It was the spirit of the garden that crept into my boy-heart and left
its fragrance, to endure through the years. What the garden stood for -
what it expressed - left a mysterious but certain impress. Grandmother's
touch hallowed it and made it a thing apart, and the rare soul of her
seemed to be reflected in the Lilies of the Valley that bloomed sweetly
year by year in the shady plot under her favorite window in the
sitting-room. Because the garden was her special province, it expressed
her own sturdy, kindly nature. Little wonder, then, that we cherished
it; that I loved to roam idly there feeling the enfoldment of that same
protection and loving-kindness which drew me to the shelter of her
gingham-aproned lap when the griefs of Boyhood pressed too hard upon me;
and that we walked in it so contentedly in the cool of the evening,
after the Four O'clocks had folded their purple petals for the night.

Grandmother's garden, like all real gardens, wasn't just flowers and
fragrance.

There was a brick walk leading from the front gate to the sitting-room
entrance - red brick, all moss-grown, and with the tiny weeds and
grasses pushing up between the bricks. In the garden proper the paths
were of earth, bordered and well-defined by inch-wide boards that
provided jolly tight-rope practice until grandmother came anxiously out
with her oft-repeated: "Willie don't walk on those boards; you'll, break
them down." And just after the warm spring showers these earthwalks
always held tiny mud-puddles where the rain-bleached worms congregated
until the robins came that way.

There's something distinctive and individual about the paths in a garden -
they either "belong," or they do not. Imagine cement walks in
grandmother's garden! Its walks are as much to a garden as its flowers