These flowers were
not cultivated, but grew spontaneously from the seed they shed year
by year on the ground, the gardener doing nothing for them beyond
keeping the weeds down and bestowing a little water in hot weather.
The solstitial heats being now over, during which European garden
flowers cease to bloom for a season, they were again in gayest livery
to welcome the long second spring of autumn, lasting from February to
May. At the farther end of this wilderness of flowers and fruit trees
was an aloe hedge, covering a width of twenty to thirty yards with its
enormous, disorderly, stave-like leaves. This hedge was like a strip
of wild nature placed alongside of a plot of man's improved nature;
and here, like snakes hunted from the open, the weeds and wildings
which were not permitted to mix with the flowers had taken refuge.
Protected by that rude bastion of spikes, the hemlock opened feathery
clusters of dark leaves and whitish umbels wherever it could reach up
to the sunshine. There also grew the nightshade, with other solanaceous
weeds, bearing little clusters of green and purple berries, wild oats,
fox-tail grass, and nettles. The hedge gave them shelter, but no
moisture, so that all these weeds and grasses had a somewhat forlorn
and starved appearance, climbing up with long stringy stems among the
powerful aloes. The hedge was also rich in animal life.
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