Page:The Bloom of Monticello (1926).pdf/13

 martins, swallows and whip-poor-wills, I was so taken up with my chickens that I never attended to them. Therefore, I cannot tell you when they came, although I was so unfortunate as to lose half of them (my chickens) for my cousin, Bolling, and myself have raised but thirteen between us."

Jefferson loved every living growing thing at Monticello, and one of the hardships of his life of service to the state was that he was almost constantly away from home for more than forty years. The trees, the flowers, the fields and the birds there were precious in his sight, and though the center for years of political thought and change, beloved of many men, and hated by others, doted on by women, burdened always with care and often overshadowed by grief, he treasured many memories of the place, and its scenes and scents and sounds were constantly luring him back. Diplomat, statesman, social reformer, poet, architect, musician, scientist, inventor, student of government and politics, author, and collector of fine books, though he was, he never missed the ecstasy of blossom time at Monticello.

Few Virginia gentlemen of that time, of town or country, were without their farms and gardens. Flowers in gay profusion clustered at the bases of the white-columned porticos in town, and vast holdings in the country made most of the men farmers; and wherever George Washington, George Mason, or Thomas Jefferson were gathered together there was sure to be talk of crops and vegetables and flowers. Councils of State, we may safely wager, were often turned into conferences of farmers.