Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1877 — Old Fashioned Flowers. [ARTICLE]

Old Fashioned Flowers.

I want to put in a plea for oldfashioned flowers. I am fond of old-fashioned things, and theflowera our grandmothers loved ought not to be neglected. But they and just as many of our grandmothers’ good old habits ana virtues are neglected and undervalued for the showy, fashionable things of toss you could have wen one corner in my garden this summer, I am aulte sure you would have conclued that old-fashioned flowers, can hold their own right bravely, with almost any modern flower. A friend who, to her honor be it said, has never let her love for modern things blind tier to the good qualities in things of other days, sent me some little packages of seeds. I sowed tmm by themselves, half afraid to put them with the showy, king-named ones I fought at the florist’s. An,d I»m glad I did, fur they form a little colony which it does one good to visit. There are marigolds, dark.and. rich, with the peculiar aromatic smell of that much-negleeted ! plant whose every petal is like apiece cut from velvet There are.larkspurs plant'll about them, —the splendid old blue larkspur, and the contrast of dark ma-roon-brown and 1 rieh blue is delightful. Blunted in lhe center of one bed > 8 a nasturtium, it is a perfect mass of green leaves .and‘scarlet blossoms. One corner is full of poppies,— great balls of scarlet tipped with white, as double a# any dahlia, and as large as any peony, and a gi'esf deal prettier, every body would rtiy, if they gteW on peony stalks, in another bed I have ragged rpb’ms. and gilly flowers growing oii the moat amiable terms, put Hke two? old-fashioned ladies on a visit together. A little trellis I have covered completely with morning glories; and you ought to see them m the morning! Every flower w A glory. I begin to understand no'* why they were so named. Each great trumpet-shaped blossom, s»im blue as the sky ever was, some pink, some pure white, and som< striped, making you tfihik of vases' of most exquisitely colored Bobe-r mi ah glass. lain with them planted in a mass, and next year I am going to hare . them everywhere. In my othei garden I of the modern fashionable flowers, but my friends don’t seem to tike to stay artion£ theih as Well as they do in my old-fashioned garden. I wish all the boys ajnd girls would try some pt lhe kinds I have grown, in my Centennial garden, as I call it. lam ’sure they would be more than satisfied With them, tor they are sturdy, vigorous kinds, an<| there is something Hearty and substantial about them.—A’ien E. Hexford in Young J oiks'Monthly.