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It had everything--everything a garden can have, or ever has had.
There were wide, wide lawns with carved stone seats, green with
moss. Over the lawns hung weeping-willows, and their feathery
bough-tips brushed the velvet grass when they swung with the
wind. The old flagged paths had high, clipped, yew hedges either
side of them, so that they looked like the narrow streets of some
old town; and through the hedges, doorways had been made; and
over the doorways were shapes like vases and peacocks and
half-moons all trimmed out of the living trees. There was a
lovely marble fish-pond with golden carp and blue water-lilies in
it and big green frogs. A high brick wall alongside the kitchen
garden was all covered with pink and yellow peaches ripening in
the sun. There was a wonderful great oak, hollow in the trunk,
big enough for four men to hide inside. Many summer-houses there
were, too--some of wood and some of stone; and one of them was
full of books to read. In a corner, among some rocks and ferns,
was an outdoor fire-place, where the Doctor used to fry liver and
bacon when he had a notion to take his meals in the open air.
There was a couch as well on which he used to sleep, it seems, on
warm summer nights when the nightingales were singing at their
best; it had wheels on it so it could be moved about under any
tree they sang in. But the thing that fascinated me most of all
was a tiny little tree-house, high up in the top branches of a
great elm, with a long rope ladder leading to it. The Doctor
told me he used it for looking at the moon and the stars through
a telescope.
It was the kind of a garden where you could wander and explore
for days and days--always coming upon something new, always glad
to find the old spots over again. That first time that I saw the
Doctor's garden I was so charmed by it that I felt I would like
to live in it--always and always-- and never go outside of it
again. For it had everything within its walls to give happiness,
to make living pleasant--to keep the heart at peace. It was the
Garden of Dreams.
One peculiar thing I noticed immediately I came into it; and that
was what a lot of birds there were about. Every tree seemed to
have two or three nests in it. And heaps of other wild creatures
appeared to be making themselves at home there, too. Stoats and
tortoises and dormice seemed to be quite common, and not in the
least shy. Toads of different colors and sizes hopped about the
lawn as though it belonged to them. Green lizards (which were
very rare in Puddleby) sat up on the stones in the sunlight and
blinked at us. Even snakes were to be seen.
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