painted there, but nearer Kyoto, gives an idea of them. A tiny silver ribbon of a stream slips zigzag down among them, and doubles the beauty of those near enough to be reflected in it; fluttering their silken flags, with leaves like swords high in air, they fill the place like a fairy army. Irises usher in the summer.
II. SUMMER
“Like strips of cloth laid down to bleach,
Snow-white in moonlight lie
The Deutzia bushes by the path
For summer’s finery.”
So says the poet, and his acclaimed flower is the great white mark of June in the mountains—the broad white stripe that distinguishes the first-class compartment.
Spring is the favoured first-born of the year, and has the most wealth of bloom, as his entail from the Father Year. But summer, well-beloved second son, has a rich inheritance also, from his mother Nature. Even those fragrant blossoms rightfully accruing to spring. Azaleas and Irises, in the Northern parts and in the mountain altitudes creep into summer’s lap. Here, in my garden in Hong-Kong, bewildered by the heat coming before the rains, as it has done this year, my Japanese Azaleas, snow-white, amber, orange, and carmine, are adorning September with flowers; yet no bait of double
