It was mother who planted the verbenas. I think that my grandmother was not an impassioned gardener: she was too indulgent a lover of dogs and grandchildren. My great grandmother, I have been told, made her garden her great pride; she cherished rare and delicate plants like oleanders in tubs and wall-flowers and lemon verbenas in pots that had to be wintered in the cellar; she filled the waste spots of the yard with common things like the garden heliotrope in a corner by the woodshed, and the plantain lilies along the west side of the house. These my grandmother left in their places (they are still there, more persistent and longer-lived than the generations of man) and planted others like them, that flourished without careful tending. Three of these only were protected from us by stern commandment: the roses, whose petals might not be collected until they had fallen, to be made into perfume or rose tea to drink; the peonies, whose tight sticky buds would be blighted by the laying on of a finger, although they were not apparently harmed by the ants that crawled over them; and the poppies. I have more than once sat cross-legged in the grass through a long summer morning and watched without touching while a poppy bud higher than my head slowly but visibly pushed off its cap, unfolded, and shook out like a banner in the sun its flaming vermilion petals. Other flowers we might gather as we pleased: myrtle and white violets from beneath the lilacs; the lilacs themselves, that bloomed so prodigally but for the most part beyond our reach; snowballs; hollyhock blossoms that, turned upside down, make pink petticoated ladies; and the little, dark blue larkspur that scattered its seed everywhere.