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137
The Solitary Summer
·
Elizabeth Von Arnim
58
One
day,
in
going
round
the
head
inspector's
garden
with
his
wife,
whose
care
it
is,
I
remarked
with
surprise
that
she
had
no
sweet-peas.
I
called
them
Lathyrus
odoratus,
and
she,
having
little
Latin,
did
not
understand.
Then
I
called
them
wohlriechende
Wicken,
the
German
rendering
of
that
which
sounds
so
pretty
in
English,
and
she
said
she
had
never
heard
of
them.
The
idea
of
an
existence
in
a
garden
yet
without
sweet-peas,
so
willing,
so
modest,
and
so
easily
grown,
had
never
presented
itself
as
possible
to
my
imagination.
Ever
since
I
can
remember,
my
summers
have
been
filled
with
them;
and
in
the
days
when
I
sat
in
my
own
perambulator
and
they
were
three
times
as
tall
as
I
was,
I
well
recollect
a
certain
waving
hedge
of
them
in
the
garden
of
my
childhood,
and
how
I
stared
up
longingly
at
the
flowers
so
far
beyond
my
reach,
inaccessibly
tossing
against
the
sky.
When
I
grew
bigger
and
had
a
small
garden
of
my
own,
I
bought
their
seeds
to
the
extent
of
twenty
pfennings,
and
trained
the
plants
over
the
rabbit-hutch
that
was
the
chief
feature
in
the
landscape.
There
were
other
seeds
in
that
garden
seeds
on
which
I
had
laid
out
all
my
savings
and
round
which
played
my
fondest
hopes,
but
the
sweet-peas
were
the
only
ones
that
came
up.
The
same
thing
happened
here
in
my
first
summer,
my
gardening
knowledge
not
having
meanwhile
kept
pace
with
my
years,
and
of
the
seeds
sown
that
first
season
sweet-peas
again
were
the
only
ones
that
came
up.
I
should
say
they
were
just
the
things
for
people
with
very
little
time
and
experience
at
their
disposal
to
grow.
A
garden
might
be
made
beautiful
with
sweet-peas
alone,
and,
with
hardly
any
labour,
except
the
sweet
labour
of
picking
to
prolong
the
bloom,
be
turned
into
a
fairy
bower
of
delicacy
and
refinement.
Yet
the
Frau
Inspector
not
only
had
never
heard
of
them,
but,
on
my
showing
her
a
bunch,
was
not
in
the
least
impressed,
and
led
me
in
her
garden
to
a
number
of
those
exceedingly
vulgar
red
herbaceous
peonies
growing
among
her
currant
bushes,
and
announced
with
conviction
that
they
were
her
favourite
flower.
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