Irises one sees in May, and well into June. At Hakone I know peasants’ gardens where they may be found in late July, and even in August. Adorably, fragilely perfect things, are not they best of all? I remember a faultless group of them on the banks of an ugly little stream on the road to Kurihama, Perry’s landing-place. They were fluttering, like true flags, in a wind which was sharp enough to tear into rags the silk gossamer texture of their petals, but which left them uninjured. They were planted and tended by peasants, but no millionaire, with a staff of highly paid gardeners, could have had more exquisite specimens. There were pale blue ones, delicate as a misty April sky; and rosy mauve ones, like a flushing Western one; there were Quaker-garbed blooms, silvery grey and white ones, thin and crinkled like almost transparent silk. These plants must have been lovingly as well as judiciously looked after, for Irises of such perfection are most difficult things to grow. With infinite affection, but, alas! without scientific knowledge, I have never been able to persuade those I have had from Japan to do anything, and even scientific growers, who have not perhaps the necessary love for them, have been disappointed in the same way. They are nowhere else so beautiful as in Japan. Near Yokohama, in a shallow valley, there is a vast field of them. The picture facing page 194, although not
