9. But one thing I have ascertained of it, lately at Brantwood, that it is
capricious and fastidious beyond any other little blossom I know of. In
laying out the rock garden, most of the terrace sides were trusted to
remnants of the natural slope, propped by fragments of stone, among which
nearly every other wild flower that likes sun and air, is glad sometimes to
root itself. But at the top of all, one terrace was brought to
mathematically true level of surface, and slope of side, and turfed with
delicately chosen and adjusted sods, meant to be kept duly trim by the
scythe. And _only_ on this terrace does the Giulietta choose to show
herself,--and even there, not in any consistent places, but gleaming out
here in one year, there in another, like little bits of unexpected sky
through cloud; and entirely refusing to allow either bank or terrace to be
mown the least trim during _her_ time of disport there. So spared and
indulged, there are no more wayward things in all the woods or wilds; no
more delicate and perfect things to be brought up by watch through day and
night, than her recumbent clusters, trickling, sometimes almost gushing
through the grass, and meeting in tiny pools of flawless blue.
10. I will not attempt at present to arrange the varieties of the
Giulietta, for I find that all the larger and presumably characteristic
forms belong to the Cape; and only since Mr.
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