

“ Bright flowers and green foliage combine their charms, and climbers with their flowery festoons cover over the bare and decaying stems. Yet, pick out the loveliest spots, where the most gorgeous flowers of the tropics expand their glowing petals, and for every scene of this kind, we may find another at home of equal beauty, and with an equal amount of brilliant colour. ”

“ If you want to see a new and peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored, and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene in fairy-land. ”

“ The rain falling upon the just and the unjust makes the heart of the husbandman leap for joy, at the prospect of a bountiful harvest, causes the foliage and the gardens to put on a more beautiful green, the lilies of the valley and the rose in the garden ("the transient stars of earth") to unfold themselves more beautifully. ”

“ World-wide fame and a comfortable fortune await the florist who shall produce a variety of blue rose, tulip, hollyhock, or dahlia, or a yellow geranium or larkspur, which all persist in their fidelity to their particular color series. And yet nature gives us occasional exceptions which, however, only serve by their contrast to emphasize the universal law. ”

“ Imagine an immense plain, green as a meadow, covered with young grass, crossed in all directions by endless rows of cypresses, pines, oaks, and poplars, dotted with dense orange-groves that in the distance look no larger than shrubs, and with great orchards and gardens so crowded with fruit trees that they look like green hillocks ”

“ The flower of the garden is commonly more choice and valuable, and, though in its own nature withering, will last the longer for its being sheltered by the garden wall and the gardener's care; but the flower of the field (to which life is here compared) is not only withering in itself, but exposed to the cold blasts, and liable to be cropped and trodden on by the beasts of the field. ”

“ Looking westward, their colors are lost in a blaze of light; but in other directions the whole forest is a flower-garden, in which these late roses burn, alternating with green, while the so-called "gardeners," walking here and there, perchance, beneath, with spade and water-pot, see only a few little asters amid withered leaves. ”

“ The florist may delight in this: the true lover of flowers never will. He who has taken lessons from nature, who has observed the real purpose and operation of flowers; how they flush forth from the brightness of the earth's being, as the melody rises up from among the moved strings of the instrument; how the wildness of their pale colors passes over her, like the evidence of a various emotion ”

“ One very common flower resembles our cardinal flower, though not of so deep a color, another is very like rocket or phlox, but smaller and of various colors, white, blue and purple. Beautiful white lupines I find too, violets white and purple. The vines and parasites are magnificent. I followed on this road till I came to the prairie which skirts the river, and this, of all the beauties of this region, is the most peculiar and wonderful. ”

“ The fern, the moss, the foxglove, the daphne, the wild strawberry, grasses of all kinds, tangled furze and thistles, and plants innumerable, which elsewhere would be weeds, but here appropriately adorn the garden of nature, literally mantle the banks on either side, whilst the trees which line their top thrust their roots down and in and out in the most fantastic shapes. ”

“ On the intervals of prairie grow the grasses, soft, brown and ripe with last year’s growth, showing as yet but little of the green of this. These paint all the background of the scene with their olives and tans, as if the painter of it first made his background with grass, then set his figures and lights and shades upon this, the gray stubs, the deep brown trunks of living trees, the vivid green of the palmetto leaves and gold of sunlight and purple of shadows chasing one another over all. ”

“ From every tree fluttered a flag, more or less inappropriate, and on every bush and plant, poppy and rose, sage and phlox, laurel and sweet briar, blossomed roses of a size and colour to make a florist's heart rejoice—had they been real. ”

“ Florrie jumps for joy at sight of half an inch of a green leaf in a brown stone, and takes more notice of it than of all the green in the wood, and you, or I, or any of us, would be unhappy if any single human creature beside us were in sharp pain ”

“ Then the flowers come forth, meadows and groves are clad in green, the birds make ready to build, and sing sweetly for solace of the soft summer that follows thereafter. The blossoms bud and blow in the hedgerows rich and rank, and noble notes enough are heard in the fair woods. ”

“ Every shade in foliage, and every hue and odour in flower will charm him: the delicacy of the plane sets off the polished darkness of the oleander and myrtle leaf, the moist glitter of the maidenhair enriches the ferns that spread themselves like fans upon the rocks, and along the vine-branches the shooting leaves begin to uncurl. ”

“ Fields and fields and fields of the loveliest wild flowers, all golden and purple and pink, and gardens with red, red roses, and sweet-smelling lilacs climbing over the stone walls, and soft-colored fruit blossoms—there were more flowers than days in a hundred years. ”

“ In our woods and ravines the flowers are mostly spring flowers, which die away just as the foliage of the trees is coming out and the shade deepens; while ferns are often dormant at that time, but grow as the shade increases. ”

“ That there is not a day in the year, but the trees, as well as the most humble plants, do there yield ornaments for Flora; with all sorts of curious and pleasant winter-greens, that seemed to perpetuate the spring and summer, from the most humble myrtle, to the very true cedar of Libanus. Not without infinite variety of tulips, auriculaes, anemones, gillyflowers, and all other sorts of pleasant, and delicate flowers, that he may be truly said to be the master-flowrist of England; and is ready to furnish any ingenious person with any of his choicest plants. ”