I was taught from infancy to
cut a bloom I wanted. My regular habit was to lift one plant of
each kind, especially if it were a species new to me, and set it in
my wild-flower garden."
To the birds and flowers the child added moths and butterflies,
because she saw them so frequently, the brilliance of colour in
yard and garden attracting more than could be found elsewhere. So
she grew with the wild, loving, studying, giving all her time. "I
fed butterflies sweetened water and rose leaves inside the screen
of a cellar window," Mrs. Porter tells us; "doctored all the sick
and wounded birds and animals the men brought me from afield; made
pets of the baby squirrels and rabbits they carried in for my
amusement; collected wild flowers; and as I grew older, gathered
arrow points and goose quills for sale in Fort Wayne. So I had the
first money I ever earned."
Her father and mother had strong artistic tendencies, although they
would have scoffed at the idea themselves, yet the manner in which
they laid off their fields, the home they built, the growing things
they preserved, the way they planted, the life they led, all go to
prove exactly that thing. Their bush--and vine-covered fences crept
around the acres they owned in a strip of gaudy colour; their
orchard lay in a valley, a square of apple trees in the centre
widely bordered by peach, so that it appeared at bloom time like a
great pink-bordered white blanket on the face of earth. Swale they
might have drained, and would not, made sheets of blue flag,
marigold and buttercups.
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