Cosmos
and family pushed their heads against the sash and insisted upon seeing
the world. Once in the garden, they throve mightily, and early in July,
at a time when I had more flowers than I needed, the entire row
threatened to bloom. After two weeks of coquettish showing of colour
here and there, up and down the line, they concluded that midsummer sun
did not agree with any of the shades of pink, carmine, or crimson of
which their clothes were fashioned, and as for white, the memory of
recent acres of field daisies made it too common, so they changed their
minds and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. When they were
pinched in on top, they simply expanded sidewise; ordinary and
inconspicuous staking failed to restrain them, and they even pulled away
at different angles from poles of silver birch with stout rope between,
like a festive company of bacchantes eluding the embraces of the police.
A heavy wind storm in late September snapped and twisted their hollow
trunks and branches. Were they discouraged? Not a particle; they simply
rested comfortably upon whatever they had chanced to fall and grew again
from this new basis.
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