i
THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
PRESENTED BY
PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND
MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID
Ir
THE RESCUE OF AN OLD
PLACE
BY
MARY CAROLINE ROBBINS
When Epicurus to the world had taught
That pleasure was the chiefest good,
(And was perhaps i' the right, if rightly understood,)
His life he to his doctrine brought,
And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure sought.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
p00, CambnDgr
1900
Copyright, 1892,
JJv MARY CAROLINE ROBBINS.
All rigkts reserved.
FOURTH IMPRESSION.
Tkf Riverside Pr*u, Cambridge. Man., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghtoo & Company.
To J. H. R.
i DttJtcatf
THKSB RECORDS OP OUR HAPPY YEARS
Or WORK AND HOPS.
M363518
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction vii
I. The Old Place i
II. Planting Willows and Pines n
III. A Baby Forest 23
IV. Clearing Up 35
V. On the Perversity of Certain Trees ... 51
VI. The Wreck of an Ancient Garden ... 63
VII. A New Perennial Garden 75
VIII. A Venerable Orchard 85
IX. A Struggle with the Web-worm .... 97
X. Planting Trees on a Lawn in
XI. Reclaiming a Salt Meadow 123
XII. Terraces and Shrubs 137
XIII. Evergreens in Spring 151
XIV. The Love of Flowers in America .... 165
XV. The Rose-Chafer 177
XVI. Sufferings from Drought 191
XVII. The Blessing of the Rain 203
XVIII. Discouragements 215
XIX. A Water Garden 229
XX. Landscape Gardening 245
XXI. The Waning Year and its Suggestions . . 261
XXII. Utility versus Beauty 277
INTRODUCTION
These chapters, which originally ap-
peared in Garden and Forest, were written
partly to acknowledge a debt for many
practical suggestions derived from its
pages, which helped us in our efforts to
bring harmony and beauty out of neglect
and desolation in one of the "abandoned
farms" of Massachusetts; and at the
same time to show the pleasure and inter-
est we found in endeavoring to create a
garden and forest of our own.
The experiments that I relate are by
no means completed, and the mistakes
made will call for sympathy, as the suc-
cesses will claim congratulations ; but to
those who will kindly go with me along
the way we have come, at all events the
story ought to show what can be done with
moderate expense, by the aid of such ex-
cellent publications as are now within
vii
Introduction
reach of every one, and how, by loving
labor, the old may he made to add charm
and dignity to the new, while the new
lends purpose and meaning to the old.
What has given so much delight in doing,
must, it seems to me, give pleasure when
told, and it is in this hope that I venture
to detail our very simple experience.
M. C. R.
y October 8, 1891.
I
THE OLD PLACE
In a coign of the cliff between lowland and high-
land,
At the sea-down's edge between windward and
lee,
Walled round with rocks as an inland island,
The ghost of a garden fronts the sea.
A girdle of brushwood and thorn encloses
The steep square slope of the blossomless bed
Where the weeds that grew green from the graves
of its roses
Now lie dead.
SWINBURNE.
I
IN the very heart of old New Old houses
England towns there may often
be seen some dilapidated house
falling into ruins, surrounded
by half -dead fruit-trees and straggling
shrubs, while an adjacent garden, once
productive and blooming, runs to waste
beside it. Its gates are off the hinges,
the fences falling to pieces, the hedges
untrimmed, the flower-beds smothered in
weeds; coarse burdocks and rampant wild
vines encumber the ground and run over
into the highway, the trim paths have
disappeared, the out-houses are toppling
over : forlornness and abandonment speak
in every line of the decaying house, the
former gentility of which renders its de-
cline still more melancholy.
It was such a dreary old place as this
that attracted our attention when we first
came to settle in Massachusetts. Why
3
The Rescue of an Old Place
such a desirable spot should have fallen
into disrepute was always a surprise, for
the situation in itself was excellent, the
estate running for ni.ie hundred feet along
the main street of the town, and lying
about half way between the two villages
known in popular parlance as The Plain
and Broad Bridge, so that it was only a
quarter of a mile from the post-office of
one, while the railway station of the other
was within a ten minutes' moderate walk
for a man. Moreover, it commanded a
lovely inland view, and had an unusual
variety of surface to make it interesting,
as well as a fertile soil for grass and gar-
den.
A phasing The view was what particularly ap-
prospect. . ' J
pealed to us, for it comprised a charming
stretch of salt meadow, with a blue stream
winding through it like a ribbon, skirted
by low, heavily wooded hills, with a dis-
tant glimpse of houses overtopped by the
masts of the shipping in the harbor.
From the higher levels of the farm one
could catch a glimpse, when the leaves
were off the trees, of a strip of blue sea,
and Boston Light could plainly be seen
4
The Old Place
revolving after sundown, while of a still
evening the monotonous roll of the waves
upon the beach could be clearly heard.
The old house, which we vainly tried to The ruined
find habitable, had stood for two hundred hou "'
years, and must have been a fine dwelling
in its day ; its rooms, though low-ceiled,
being spacious and numerous, and their
outlook picturesque. It was ill-planned
for modern ideas, though many of its con-
temporaries in this ancient town are still
occupied, and by a little alteration made
very comfortable ; while, owing to neglect
and ill usage by tenants, the owners hav-
ing long since moved away, it was in a
condition of hopeless disrepair. The floors
had settled, and the walls with them, un-
til in some of the lower rooms there were
gaps beside the beams of the ceiling, in
which rats or squirrels had made their
nests, so that supplies of nuts were to be
seen safely stored away in the holes. The
window-panes were broken, the shingles
mossgrown and ragged, the chimneys fall-
ing into ruins, and the sills had rotted
away. Moreover, the road that wound by
the door had been so raised by the accre-
5
The Rescue of an Old Place
tion of two hundred years, that the part of
the place around the house lay in a hollow,
and, there being no one to complain, the
town dug water-ways and coolly drained
the road over the surface of the ground,
so that, after a spring freshet, piles of
sand were to be found all over the grass,
giving the farm a water-logged aspect that
added to its disrepute.
We tmy the From this, and from the fact that, situ-
atec j as - t was b etween the two villages,
it formed absolutely a part of neither of
them to us an advantage rather than a
drawback, but to the town's-people an ob-
jection it resulted that when the farm
was put up at auction, some ten years ago,
no purchaser could be found at any price.
Finally, convinced that the land was worth
more without the house than with it, the
owner took it down, and, to the great
amusement and consternation of the old
farmers, who despised the spot, we bought
the place for a moderate sum, having con-
vinced ourselves by careful examination
that it would at least give us an occupa-
tion for the rest of our natural lives to get
it into condition ; and as that was what
6
The Old Place
one of us wanted, we were disposed to try
what could be made of it, and confound
our critics.
Then arose in the village a murmur of
disapprobation and superior wisdom, such
as is apt to follow any purchase in a New
England country town.
" What does the doctor want of that for- Comments
of the
lorn old hole ? Only a salt-ma'sh to look at,
and the road a-drainin' right into it all the
time. Ain't no place to put a house ; too
shady and wet where the old one was, and
ef he goes up on the hill he '11 jest blow
away. Used to be a good farm in the old
man's time ; best garden spot in town, but
pretty well run out now ; and the fences !
It '11 take all he '11 earn to keep them
fences in repair ; half a mile o' fencin' ef
there 's a rod."
And so the croaking went on behind
our backs, and sometimes to our faces,
with only a word of good-will now and
then from people who recalled the charm
of the old place when it was in the hands
of the family, and hoped that something
of it might in time be restored.
We ourselves, left face to face with our
7
The Rescue of an Old Place
bargain, went over the land, now our own,
and took heart of grace as we planned our
first improvements, and decided on a site
for the house. When we took an account
of stock, this is what we found :
A qwer. A curiously shaped piece of land, some-
thing like the State of Maryland, omitting
the Eastern Shore. The long front of
about nine hundred feet, lying upon the
main street, at its southern end was nearly
six hundred feet in depth ; but this part of
the place was a barren gravelly hill, which
had been pastured until nothing was to be
found upon it but a thin, wiry grass, full of
white-weed and a growth of short briers.
In the autumn it was a blaze of Golden-
rod. The hill sloped steeply to the north
and northeast, so that the side of it was
exposed and cold, the wind sweeping up
across the meadow from the sea in bleak-
est gusts. This we at once determined
was the place to plant Pines, with a view
to a subsequent forest. At the foot of the
hill was a fertile swale of excellent grass
land, which intervened between it and a
second rise of land, which was the termi-
nation of another gravelly hill, through
8
The Old Place
which the main street had been cut, leaving
upon our side a small knoll, from which
the ground sloped in every direction, mak-
ing a perfectly drained and slightly ele-
vated spot for a house, an excellent, but
rather limited situation, perfectly barren
of trees and requiring much grading.
On the north side of this knoll was an-
other abrupt slope, and then the ground
swept on below the level of the highway,
gradually narrowing, as a back street, run-
ning obliquely, came to intersect the main
road at the northern extremity of the
place, where was an Apple orchard of im-
mense old trees whose bending boughs
swept the ground ; and in the very point
a wilderness of Locusts and Wild Cher-
ries.
The site of the old house, shaded by The old site
some fine Elms and White Ashes, was too Si>rl~
near both streets to be at all desirable, newluntse -
though the shrubbery and the tangled re-
mains of an old flower-garden rendered it
very attractive; but at the rear the salt-
marsh was in too close proximity, and
about half an acre bordering on the back
street was so overflowed at times by salt
9
The Rescue of an Old Place
water that it would only afford a crop of
marsh-grass.
The neighborhood of this meadow was
thought to be one of the drawbacks of the
spot by many; but knowing that it was
perfectly wholesome, and certainly beauti-
. ful, to us it was only an added advantage,
so long as the gravelly knoll gave us so
good a foundation for our dwelling.
A owL * ^ ur ^ rst P r bl em > tne fences, we deter-
mined to deal with by planting Willows.
The barren hillside was to be screened
with Pines, and procuring and setting these
was our first subject for consideration.
II
PLANTING WILLOWS AND
PINES
" Willow ! in thy breezy moan
I can hear a deeper tone ;
Through thy leaves come whispering low
Faint sweet songs of long ago
Willow, sighing willow ! "
MRS. HEMANS.
* Who liveth by the ragged pine,
Foundeth an heroic line."
EMERSON.
II
|HEN one has nearly half a mile
of boundary to define around
his four-acre lot, the question
arises how it can be inclosed
with the least expense and trouble, and in
such a way as not to disfigure the grounds.
With this problem we had now to deal.
The front upon the main street, thanks
to the sociable fashion of our day, it would
be quite proper to leave open, with only
such screen of shrubs and trees as we
should decide upon when the house was
built, and the lawn properly graded. Part
of it was already well hedged in with an-
cient bushes, which straggled about where
the old house stood, in most admired dis-
order. But all along Winter Street, as the
road behind us is somewhat ambitiously
designated, the fence was tumbling down }
and the whole garden spot lay uncomfort-
ably open to view, as well as to the cold
The Rescue of an Old Place
We decide east winds that blow across the meadow
from the sea. We decided that here a
row of Willows would come in admirably,
as there would be plenty of rich moist soil
for the young trees to root in, and with
such a protection the wind-swept garden
would in time be warm and secluded,
while the silvery foliage would be a har-
monious setting for the emerald meadow
and the sapphire stream.
This idea we carried out the week after
we made our purchase. A friendly far-
mer neighbor, compassionating our folly in
starting such an enterprise, but anxious to
see what we would make out of the place,
kindly offered to give us as many cuttings
as we wanted ; so one bright day in June
he appeared upon the scene with a cart-
load of Willows, a crowbar, and a hatchet,
and, with a man or two to help him, before
night he had cut and driven firmly into
holes, easily punched by the crowbar in
the soft soil, some five hundred bare
stakes, every one of which in a few weeks
put forth a crop of roots and leaves.
The stakes, sharpened at the end, were
about three feet in length, one foot of
14
Planting Willows and Pines
which was driven into the ground, and HOW we did
firmly stamped into place. It was found
better, in driving them, to have them set at
an angle of about twenty degrees, with the
tops pointing toward the south, so that
the stems did not receive the full force of
the midday and afternoon sun. We used
the common White Willow (Salix alba\
which abounds along swampy roadsides
everywhere in New England.
These trees have all thriven well, though
owing to the marsh being salter in certain
places than in others, some have grown
less rapidly than their companions. The
fear of the salt water led us into the error
of planting one row of trees at first inside
the fence, and at some distance from it,
where the presence of Clover and English
Grass showed that the top soil was fresh.
Subsequently, when they were all well
rooted, we removed them to the outside
along the highway, where they now begin
to make an agreeable shade and an effec-
tive screen. The annual dumpings of sand
made by the town along the edge of the
road, to maintain its level, which con-
stantly tends to sink into the marsh across
The Rescue of an Old Place
which it has been carefully built, seem to
help the trees, which continue to send out
surface-roots as the ground rises about
them ; and though some of them during
their first seasons had a sorry time of it
in dry, hot weather, they ultimately pulled
through, and are no longer sources of anx-
iety.
The barren The most exposed portion of the place
being thus provided for, we turned our at-
tention to the barren hillside, which was
a pretty hopeless-looking spot for trees of
any kind. This elevation, some forty feet
high and running back nearly six hundred
feet from the main street, seems to be the
bank of some former water-way ; at least
I like to fancy that the odd terraces,
which break its otherwise even slope, re-
present the gradual subsidence of some
body of water which must once have filled
the gorge, when the present meadow was
an arm of the sea. Gravel and sand,
mixed with moderate-sized cobblestones,
are its constituent parts, nothing like a
boulder having come so far down. We
have often regretted that some of the no-
ble rocks which abound on the other side
16
Planting Willows and Pines
of the street, farther up the former stream,
were not on our hill to form a feature in
our landscape-gardening, marked as they
are with the scratches which show the
grinding of some primeval glacier.
Over the rough foundation of our hill a character
thin soil has formed itself; fairly deep on "*"*
the level top where the plain begins, but
constantly washed off down the sides into
the swale below. It seems hardly possi-
ble that trees can ever have grown here,
nor are there the smallest traces of any in
or upon the soil ; but here we resolved
that trees should grow; and again the
farmers mocked at such a wild idea, and
looked forward with sombre satisfaction
to our discomfiture.
But how to set about it ?
To plow the surface, unless we could A harmless
, ... tumble.
yoke a goat to the plow, seemed impossi-
ble, since we had just seen a man and
a horse and a dump-cart roll together, in
a confused but unharmed heap, from the
top to the bottom, on account of an incau-
tious step off the level. Even if we could
have plowed the ungrateful soil, of what
use would it have been, since there was
The Rescue of an Old Place
nothing to bring to the surface but stones ?
Cultivation being apparently out of the
question, the trees would have to take
their chance, and a wretched chance, too,
for the south shore of Massachusetts Bay
is subject to long and severe droughts,
and to several months of hot weather in
the summer.
A north But here we were upheld by our author-
s $ e pZ. ities. An excellent book on forestry gave
us some consoling statistics, and later, our
favorite horticultural journal was invalu-
able in its suggestions. We found that in
reforesting hills in France and Switzerland
that had been swept bare by avalanches,
a northeast slope proved the most favor-
able exposure for the growth of young
Pines, and, if we had nothing else, we had
plenty of north and east, with the winds
thrown in ; so, if that was the sort of thing
that they liked, why, bring on the Pines,
and let them have all they want of it.
But by the time we got round to this
job, as the farmers say, the season for
spring planting of Pines was over, and an
exceptionally dry and burning summer was
in full blast, and the very grass on the hill
18
Planting Willows and Pines
was crisped and dry. Our impatience,
however, was too great to permit us to
wait for another year to begin our experi-
ment. We had read some accounts of
August planting of Pines, and determined
to have our little fling on the spot, and
find out for ourselves whether it was a
good time or not.
So we waited, as anxiously as the pro-
phet Elijah, for the first sign of rain, and fc
when at last the brassy heavens veiled
themselves in cloud about the middle of
August, we started off after trees not
the pampered darlings of a nursery, used
to water and rich soil, but the hardy road-
side denizens of dry pastures and sand-
hills. We picked out the driest and sandi-
est spots to dig them from, so that if their
roots discovered nothing to feed upon in
their new locality, they would, from long
habit, have got used to short commons, and
could adapt themselves to the situation.
Before going out we had the men dig
holes over the surface of the side hill with
a grub-hoe, banking up the thin soil at the
lower side of the holes with sods, so as to
make little dams to retain the water ; in
19
The Rescue of an Old Place
these holes we set the trees we selected,
which were not over three feet high, but
stocky and well rooted. When possible
we punt we took up the dirt with them, keeping
their roots moist, and well shaded in the
cart, and no more were brought at a time
than could be set in two or three hours.
After they were all planted, with great
labor and trouble, we gave our nursery
a thorough watering, and then, except
on two or three subsequent occasions,
when things looked really desperate from
drought, they were left to take their
chance. Luckily that year the rains be-
gan to fall soon after they were set, and
the autumn was a very wet one, so that a
good many of the little trees were living
in the spring ; but another batch, set in
the latter part of May the following year,
owing possibly to the very heavy rains of
1888 and 1889, did so much better, that
we shall always be disposed to give the
preference to spring planting in the fu-
ture.
Of some one hundred and fifty Pines set
upon this barren northerly hillside, under
these cruel conditions, about eighty sur-
20
Planting Willows and Pines
vive, a few of which are still leading a pre-
carious existence, while the greater part
are flourishing bravely, making a fine show
in winter against the snow. In summer
they shade so completely into the unkempt
green background of the hill that, unless
seen in profile, they are barely visible, even
when five feet high, and very bushy. Still
farther back we have tried setting out very ing.
small Pines, and have sown the ground in
autumn with countless Pine-seeds, and
nuts of all sorts, which come up satisfao
torily enough, and do bravely for a month
or two, but suffer dreadfully in July and
August. They are a fruitful source of
anxiety and disappointment, because they
cannot make up their minds whether to live
or die. The young Oaks are especially
trying in this respect, for when we have
fairly given them up for lost, they thrust
out a feeble little leaf and make a fresh
effort at existence, but at this rate a mil-
lennium will be too short for them to get
their growth in. I have read somewhere
that an Oak grew from an acorn in this
commonwealth of Massachusetts, forty
feet in fourteen years, but if these hillside
21
The Rescue of an Old Place
acorns achieve fourteen feet in forty years
we shall feel we have not lived in vain.
HOW to make "What do you do to make trees grow ? "
I asked an Englishman who was coaxing
along a rebellious Butternut to some show
of vigor.
" Oh ! " said he, " I just talks to 'em,
and tells 'em to grow, and they grow."
Mindful of this advice, I do not fail to
exhort these recreant acorns, but no
teacher of a primary school ever had a
worse time in getting a shoot out of a
young idea, than do I out of. this infant
class of refractory nuts and seeds.
22
Ill
A BABY FORES1
The seed has started, who can stay it ? See,
The leaves are sprouting high above the ground.
Already o'er the flowers its head ; the tree
That rose beside it, and that on it frowned,
Behold ! is but a small bush by its side.
Still on ! it cannot stop ; its branches spread ;
It looks o'er all the earth in giant pride.
JONES VERY.
Ill
know that mothers love best T** **i<n>-
.... . . . ltne$s of the
those children who give them km. '
the most trouble, and it must be
on some such principle that this
barren hillside of ours wins our best af-
fections ; for, as we cultivate its seemingly
thankless surface, while it disappoints and
resists our loving efforts, all the more
there grows in us a tender comprehension
of its hidden beauty, a wider sense of its
possibilities, and a greater patience with
the slow processes by which it is to be
restored to vigor and productiveness.
We sympathize with its struggle for self-
adornment, poor, barren, ugly thing. The
cold northern slope comes slowly to life,
turned away as it lies from the fostering
sunlight. When the plain and swale are
bright with the hues of spring, the uncut
grass upon its side is still brown and with-
ered ; it seems to dread awakening from
25
The Rescue of an Old Place
its winter sleep, but at last it begins to
star itself over with blossoms of white
Saxifrage, and anon it grows purple \vith
Bird's-foot Violets, sending out in the sun-
shine that soft, fleeting perfume which is
a hint of the riper fragrance of their Eng-
lish cousins.
At this season, too, the exquisite wild
Columbine decks it with earrings of coral
and gold, which the country children call
meeting-houses from their steeple-shaped
horns, and over it the all-pervading Daisy
waves its white and yellow blossoms stur-
dily in the wind, while the wild briers put
forth their roses, and the Dog's-bane its
fragrant cymes, till the Goldenrods and
Asters come at last to hide its barrenness
with their royal splendor. And all the
while there are short, thin grasses, of ten-
der greens and browns, clothing it humbly,
while spots of vivid emerald moss indicate
the presence of hidden rivulets that feed
a living spring that lies at its foot.
In this spring is the possibility of a
water garden, of which there is already a
beginning. All summer long you can see
shining there the blue eyes of great For-
26
A Baby Forest
get-me-nots, the seeds of whose forefathers Forg*t-m
were brought, long ago, from stately Fon- ^-a^T*
tainebleau by a gentle artist, who planted
them by his own brookside, whence they
have overrun and made famous the Hing-
ham Meadows, their bright blossoms, like
scattered fragments of the sky, gleaming
among the rushes, and affording a valu-
able industry to the small boys who sell
them at the railway station as you pass.
In addition to these continuously bloom-
ing flowers, there are Pussy Willows and
white Violets in the spring, and in the late
summer the Arrowhead lifts its sculptur-
esque blossom and fine outlined leaf from
the water, and the Cardinal-flower uprears
its scarlet spikes amid the blossoms of
stately grasses. Some day we hope to see
a Pond Lily asleep upon its surface, and
if the Lotus-flower would but brook our
rigorous winters, we should add one to the
collection.
At the foot of the hill, at each end, is a stray i*
clump of White Birches, ladies of the ***'
woods that have strayed from their home,
and lost themselves on this waste, and
rustle their thin leaves timorously, bend-
27
TJ:e Rescue of an Old Place
ing their slender white stems as the sea-
blasts strike them. Now that we have
stopped mowing and pasturing, we find
clumps of Bayberry and Chokecherry
bushes coming up under the tumble-down
old rail-fences between us and our neigh-
bors, so that these last are already high
enough to shade the boys when, tired and
hot with play, they throw themselves upon
the ground under their grateful protection.
A tennis p or on the summit of the hill there is level
court on tnt
*M- space enough, inside our line, for a tennis-
court, from which you can look for a mile
across the meadow to the tree-clad hills
beyond, and the clustered houses and
masts of the harbor, half-buried in trees,
and seek for the blue line upon the high
horizon that indicates the sea.
Straggling paths, worn by careless feet,
lead up the hillside in those pleasant,
meandering ways that indicate the foot of
man, and, in imagination, we see them
shaded by the Birches and Pines that we
have hopefully planted along the borders ;
for, in moving our trees with the surround-
ing sod, we usually brought along these
close companions ; the Pines and Birches
28
A Baby Forest
being so married, in most instances, that
it seemed a cruelty to separate them.
Hope and faith are qualities that find
splendid exercise in tree-planting, and no
pursuit can be more unselfish ; for, as we
watch the tardy growth of our plantations,
it is with the stern conviction that other
eyes than ours will see the waving of tree-
tops above them, and that far younger feet
will tread the fragrant woodland ways
when they are at last carpeted with Pine-
needles. It is by this spirit that we be-
come one with Nature, sharing humbly in The
, . i T i of Nature,
her patience, in her vast unending plans,
in her bountiful provision for the future.
What better boon to the race can a man
leave than a wood that he has planted, in
which a future generation may walk and
bless his name ? Or, if the name be for-
gotten, there shall abide the forest-bless-
ing, ever beneficent, the mother of springs
that fertilize the plain, a shelter to the
weary, a delight of the eye, a source alike
of profit and pleasure while it endures.
We have friends who scoff when we
take them to walk in our forest and beg
them not to step on the Oaks ; but, to us,
29
The Rescue of an Old Place
these tiny seedlings, so feeble and unim-
portant, are personalities that we have
cherished through successive seasons,
feeding them when hungry, giving drink
The suffer- when dry, grieving when their tender
leaves, scorched by too fierce a sun, with-
ered and fell, and rejoicing when, under
the cool rains of September, their little
bare stems put forth fresh crowns of leaf-
buds. Much comfort can be taken in the
fact that an Oak once rooted will not
wholly perish, but some day conquer even
the most obdurate of soils. Like good
seed sown in the heart of a child, the
storms and sunshine of the world may
seem for a time to wither the plant to the
ground, but in the end the beauty and
power of deep-rooted character will pre-
vail and bear fruit.
We have in our experiments endeavored
to make use of such materials as lay at
hand, though well aware that nurseries and
gardens could have helped us on our way
more rapidly. But trees, if purchased,
are expensive luxuries, and our object has
been partly to see what can be done with-
out much money, and with only a moder-
30
A Baby Forest
ate amount of labor. Our experience has Transplant*
ing more
shown us, what the books on forestry told satisfactory
, than sowing.
us in the beginning, that sowing seeds
and nuts is far less satisfactory than trans-
planting small trees ; but we have had the
entertainment of proving their statements
for ourselves, and find our compensation in
such trifling results as we have achieved.
The Pine seeds, which we shook from the
cones in the autumn, and planted before
they had time to dry, came up profusely
enough in little clusters, but so tiny and
weak, that it is wonderful that they are
ever discovered even in the thin grass of
the hillside, which we leave near them to
afford shade. They make, under these
conditions, a sturdy little growth so long
as the weather is cool and moist, but are
apt to disappear altogether in the month
of July. Any small tree, that one can
pull up by a wayside, will make better re-
turns for a little attention than these slow-
growing mites from seeds.
Such White Birch seed as we have sown,
either because we did not know when to
gather it, or whether it came from the
wrong tree, has failed to come up at all ;
The Rescue of an Old Place
but in the sandiest and most uncomfort-
able part of the hill we find little seed-
lings that have come up of themselves
from the trees at the foot, so that we are
fain to confess that Nature understands
her business better than we do.
^ e verv sma ^ Pi ne s, a few inches high,
of which we have set a large number on
the rear of the hill, do not grow as well as
the larger ones, and are more apt to die.
So far our experience leads us to prefer
good-sized trees of all kinds for transplant-
ing, rather than small ones, the larger tree
seeming to have more vitality to come and
go upon until new roots are formed, and
it has become adapted to its new condi-
tions.
We have planted various kinds of acorns
in great profusion, but the Mossy-cup and
the Chestnut Oak seem to thrive best in
this waterless soil. The White and Red
Oaks seem to require enriching to hold
their own at all, and Maple seedlings,
which come up promptly, yield to the first
drought, though very small transplanted
trees live on. Hickories, though slow in
growth, are not vanquished by the con-
32
A Baby Forest
ditions, and little yearling Chestnuts, trans-
planted and dug about, flourish bravely.
From a friend in town, whose English Planting
Walnut-tree has borne profusely after the
recent warm winters, we have obtained
fresh nuts, which, promptly set, have ger-
minated and given us fine little shoots in
one season. This tree is a more rapid
grower than any of our native nut-trees,
and so far has stood the winters, but we
have had no weather below zero here
since 1887, and cannot answer for the ef-
fect of an old-fashioned season. The field-
mice have a great predilection for them,
and gnawed our largest one down to the
root a year ago, but it came up again in
the spring with redoubled vigor, and made
up for lost time.
Small Black Birches, dug up by the Results.
roadside, and put into holes prepared for
them in the side of the hill, have thriven
without much attention, and make a fa-
vorable growth ; but some Ailanthus-trees
from a nursery, in spite of Horace Gree-
ley, have refused to do anything at all. In
the swale at the foot of the hill, where the
soil is deep and moist, all trees flourish.
33
The Rescue of an Old Place
English Oaks grow rapidly from acorns,
and we have a fine group of Chestnuts,
transplanted when fifteen feet high, that
grow well after being cut back sternly
when set. Though much beset by insects,
they are now firmly established, having
been planted in the autumn of 1888. In
this same moist, rich soil we have also had
very good success with that difficult tree
to move, the Hemlock ; and the Tulip-tree
and the Mulberry also flourish, though
the tender young branches of the latter
suffered after the last two warm winters,
dying back badly.
climbing To get all this young family started,
as may be imagined, took a great deal of
time, and much subsequent attention, one
favorable result of which is that from con-
stant clambering up the steep hill, which
was at first a breathless piece of business,
our lungs have developed co such a de-
gree that we are disposed to recommend
the cultivation of a forest on a slope to all
such as, like Hamlet, are " fat and scant
of breath," for the fine stimulus it proves
to the action of the heart.
34
IV
CLEARING UP
The dense hard passage is blind and stifled,
That crawls by a track none turn to climb
To the strait waste place that the years have
rifled
Of all but the thorns that are touched not of
Time;
The thorns he spares when the rose is taken ;
The rocks are left when he wastes the plain ;
The wind that wanders, the weeds wind-shaken,
These remain.
SWINBURNE.
IV
" trees will grow while one
sleeps," according to the old
adage, we made planting our
first business, and left setting
the place in order to come later, for
it seemed to promise an indefinite job,
everything having gone more or less to
rack and ruin during its period of aban-
donment and desolation.
The forlornness of an old, neglected A forlorn
farm is largely owing to the condition of *
its trees and shrubs, which, being left to
themselves, take on a tumble-down, half-
dead look that often belies their real con-
dition. A few decayed trees bring all the
others into disrepute, like a grog-shop in
an otherwise respectable neighborhood,
and untrimmed shrubs are as unbecoming
as unkempt hair.
When we came to examine matters at
Overlea, as we named our acquisition, from
37
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
its command of the meadow, we found
that a good sweeping and dusting would
do wonders for it, and with that enthusi-
asm for setting to rights inborn in the
New England breast, we prepared for a
grand redding up.
While the grading of the knoll was go-
ing on preparatory to building the house,
our factotum, appropriately named Blos-
som, since his function was to adorn the
place, was busily employed in removing
all the unsightly dead limbs from among
the live ones, and in hewing down such
old Pear and Apple trunks as proved
hopeless.
^^ e ^ s anc * branches were dragged
away to the wettest place in the meadow
at the back of the knoll, and transformed
into a corduroy road, by which one could
pass dry-shod out into the rear street.
This floating rubbish, supported by the
tangled grass on the marsh, formed a
foundation upon which, after inserting a
plank water-way at the bottom, for the
ebb and flow of the tide, we subsequently
built a substantial carriage-road of stones
Clearing Up
and gravel, which now affords a back en-
trance to the stable and kitchens.
The palings of the fence were removed
for kindlings, but the posts and rails were
left to form a slight boundary until the
hedges and tree rows should be fairly
established ; the straggling shrubs were
trimmed into better shape, the Box-arbor
clipped and cleared of weeds, trailing
vines were taught once more the use of
a trellis, and the grass was mown and
raked clean of the last year's rowan.
Fierce war was made upon the Bur-
dock and Mint and Horse-radish that had
squatted everywhere on the land ; load
after load of the accumulated rubbish of
years was buried under the corduroy road,
and hidden from view with gravel ; the
Pear-trees were carefully pruned and tied
up, and the old Grape trellis stiffened with
new posts and lattices.
When all this was done, and it was no
brief job, the place took on a civilized air
truly surprising, but, like the boy's wash-
ing his face, which cost his father a thou-
sand dollars, the felling of the first ragged
39
The Rescue of an Old Place
old tree was an entering wedge of im-
provements that found no end.
The clearing up revealed unsuspected
beauties and possibilities in the old place,
and at the end of it we had taken an ac-
count of stock, and were aware that we
had become owners of a treasure-house of
enjoyments. But the charms and wealth
of that old garden are " another story,"
which remains to be told later.
Grading the While all this spring and fall cleaning
was going on, the heavy labor of grading
was in progress. Teams and men were
coming and going, heavy scrapers were
plowing part of the little knoll down into
the valley, and loads of gravel were being
dumped to bring the slopes into proper
form, the surface soil having been first
removed to cover the future lawn. Week
by week the work went on, till the very
landscape changed its contours, as the re-
moval of the crown of the knoll threw
open to view, from the sidewalk, the fine
stretch of green meadow and blue stream,
once hidden from view by its cone.
When our much interested critics found
that we had chosen the site for our dwell-
40
Clearing Up
ing in an unexpected part of the grounds,
their murmurs again reached our ears.
"Why in the world don't the doctor
r , , . , , . i our critics.
build up on top of the hill, where he can
see everything, and be among neighbors ?"
sang half the chorus.
" If I had a lot of big trees like those
Elums I M get the good of 'em, and put
my new house on the old cellar," echoed
the antiphonal.
" Never can make anything better 'n a
Shumack-bush grow in that gravel-pit,"
shouted they all together.
" Well, perhaps he knows what he 's
about," would interpose some friendly
voice ; " but it would n't be my way, any-
how. He '11 find out, come to plantin',
that he 's got to have soil, even for a door-
yard."
When it came to building the founda- w e are like
tions, their distance from the highway
seemed inordinate to most of these critics, Ass '
but now and then we were reproached by
the more ambitious for not leaving front
enough. In fine, we came to be in full
sympathy with the Old Man and His Ass
of the fable ; but being luckier than he in
The Rescue of an Old Place
having a mind of our own, we did not end
by pitching house and all into the water,
as we might have been tempted to do
from the multitude of counselors, in which,
in spite of Solomon, there is not always
wisdom.
Our firm conviction was that the hill,
in spite of the commanding view toward
the north, was too bleak and exposed a
position to be pleasant for an all-the-
year-round home ; it was also too near
the neighbors' lines, and too remote from
orchard and garden.
On the other hand, tempting as the
u. great Elms certainly were on a hot sum-
mer day, the lot at that end of the farm
was quite too narrow for a house and
stable such as we required. The knoll,
though limited in area, gave us plenty of
elbow-room, and from its elevation we over-
looked the grassy swale on one side, with
the hill for a background, and northward
could view the ever-changing tints of the
meadow, behind the gardens and the fruit-
trees. Experience has confirmed the
dom of our choice, and, in justice to our
advisers, I will say that they now hand-
4*
Gearing Up
somely admit that, though they " did n't
think much of the doctor's ch'ice, to begin
with," they are now convinced that " he
has got about the likeliest lot on the
street."
People question us about our Willows,
and ask whether we are to make a hedge of
them or allow them to grow up into trees.
"If you allow the Willow-trees to grow
up," they ask, "won't they shut off all
your view? and if you don't allow them
to, won't the labor and trouble of cutting
them back every year be serious ? "
We do mean to let them grow into trees
at their own sweet will, at least for the
present. The knoll is so high, and the
slope of the ground, from the foot of it to
the edge of the place, so decided, that our
veranda - floor is some twenty -five feet
above the level where the Willows are set,
so that they can grow for some years to
come without becoming an annoyance.
They are also quite a long distance away,
as the line runs diagonally between us and
the meadow. Should they ever become
a serious obstruction, polling once in five
years, we think, will keep them where we
43
The Rescue of an Old Place
want them, as from our elevation we can
look directly over the top of a very tall old
Apple-tree which stands at the foot of the
slope near the house, and a Willow in the
distance will have to be quite a tree to be
really troublesome. A vista cut here and
there in the line will really enhance the
charm of the prospect, but at present they
are not more than fifteen feet high.
Another inquiry has been made with
regard to the preparation of the soil on
the hill for the Pines.
The pa- Unfortunately, we did nothing in the
Krl^f'our way of making a bed for them beyond the
process I have described. No doubt,
they would have fared much better for a
little feeding, and more of them would
have lived, but the hill was very steep and
hard to get at, even with a wheelbarrow ;
and, besides, we had no soil to spare, for
we needed everything we could get for
the lawn, and did not care to buy any for
so doubtful an enterprise. We therefore
tried our experiment under the sternest
conditions. However, those tiny Pilgrim
Fathers of the future forest stood the trial
like little men. Some of them, it is true,
44
Clearing Up
died of consumption, and some of fever ;
but the survivors are growing tall and
stout on their poor pickings, and will do
us credit yet.
There is one of them, nicknamed Epis- The history
copus, from its birthplace in the church
lot, which is a beautiful illustration of
that fable called Nature and Education,
in " Evenings at Home," a book which
was the delight of the childhood of a pre-
vious generation, and an infinite bore to
the present advanced infant.
I spied the poor thing one day hanging
by one root to the side of a sandhill, which
was being graded to a smooth slope, and
asked the men who were working there to
let me have it. Though much ridiculed
for its shapeless and unpromising aspect,
it was given a comfortable shelf pretty
well down on the slope, and coaxed to
hold its head up by various devices. Un-
used to kind treatment, this wayside waif,
which had got used to growing nearly up-
side down, hung its head and sidled up
against the hill, and seemed to find its
branches as much in its way as the legs
and arms of a guttersnipe in a parlor ; but
45
The Rescue of an Old Place
time and training, and the neighborhood
of Boston have their influence even on a
Pine, and that clerical tree is now a very
Bishop in erectness and dignity, having
been lopped and pruned and tied to stakes,
till it puts the most symmetrical of the
other Pines to shame by the vigor of its
development, proving that if anything can
" beat Nature " it is Education.
The consolation of having a limited
number of trees is that each one acquires
an individuality, and their owner gets to
know them as a shepherd does his flock.
I wish every one could learn the way in
which these little growing things take hold
of one's interest, and people life in the
country, and that this pursuit could be
taught to children as a branch of their
education.
The plant- It is the custom in some of our high-
Ty schools* schools for the graduating class to plant a
and colleges. ^^ ^ ^ neighborhood Q f the Sc h 00 l-
house and for a long period it has been
the time-honored custom of universities
to set out a vine in commencement week,
to commemorate the class that is leaving
college.
Clearing Up
During a visit last summer to an east-
ern town, my attention was called to the
Ampelopsis, each vine labeled with the
date of the class cut in one of the stones
of the foundation of the college chapel,
near which the plants were set, and it was
melancholy to see how forlorn and small
many of them were, and how others had
died completely for lack of attention. The
same may be said of numbers of the pitiful
little Maples and Elms that huddle around
the unpicturesque and bare high-school
buildings in some parts of New England,
which really should by this time be amply
shaded if a proper attention had been paid
to the young trees when set out.
It strikes me that a radical change A
should be made in the time of planting
these commemorative trees and vines.
Instead of setting them out at the close
of its career, every class should on enter-
ing the school or university erect its
growing monument, and devote its best
energies during the four years of school
or college life to having its vine or its tree
beat the record in growth and vigor. In
this way, if one specimen died another
47
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
could be planted, that the class might be
sure of a memorial, while yearly a com-
mittee should be appointed to attend to
the plant, and a small subscription be
levied on each member of the class for
proper fertilizers and cultivation.
If the personal attention of the boys
could be given to the subject, if they
would themselves dig about and enrich
and prune what they had planted, and
would take pride in it, the effect would
be good in awakening in their minds an
interest in the growth of plants and trees ;
and some slight knowledge might be ac-
quired of climatic and soil conditions,
while a hint might be given to them of
one of the best and purest pleasures
which is within the grasp of man.
In this way could be instilled into the
rising generation an interest in forestry,
that might in time bear fruit in greater
care for this property of the nation.
Among the books of reference in schools
some should be supplied which treat of
the proper management of growing things,
so that the youths and maidens could
study the subject for themselves. If, at
48
Clearing Up
the end of each year or four years, some
slight reward, such as a simple medal or
even an honorable mention, could be
awarded to that plant or tree which had
made any surprising growth, it might still
further stimulate an interest among the
young people in this most beautiful and
useful work. If masters of schools and
professors of colleges would use their in-
fluence to bring about this change as
speedily as possible, it could not fail to
do good to the youths themselves, and
would replace with vigorous trees and
vines the usually melancholy specimens
which many classes now leave behind
them as their monument.
The forester of ever so minute a wood
has a fund of enjoyment on his plantation
that no unlimited order to the best of
landscape gardeners can ever give him. It
is a fine spiritual exercise to bring the mind
into sympathy with inferior organisms,
and when one has fairly learned to love
anything so stubborn and irresponsive as
a tree, he has gained a step in mental de-
velopment, even beyond that point won
49
The Rescue of an Old Place
by a sympathetic understanding of his
brother man.
A flower However fond one may be of a flower
garden, I doubt if it ever yields quite so
s. sturdy a satisfaction as the culture of
trees. It is the difference between bring-
ing up a girl and a boy, one all light,
color, sweetness, a thing to be cherished
and tenderly sheltered and nurtured ; the
other less outwardly winning, more obsti-
nate in development, more independent
and manly in habit, but more worth while ;
a thing of positive pecuniary value when
well grown ; and formed, when symmetry
and breadth are fully attained, to be of
service in sheltering the weak and weary
who seek protection in what Mrs. Gamp
would call " this wale."
5
ON THE PERVERSITY OF
CERTAIN TREES
My wind has turned to bitter north,
That was so soft a south before ;
My sky, that shone so sunny bright,
With foggy gloom is clouded o'er.
ARTHUR HUGH C LOUGH.
conscience would lead me to Apology &*
to my trees.
make an apology to my tree-
nurslings for having called them
stubbbrn and irresponsive, when
they have in many instances given me so
much satisfaction ; but as I feel that it is
necessary to be as honest about mistakes
as about successes, in order to render these
records truly valuable, I feel it my duty
though it is almost as bad as betraying a
domestic secret to admit that they have
been a trial. And that people may not
be led away into thinking a tree nursery
any freer from failings than a child nurs-
ery, I must tell the painful as well as the
charming facts about them.
No one knows better than I how much Th* freak-
some of the more satisfactory among them " O me"/
will do for one under kind treatment, but, thtm '
all the same, I must reluctantly maintain
that many of them are freakish and dis-
53
The Rescue of an Old Place
appointing ; not, perhaps, so much from
their inherent wickedness, as from the
baneful influences of the world outside, the
flirtations with insects of which they are
capable, their predilection for ornament-
ing themselves with bright colored fungus
growths which check their development,
a perverseness about living, even when
given the very best advantages, only par-
alleled by those Chinese* servants who
go and kill themselves if their master
speaks sharply to them ; and, above all, a
stubbornness about adapting themselves
to new conditions as great as that of a
trueborn Briton.
A tree tkt Your tree is the true conservative, and
true con- ..... .
will insist upon its own way quite as un-
reasonably as a human being, even when
you are sure you know what is better for
it than it does itself. It is as hard to
bring it to a new way of living as it is to
bring about a constitutional amendment.
If there is a spot where you do not want
a tree to grow, notably a garden bed or
your potato patch, there it will insist on
coming up and making itself at home ;
but, take up this interloper and put it in a
54
On the Perversity of Certain Trees
proper place, where you want it, and, ten
to one, it will sulk and defy you.
One's favorites show in extreme youth but of m-
a propensity to come in contact with cows' 7r2%er.
horns and the jackknives of mischievous
boys, that is another proof of ill-regulated
character. They let their top-buds perish
in the most careless way, and put out two
leaders instead of one before you know it ;
they grow unevenly, they make themselves
untidy with absurd little leaves up and
down their stems, with a vague idea of
keeping the sun off their trunks. One
has a constant struggle with evergreens to
keep their lower limbs in condition ; they
always prefer to go barefooted. Indeed,
I call one Norway Spruce I know of Sock-
less Jerry, on account of this very failing.
There is a crying instance of depravity A depraved
in a moderate-sized White Ash on our wklU Ash *
lawn, which ought to be a stately tree by
this time, for a neighbor tells us it has
been growing there for forty years. Every
spring it puts out a magnificent crop of
new shoots, and we congratulate our-
selves that at last it has really made up
its mind to go ahead and reward us for
55
The Rescue of an Old Place
all the digging around and high feeding
we have given it ; but in late June omi-
nous yellow spots appear upon the leaves,
great orange-colored excrescences disfig-
ure the young shoots/ and the first thing
we know they are all shriveled and dying,
and the ground underneath it is strewn
with blackened leaves. Later it pulls it-
self together and gets out a feeble crop of
young sprouts, just enough to enable it to
hold its own from year to year, but which
seem to add almost nothing to its girth,
and very little to its height,
Now, can any one tell me what is the
proper punishment for that ?
Hemlocks Of the perversity of Hemlocks I could
verse. write a volume. I knew something of
their waywardness in the State of Maine,
but even in Massachusetts, where every-
thing is regulated by law, they show no
higher sense of duty.
In vain do you coax along a beautiful
little tree, carefully raised in a nursery
till it has a fine ball of roots, to live and
thrive for several seasons ; at the end of
that time you find it in the spring yellow
and brown and bare, with every sign of
56
On the Perversity of Certain Trees
premature decay about it. In a clump
they may condescend to grow, or on a hill,
but if you don't want a clump, or a hill on
the lawn, what then ?
Any one who has ever set his affections
of otftny
on a Peach orchard knows something of trees.
the shameless coquetry of its behavior ;
and in the course of these chapters I
shall be compelled to record instances of
misconduct even in the most innocent and
carefully brought up trees as well as in
the wild and unsophisticated ones. Even
the common White Birch, which will live
anywhere and everywhere, and thrive on
a sandbank, goes and gets itself eaten up
with rosebugs the minute we try to uti-
lize it on a lawn. Lombardy Poplars, too,
in spite of much specious promising, be-
have shamefully ; and I have known a
Catalpa to grow undaunted in an inclo-
sure for twenty years and then succumb in
a cowardly way to one cold winter. The
fact is, though I am loath to say it, as a
class you cannot absolutely depend upon
trees, and when you say that why, you
say everything !
I have also something to add concern-
57
The Rescue of an Old Place
Concerning ing our grove of Chestnut-trees, that were
taken from a plantation of trees in our
neighborhood, which had been made some
years ago, on one of the neglected places
hereabout. They had been set out when
small, and left to take their chances with-
out cultivation for certainly ten years.
How much they had received when very
young I cannot say, for their gardener has
long since moved away. When we got
them they were some three inches in di-
ameter one foot from the ground, and
slim and stately, with fairly good roots,
but not like those of frequently moved
nursery trees. We topped them when
they were set in the autumn, and as they
did not seem very vigorous, the next year
we cut them back very severely, of differ-
ent lengths, as an experiment. Some of
them we left ten feet high, and one of
them which had poor roots and looked
sickly we cut down to within two feet of
the ground.
Last summer they all put out vigorous
tops with enormous leaves, but they are
much beset by the aphis, which makes
havoc with the first growth, and later by
58
On the Perversity of Certain Trees
the insatiable rosechafer; yet, in spite of
these drawbacks, they thrive in the rich
deep soil of the swale, sheltered by the
hill from the sun and the burning south-
west winds. They are planted about fif-
teen feet apart, as we thought they would
do better in close company, and they can
be trimmed out when they are larger if it
seems desirable. Smaller ones are set on
the hillside, where they seem to flourish,
and some future generation may see our
hillside, like those noble slopes of the
Connecticut valley, waving with their
splendid foliage.
But all these trees give us care and information
trouble, and much disappointment, like iat<<
everything on which one's heart is set,
and then we are always finding out things
just too late, for we constantly discover in
our reading articles published the day
after the fair, which show us how much
better we might have done had we had
the information a year or two earlier. In
fact we have reason to think ourselves
among those
Mountainous minds that were awake too soon,
Or else their brethren slept too late,
59
The Resets of an Old Place
for no sooner do we evolve an idea and
put it in practice, than at every turn the
public press is crammed with views on this
very subject which it has never seen fit
to express previously. Hinc ilia lacrima.
Had all that we discovered later in print
would have , ! . t_ t
induced di*- been within our grasp in the beginning,
had modern ideas been fairly abroad, how
much easier everything would have been 1
But, also, how afraid we should have been
to undertake anything, having learned
thus that we ought never to build without
a landscape architect, never to plant with-
out the advice of an experienced land-
scape gardener, never to suffer from mis-
takes that could so easily be avoided by
proper appeals to a professional ! But all
this wisdom might as well have come in
the next century as just a year too late,
and so here we are, with all our blood
upon our heads, because we chanced to
dig our cellar and make our contract a
year or two before a certain eminent den-
drological journal was born.
As it was, we went to some scientific
neighbors, who had done the same thing
we were doing thirty years before with
60
On tbe Perversity of Certain Trees
very distinguished success ; and some of
them gave us advice, and others gave us
trees, which were even more to the pur-
pose; and they kindly encouraged our
efforts, and took an interest in what we
were doing that sustained and cheered us
on our way.
No one's experience, either in books or
in real life, proves to be exactly like our
own, so that we feel that we have had the
benefit of an original experiment. Only
time can fully reveal where our mistakes
lie, for it alone can show whether we have
planted not wisely or too well.
61
VI
THE WRECK OF AN ANCIENT
GARDEN
A brave old house ! a garden full of bees,
Large dropping poppies, and queen holly-
hocks,
With butterflies for crowns, tree peonies,
And pinks and goldilocks.
JEAN INGELOW.
VI
EXT to our tree garden came A wonder-
the old-fashioned flower garden *'
as an object of care and inter-
est in the renovation of the
place, and here we met with many agree-
able surprises ; so that we were perpetu-
ally reminded of the " Swiss Family Rob-
inson," who, when they went ashore on
their desert island, found all they needed
to make them comfortable on the wreck,
from which, luckily, they were able to
help themselves before the old hulk went
to pieces. After that, every little thing
which was quite indispensable came out
of a wonderful bag that belonged to the
worthy mother.
Since we landed upon the barren waste
of this abandoned farm, we have often had
reason to compare the old house-lot with
the ship, and the front yard with the moth-
er's bag, for a number of trees and shrubs
65
The Rescue of an Old Place
have been forthcoming from the one,
while the other has proved an inexhausti-
ble resource, not only for our own, but
other people's gardens.
Mi* Betty For, once upon a time, in the old house
which is now no more, there dwelt two
dear old ladies who took great pride in
their garden, and stocked it well with all
the best flowers of their day, and from it
came bulbs and cuttings of roses, and
roots of perennials, that still help to make
beautiful the ancient gardens of this fine
old town. They were women of refine-
ment and learning, much respected and
beloved, and the older people still warmly
recall Miss Betsy and Miss Peggy, and
the days when the old house was always
a sunny and cheerful resort. After the
place was abandoned and unoccupied for
many years, people felt at liberty to come
and help themselves to slips of the shrubs
and to roots of the old plants, so that one
might hardly hope to find anything of
value still existing there ; but when we
came to clear away the rubbish, we were
surprised to find what a tenacious hold
the occupants had of the soil, so that, as
66
The Wreck of an Ancient Garden
the spring and summer months sped by,
we were constantly surprised and charmed
to find, in unexpected places, some shrub
or flower that clung to its old haunts, and,
half-hidden from the eye, bloomed away
its sweet life heedless of observers.
Along an uneven old wall that had sup- MU* Bcttft
ported the terrace of the house, I had a
bed dug, into which I transplanted such
bulbs and roots as would consent to be
torn from their original homes. This bed
I call Miss Betsy's Garden, for I am quite
sure that in old times that gentle soul
must have watched and tended her favo-
rites by this same sunny wall. There is
one prim little Columbine which wears a
minutely fluted lavender cap that I associ-
ate with her, and always call by her name.
The flowers that come up in Miss Betsy's
Garden are all simple and homely, but to
me their quaint familiar faces are more
appealing than the far showier and splen-
did blooms of to-day.
They must have family records of inter- Som*kigk>
est, these ladylike old blossoms. Those
yellow Daffodils, with their long green
ribbons, have nestled up against that wall
The Rescue of an Old Place
till, no doubt, they regard it as an ancient
castle, of which they are the chatelaines ;
and I am sure that dignified Narcissus
must have a history. There is a sweet
A fragrant June Honeysuckle straggling there which
breathes an old-time fragrance, and the
tiny petals of the pale pink Bridal Rose
which flutters beside it have the very tint
of soft color one sees in the cheek of an
ancient maiden. A wild Clematis seems to
grow out of the wall itself, I have never
been able to find its root, and every
fall a Prince's-feather waves its tall plume
where once it danced with a Lady's-slip-
per. The Pansies have all degenerated
into Lady's-delights, and the Hollyhocks
come up single, but here they grow and
blossom beside a pendulous Forsythia,
the seed of which was, no doubt, sown by
some passing bird, for it is not, I think,
one of the older shrubs in this village.
FiewfrtM The rest of the garden is perfectly
tkgfraa - formless and wild. Nothing has been
done to the old part of the farm, except to
clean away the weeds and sticks that en-
cumbered it, and the old plants have grown
lank and tall along the fence and under
68
The Wreck of an Ancient Garden
the heavy shade of the trees. But here
in the spring the ground is blue and fra-
grant with hardy English Violets, that fill
the air with perfume and blossom long
before even the native White Violet, which
leads the way among our New England
flowers ; and wherever you walk you come
upon a Tulip, or a Star of Bethlehem, or
a feeble Crocus choked by the strong
grasses, and cheery DafTys are wagging
their golden heads in sheltered spots, and
later there are to be seen groups of sculptu-
resque Narcissus shining whitely under the
shrubbery, ' like a good deed in a naughty
world." The Flowering Almond sends
up spikes of bloom ; the Periwinkle, white
and blue, hides among its shining leaves,
while the Moneywort has strayed away
from the garden and made of itself a nui-
sance in the orchard, where it threatens
to root out everything else. There also
are great clumps of the giant Solomon's
Seal in shady nooks, where they grow to
wondrous size.
And the Flower o' the Quince is a rare
sight in the springtime, as its rosy flush *
mantles the scraggy old trees which are
69
The Rescue of an Old Place
good for little but blossoms. There is a
huge Viburnum bush in the orchard which
is a snowy mass in May, when the Snow-
berry buds are showing their little pink
heads against the fence, where they strug-
gle with the wild Raspberry bushes which
make their life burdensome to them ; and
in places through the grass, where once a
well kept Strawberry patch existed, are to
be found the white blossoms of a few sur-
vivors mightier than their conquerors.
In a low, neglected spot is a clump of
those old orange-colored Lilies that used
always to abound in country gardens, for
once established they could never be
rooted out ; and these, undiscouraged by
frequent mowings, bloom and spread in
unchecked luxuriance.
There are Lilacs, purple, white and Per-
sian, in profusion, and the Mock Orange
and Spiraeas all have their turn as the
seasons go round. One White Lilac has
shot up to the height of a two-story house,
and now that the windows are no longer
there to help one to gather them, it shows,
when in bloom, a crown of inaccessible
blossoms; others yield their wealth of
70
The Wreck of an Ancient Garden
flowers nearer at hand, and by the well
a Persian Lilac drops like a fountain with
rosy jets.
No longer supported by the fallen house, Rom of y *
... ... . olden time.
a Trumpet Creeper, which trailed along
the ground, has been clipped into a com-
pact bush. A venerable Althaea, which
we did our best to save, blossomed feebly
for a season or two and then perished, de-
prived of the accustomed shelter of the
porch ; but great bushes of the old-fash-
ioned White Rose abound, and there, too,
is the sweet Blush Rose, beloved of the
bee and the sturdy Hessian. A large
Damask Rose still flourishes under the
Lilacs, and a luxuriant Baltimore Belle
climbs in reckless profusion over its con-
fining wires. Where the fence stood is a
low cluster of bushes covered in summer
with a bold Red Rose, single and splendid,
the remote parent, perhaps, of the Jacque-
minot -, they call it here the Russian Rose,
but I do not know what its real name
may be ; and down in the orchard I found
a bush of the dear, thorny little Scotch
Rose, the smell of which is laden, as is no
other, with the memories of childhood.
7 1
The Rescue of an Old Place
Honuly
flowert.
An aged
Box arbor.
There are clumps of Tiger Lilies, and
old-fashioned small Bluebells, and Sweet
Williams, and a Barberry bush swings its
yellow blossoms and red berries over the
rear wall ; and under the Box-arbor I found
Spiderwort growing in great clusters.
One day, while strolling down along the
orchard fence, a familiar odor, heavy and
sweet, led me on to where a wild Aza-
lea was hanging out its fragrant blos-
soms. I do not see why a hedge of these
might not do well in this moist soil. I
hailed this one with delight as an orna-
ment to the place.
But what we like best is the fine old
Box arbor, which has grown up from a
garden border until its stout trees are now
six inches in diameter, and nearly ten
feet high, which shows their great age.
They were fair-sized bushes when old men
of this town were boys, and to make even
a bush of a Box plant is slow work. Here,
shaded by a young Elm which has sprung
up in the kindly shelter of these twisted
old trunks, we sit and look out upon the
meadow and the growing plants, and feel
7*
The Wreck of an Ancient Garden
linked with the past by this memento of Memento of
tkt past.
those who loved this garden spot, and
toiled to make it fair and fruitful, even as
we, too, toil to restore its beauty and pro-
ductiveness.
73
VII
A NEW PERENNIAL GARDEN
Pluck the primroses ; pluck the violets ;
Pluck the daisies,
Sing their praises ;
Friendship with the flowers some noble thought
begets.
EDWARD YOUL.
VII
[HOUGH the old garden has a it requires
quaint attraction from its very
antiquity, the effort to make its
successor the subject of a chap-
ter reminds me of the remark of a literary
man, who paid his only visit to Scotland
in the winter-time, that he realized more
fully than ever before how great was the
genius of Sir Walter Scott, which had
given world-renown for picturesqueness to
those low, round, bare, uninteresting hills,
the Trossachs. Lacking that genius, I
am somewhat dismayed at telling the
story of my very unimportant little gar-
den. Our late, cold springs render it
rather a dreary object of contemplation
even in the month of May, and with only
the power of words to help the reader's
enjoyment, I shall have to ask indulgence
for the meagre record of its very simple
charms.
77
The Rescue of an Old Place
used to tel1 a stor y of an
Irish prison that was to be built out of
the stones of an old one, while the prison-
ers were to be kept in the old jail until
the new one was completed. This tale
suggests our fashion of constructing a
new garden out of the former one, and
in our case the prisoners showed a de-
cided preference for the original institu-
tion, and were with great difficulty per-
suaded to leave it. We started out
with no very definite plan beyond killing
two birds with one stone, always a desir-
able object when one is short-handed,
and the results are not particularly im-
pressive.
A garden While the house at Overlea was build-
ing, the carpenters kept their tools in a
part of the old dwelling that was still
standing, and their constant journeys to
and fro, between the knoll and the work-
shop, wore a narrow winding path, along
which we had a flower-bed dug, to put
such roots in as we wished to bring with
us from the rented place that we were oc-
cupying, and also to serve as a home for
such plants as we might dig up about the
A New Perennial Garden
farm. Some sprigs of Box, broken from
the arbor, and set in the 'soil at the edge
of the bed, took root and made a rough
border, and here, in August, I trans-
planted Lily bulbs, and a little later put
in such perennials as needed to be set out
in the fall.
Between this flower-bed and the street Some old
r ,. i i T- Pear-trees.
were three rows of straggling old rear-
trees that gave some suggestion of possi-
ble fruitfulness, though it seemed likely
that they were too old to profit by prun-
ing. They had been famous in their day,
and still preserved the remnants of a repu-
tation, though more modern varieties have
borne away the palm in newer gardens.
But Bartletts and Sheldons and Seckels
will never be out of date, and there are
others, the very names of which the old
settlers have forgotten, which still yield
sweet and luscious fruit, when the weather
and the insects permit. Half dead they
seemed when we first went to work at
them, cutting away the dead branches and
scraping their mossy trunks, to the infinite
disturbance of the insects which had clus-
tered there for warmth, and we recognized
79
The Rescue of an Old Place
What we
did to them.
A box of
plants.
that only strong methods would revive
them.
We needed sods for the terraces we
were making, and so began by removing
the turf around the trees, leaving narrow
strips of grass to walk upon. This fur-
nished us with three wide beds, which we
fertilized heavily with rich compost and
wood-ashes, the surface being tilled with
great care, keeping the edge of the spade
turned toward the trunk to avoid cutting
off the rootlets of the trees. A memory
of an old garden in which I had played
when a child, where Pear-trees grew
among the flowers, induced me to think
of utilizing these broad fertile spaces for
perennials. The Pear-trees were at that
time doubtful as fruit-producers, but they
would afford a grateful shelter from the
hot sun when we were working among the
plants, and their sparse foliage would
hardly interfere greatly with the flowers.
In the spring a generous friend sent me
a box of hardy plants, which were set out
at random, as they came without labels,
and many of them were unfamiliar to me.
I do not find that they interfere much
80
A New Perennial Garden
with the Pear-trees, which, under this
steady cultivation, yield more of their fine
old-fashioned fruit than we know what to
do with, for pears are a drug in this mar-
ket and can hardly be given away. The
Pear-trees certainly do not hinder the
growth of the sturdy perennials, which
multiply enormously, so that every spring
and fall there are quantities of them to be
shared with friends. A nurseryman, who
came last year to set some Strawberry-
plants, declared that, if properly divided,
there were roots enough there to stock an
acre.
Such strong, showy plants as the Iris, They thrive.
the Foxglove, and the Giant Evening
Primrose flourish admirably, while Phlox
and Hollyhocks and Columbines and Spi-
raeas encumber the ground.
There is a huge Oriental Poppy that is
a gorgeous spectacle, with its rich blue-
green velvet robes and its silken headgear
of scarlet and black, producing all alone
the effect of a procession, as Bret Harte
once said of Roscoe Conjding.
Smaller Poppies come up of their own
accord, some single, some double, as the
81
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
The thing* fancy takes them, and there is a wild ar-
r *y of Larkspurs and Coreopsis and
Sweet Williams all summer. In the
spring the variegated Thyme comes up
promptly, followed closely by English
Daisies and Moss Pinks, and Pansies and
Violets, white, blue and yellow. The
Giant Solomon's Seal rings its green bells
over the heads of the tiny Bellwort ; and
all summer the Lilies and Peonies and
Spiderworts fight for possession of the
ground, while the perennial Peas, and
Calendulas and Marigolds linger there till
the last frost-horn blows.
The collection is not very choice, and,
beyond a periodical struggle with the
weeds, which try to grow as rampantly as
the flowers, it gets not very much atten-
tion ; but it makes a fine show from the
street, and from the veranda which looks
down upon it Any minute effects would
be wasted here, and we do not extend its
area, which we might readily do, because
it already requires more attention than we
are willing to spare from the shrubs and
trees that we are hurrying along upon the
lawn, and which, consequently, take all
82
A New Perennial Garden
our best energies, as well as the lion's
share of food. In short, the flower-garden
takes what it can get, copes more or less
successfully with its own weeds, and pos-
sibly is more satisfactory than if we took
more pains with it, and so were liable to
disappointments. It is not at all well
adapted to annuals, even Mignonettes
and Asters, which are sown every year,
for the stronger plants rob them of their
proper nutriment ; but I have future plans
for a parterre in that neighborhood, which
shall have fitting accommodation for all
the sweet old-fashioned kinds of yearly
flowers.
Supplemented by the old garden, the A
new will even now at any season afford a
fragrant and showy nosegay, such as our
grandmothers liked for a beaupot, and
there is always a mass of color under the
Pear-trees until late in November, when
the cold pinches the very last Calendula.
The neighborhood of the salt water makes
this garden cold, and slow to awake in
spring ; but, on the other hand, it modifies
the temperature in the autumn, so that it
escapes the early frosts, and, under the
83
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
shelter of the trees, the flowers last long
after those upon the high ground about
the house have withered and fallen.
A warm There is a sheltered corner, backed by
a mass of Lilacs and Mock Oranges, where
I dream of seeing some day a fine clump
of Rhododendrons and hardy Azaleas,
though I have some doubts about a south-
ern exposure being the very best thing for
them ; but the decorative effect from the
house will be so good that we are disposed
to make the attempt. Skirting the old
wall to the right of this, we come to the
ancient Apple and Pear trees which are
the remains of the once valuable orchard,
that at one time covered a large part of
the place.
VIII
A VENERABLE ORCHARD
O blessed shades ! O gentle cool retreat
From all the immoderate heat,
In which the frantic world does burn and sweat !
ABRAHAM COWLEY.
*Neath cloistered boughs, each floral bell that
swingeth,
And tolls its perfume on the passing air,
Makes sabbath in the fields, and ever ringeth
A call to prayer.
HORACE SMITH.
VIII
[HE whole farm at Overlea might The orchard
well be called an orchard, for
it abounds in Apple and Pear
trees, which are scattered about
it, from the point at the north to the foot
of the hill on the south.
Tall, fuzzy old settlers they are, with
mossy trunks and gaunt branches ; but,
like the ancient New England human
stock, they die game, and are useful to
the end. The weather-beaten old Seckels,
which look perfectly hopeless, still produce
stout, brown, rosy little pears, as sweet as
honey, if not much bigger than an over-
grown bumble-bee, and the venerable
Bartletts, which we threaten every year to
cut down, because they look so shabby
and disreputable in their torn and mossy
old jackets, put off the evil day by molli-
fying us every September with a crop,
The Rescue of an Old Place
which, though not large, still serves to
purchase them a reprieve.
Methuselah One of the conspicuous ornaments of
the level space below the northern ter-
race of the house is an old Pear-tree we
call Methuselah, which was transplanted
in 1779, and, in spite of its great age, still
bears a profusion of hard, sweet pears,
which the housewives consider excellent
for coddling, or preserving with barberries.
This ancient and honorable old continen-
tal, which stands some fifty feet in its
stockings, girths ten feet and three inches
a foot from the ground, and has a coat so
beautifully wrinkled and seamed with age,
that our artist friend tells us a Japanese
would beg a bit of the bark for a curio,
and exhibit it as a precious and artistic
possession. In the spring its venerable
poll is snowy with blossoms, and though
its great trunk is quite hollow within, the
six huge branches into which it separates
near the base spread wide and strong, and
send out from their broken tops vigorous
young shoots, on which the fruit grows
profusely.
We suppose this to be the original well
88
A Venerable Orchard
known Gushing Pear-tree, as this farm
was a part of the colonial grant to Mat-
thew Gushing in 1634, and was the Stamm-
haus of that widespread race, which held
the property in the Gushing name for two
hundred and forty years, the land having
descended by will from one to another,
so that we hold the first deed, and paid the
first money that was ever given for it.
The Apple orchard proper, which is in The AMU
. . orchard.
the shape of a flat-iron, lies in the point
of the place, which is quite filled by three
or four enormous old trees, which have
grown to a great height, and had, when
we came, immense branches that arched
over and almost swept the ground, their
huge mounds of rosy bloom in spring
making a wondrous sight.
Since then, with a vague idea of improv-
ing them, though some of the wise ones
tell us it is a mistake to meddle with such
old trees, we have had them pruned, that
the sun might shine more directly upon
the apples, which failed to color properly
in the dense shade. Also, the ground
beneath them has been plowed, to the
great detriment of their small roots, which,
The Rescue of an Old Place
owing to the marshy ground below, lie
very near the surface.
Last year was not their bearing year,
and not until this autumn could we tell the
effect of this surgery, which seems to have
had fairly good results, for the yield was
satisfactory though not large. The plow-
ing was not done so much for the trees as
for the grass, which had been fairly driven
out by the encroachments of the Money-
wort, which has escaped from the garden
and runs riot over the place ; and the prun-
ing was as necessary for the hay-crop as for
the fruit, for the great Elm hard by helps
to shade all that part of the grounds, and
even now the grass, when cut, has to be
transported into the open to be cured.
The year we took possession, three
trees at this point a Baldwin, a Rhode
Island Greening and a Russet furnished
us with about a dozen barrels of apples.
In addition, there are in other parts of the
place more old-fashioned trees, like the
Seek-no-Further and Early Sweet, that are
extremely useful, and fairly productive in
spite of their years and infirmities. One
of the latter trees is quite a curiosity, for
90
A Venerable Orchard
half of it is wholly denuded of bark, as if
it had been struck by lightning, and the
trunk is perfectly hollow, but the grafted
stem still sends out very strong and
healthy-looking shoots, that yield an abun-
dance of fine rosy-cheeked fruit every
other year.
The canker-worm has meddled very lit-
tle with these trees, but the web-caterpil-
lar has to be waged constant war upon,
both in spring and fall, and the last two
summers, owing to the preceding mild
winter, this pest was particularly active
and ubiquitous.
A row of Plum-trees against the east
foundation-wall of the old house, which
still stands, and makes a good shelter for
our Raspberry bushes, seem as if they
would do well if we could only cope suc-
cessfully with the murderous black knot,
with which we found them perfectly cov-
ered. In 1889 all the diseased portions
were cut away, and- since then they have
sent out a quantity of tall, healthy branches,
but no blossoms, from their closely polled
stems ; we purpose next spring to try the
effect of salt bags in the crotches of the
The Rescue of an Old Place
limbs, which, we have been told, is a suc-
cessful way of keeping off the curculio.
But from what we read of the necessary
efforts to get rid of this pest, we fear that
the plums would hardly be worth the trou-
ble, for it seems as if nothing less than a
Salvation Army would suffice to combat
this persistent beetle sinner.
iron Pears In our orchard are Iron Pears of the
g a^muni- good old kind that would serve for ammu-
nition in a field piece in case of war, and
some rickety-looking Lawrences, that bear
excellent fruit in generous quantities ; and
there is a picturesque Crab-apple tree
which grows quite too near the great Elm
to furnish any decent fruit, though it does
its best, and strews the ground beneath it
with its stony red and yellow apples. The
old Cherry-trees were too worthless, so we
cut them down. We have but few Peach-
trees, though we are told they would thrive
against the hill, as they like a northern
exposure. We are now preparing to plant
a fresh Apple orchard, which ought to be
ready to bear by the time the old trees
quite give out, and we are grateful for
suggestions as to the best kinds for domes-
92
A Venerable Orchard
tic uses, and eager to know whether the
trees will be more likely to thrive in the
moist or in the dry part of the grounds.
But there is a charm about this unpro- charm of
ductive old orchard, with its wilderness of *** orchar<L
venerable shrubs along the fence, that no
thrifty modern row of fruitful trees will
ever possess. As one sits there in the
shade on a sunny day, with the white pet-
als drifting down from their lofty boughs,
there is a murmur of bees among the foli-
age, of robins chattering among the twigs,
a rustle of leaves and flowers in the gentle
breeze, that seems the essence of the many
summers gone that have helped to swell
their great boles, and to increase their
majestic height. From under the arch of
branches the green meadow is visible, with
wooded hills rising from its margin, among
which nestle cottages, white and red, with
the faint smoke curling lazily from their
chimneys, up to the blue sky flecked with
round white clouds* How many years the
old trees have looked out upon the quiet
meadow, and for how many generations
have they dropped their rosy fruit !
In this new country of ours we yearn
93
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
OldHinf
ham.
A Memory
of Lincoln-
skirt.
for stability, for tradition, for something
to link us with that past which goes back
so little way behind us here. Perhaps the
grafts on these mossy limbs were brought
from England by the early settlers who peo-
pled the old colony. Under their shade the
sturdy Puritan has leaned upon his spade
and remembered the orchards of his native
land, which he was never to see again ;
and now, as the vision grows before our
dreaming eyes, we climb the ladder of the
past, and are again in Lincolnshire, and
the choir-boys are chanting softly in the
distance, and the bells are ringing from St.
Andrew's Church, of the other Hingham,
the gray towers of which we see afar off,
instead of the quaint spire of our old
meeting-house, whose tenscore years of
life seem so little in the older world, where
they reckon time by centuries instead of
decades.
We see the wide green fens, and the
fallow fields besprinkled with grazing
herds, the rich meadows where the lush
grass grows, and where great crops repay
the farmer's easy labor ; the wolds with
their chalk-hills, the thrifty hamlets, the
94
A Venerable Orchard
sluggish rivers creeping to the sea, the The robin
Humber with old Hull at its mouth, the J^2f<
broad bay of the Wash, overlooked by chard '
English Boston, the level pastures by the
swift-flowing Lindis, where the great tide
came in. The bells from the great towers
are ringing, is that the " Brides of En-
derby " we hear ? and so we wander in
a dream of the far past, till the boom of
the bells resolves itself suddenly into the
humming of bees, the venerable towers
vanish in the shaggy trunks around us,
and we are awake once more, under the
bending boughs of the old orchard, with
only a robin for a chorister.
95
IX
A STRUGGLE WITH THE WEB-
WORM
Devoured by worms, like Herod, was the town.
LONGFELLOW.
Nine hundred thousand reptiles blue.
H. BENNETT.
IX
jT is a delightful thing to own an The
orchard, but it is a blessing not
to be enjoyed without fighting
for it, since among the difficul-
ties of reclaiming a place, one cannot ig-
nore the necessary hand-to-hand conflict
with the various animal and vegetable en-
emies which lie in wait to destroy plants
and trees. Eternal vigilance is the price
of vegetation as well as of liberty, and the
cultivator who dreams that he can for a
moment take his ease in his inn, reckons
without his guests of the insect-world,
who take short naps, and require as much
nourishment as Falstaff. I shall have
more to say upon this subject at a later
date, but the Apple-trees remind me of
conflicts with the web-worm, and I find a
treatise upon his manners and customs
apropos. As an example of pertinacity,
Bruce's spider beside him pales her inef-
99
The Rescue of an Old Place
factual fires ; as an evidence of the apa-
thetic stupidity of man he is unrivaled,
and as a menace of future untold horrors
he may well be used to point a moral of
gruesome interest.
The real Some philosopher has said that " the
'wrld.'*' real end of the world will come when man
ceases to be able to cope with the insects."
When his time comes the worm is the mas-
ter of us all, but there is no reason while
we are yet stirring about this earthly ball,
that we need submit to be devoured by him
before our day. And yet, when you come
to think of it, that is what the brute is
after. Too cowardly to attack man openly,
he begins by eating up his provender.
Man, being on the whole an easy-going
animal, at first pays not much attention ;
but he only multiplies moderately, and
the insect enormously. Where a man will
leave a half dozen descendants in a life-
time, a worm will leave one hundred and
twenty-five thousand in a season ; judge
then if this can be allowed to go on in-
definitely, and man survive !
Where the inane apathy of the human
being comes in, is in not crushing his
100
A Struggle witb the Web-worm
enemy while yet insignificant ; forever
penny wise and pound foolish, man tole-
rates a moderate evil until it becomes in-
ordinate, and then wastes a fortune which
might well have been saved, in doing in-
effectual battle with his foe. It is the
fable of Epimetheus forever renewed, and
the appeal I would now make is to have
this Pandora's box closed before the rest
of the web-worms escape to plague the
world, and help make an end of the race.
It is idle to scoff at this idea as that
of an alarmist. A few years ago the
spring web-worm was an unimportant numbers
factor in our orchards. The fall worm
gave some trouble, but he was not impos-
sible to cope with. Now, not only do
we have to fight for every apple we pos-
sess in the autumn, but all through the
months of April and May, when work
presses, when every moment is precious,
it takes not only all the hands on a
farm to fight caterpillars, but also all the
eyes of the family to detect their lurking-
places ; and this not as one job, but as a
perpetually recurring duty for weeks at a
time, and all on account of the crying neg-
101
The Rescue of an Old Place
lect by land-owners of their premises, and
by town authorities of the webs on their
own highways, which have been allowed
high-rood.
to accumulate, until the country roads
have lost their beauty, lined as they are
with trees shrouded from root to summit
in ghostly webs, under which myriads of
loathsome black worms writhe and crawl,
and eat their fill, to the shuddering dis-
gust of the wayfarer.
Far and near, not only are the Wild
Cherry trees, already infested with the
odious black knot, left to spread a second
plague among the fruit-trees, but whole
orchards are allowed to bear unmolested
swarms of caterpillars, their owners pre-
ferring to sacrifice their apples rather
than take the trouble to clean their trees
of the webs.
Commtmi- Since the State of Massachusetts has
t" he charge taken the Gypsy Moth in hand, why should
not communities take charge of their own
worms, and enforce the destruction of the
webs by each land-owner, under penalty
of a fine, while the street commissioners
be made to attend to the trees bordering
the highway ?
102
A Struggle with the Web-worm
The farmers who neglect this rapidly Farmers
increasing nuisance seem to me like the
Turk who sits under a crumbling wall,
murmuring, " God is great ! if it falls it
falls ! " and takes no pains to get out of
the way.
So far as our own little farm is con- H<nuthf
cerned, some tall Wild Cherry trees that we
depend on for a screen give us timely no-
tice of the arrival of the pest, and bring us
all out promptly to do battle. The worms
are fought with fire on the end of a pole,
with a tall clipping knife, and with a wire
brush attached to the end of a long bam-
boo rod, which reaches to the very top of
the tallest trees, where, being judiciously
twisted, it brings down a crop of crawlers
for more positive destruction below. The
clipping is the most thorough method, for,
if done late in the evening, the nest, with
all its occupants, can be secured and its
contents burned or trampled to death. In
this way all the insects can be destroyed,
but, of course, it is only possible where
the web is on the end of a small branch.
Where it lies in the great crotches, the
torch or the wire brush must be applied ;
103
The Rescue of an Old Place
but the former lets some escape, and I am
told that when the nests are burned, the
fire shrivels the outside of the crawling
mass, which falls with the web to the
ground, but the caterpillars in the heart
of the living ball escape, to crawl up the
tree again and start afresh upon their
depredations.
It is of no use to think that you have
ttay" ' accomplished your purpose because, after
heroic labor, there seems not a vestige of
a nest remaining. No sooner do you feel
that you have routed the last encampment
of the enemy than, presto ! his tents are
once more like those of the Assyrian for
multitude, and in a day or two you must
resume your round to find the enemy big-
ger and brisker than ever. About three
months of the season have to be given up
to the two campaigns, spring and fall, till
finally a person of imagination begins to
feel that the philosopher's prediction is
about to be fulfilled, and that the worm
has come to stay.
" Of what use are the Cherry-trees ? "
say the wise ; '* the worm, after all, is not
so bad as the black knot, and compared
104
A Struggle with the Web-worm
to the canker-worm he is harmless : " but
the terror of his multiplication is upon me,
and I live in fear of the day when, having
ruined all the fruit-trees, and having failed
to find the shade-trees to his liking, the
worm may take a fancy to investigate
within -doors to find a more tempting
meal.
A vision of opening the front door in ^
vision of the
the morning to find the house encased in f*t*rt.
an enormous web, under which the worms
are feeding on the shingles, and glaring
at you from under their silken canopy,
besets the imagination. You seize your
hat,. a brisk young family drops out of it;
your coat there are a score of creeping
things inside the sleeves. The breakfast-
table is invaded by a squirming throng ;
others hang from the draperies and wan-
der across the ceilings. Why may not the
web-worms become as great a pest to us
as the termites prove to the South Afri-
can, if the apathetic public does not
awake in time to the necessity of destroy-
ing them while they are yet in the minor-
ity?
Here in this town, where the neglect of
The Rescue of an Old Place
certain farmers adds so greatly to the
labors of their more thrifty neighbors, we
have seen these loathsome creatures mul-
tiply in a few years to an alarming extent,
and it seems as if the time had come to
render it a penal offense to neglect to de-
stroy the webs as fast as they appear.
Unquestionably, the day is coming when
some destructive measures will have to be
adopted, and the sooner the matter is
taken in hand the easier it will be for all
concerned to get rid of the evil, and I
should be glad if some more powerful pen
than mine could be used to hurry this
good end.
Anna An evil, trifling in itself, becomes a
ntgUcttd '
b*comsa menace if neglected, and the compara-
tively inoffensive character of this little
brute seems to blind the public to the way
in which he is multiplying. A committee
to find out how much harm he does might
serve as a preliminary to more strenuous
measures, but if it were only in the inter-
est of those lovely rustic roads, in which
we take so much delight, it would be
worth while to clear away so obtrusive
an eyesore as these loathsome webs from
1 06
A Struggle with the Web-worm
the waysides, otherwise so beautiful with
their wild vines and tangle of bushes.
Moreover, for the pedestrian the mul- The worm
tiplication of caterpillars is a distress the side-
yearly more and more appalling. After w
the worm has eaten his fill he sets forth
upon his peregrinations, to find a shel-
tered spot where he can become a hermit
in a cell, until such time as his resurrec-
tion as a moth is in order, and you are
obliged to meet him on his winding way
at every turn in your path. Country side-
walks swarm with the wretches; verandas
are their especial delight ; you gather a
flower, a caterpillar is crawling up the
stem ; examine your trees of all sorts, the
brutes are making of their trunks a public
promenade, up which they hurry at top
speed to make a cocoon in the branches ;
would you rest yourself upon a bench,
the caterpillar is there before you ; if you
wear a thin gown, you may have the plea-
sure of viewing through its meshes the
wriggling, hairy form of your enemy, just
where you cannot get at him. He makes
himself at home amid the flowers of your
bonnet, he swings down upon a silken
107
The Rescue of an Old Place
He is fatal thread within an inch of your nose. He
to Christian . J
character, arouses in the gentlest breast a desire to
slay this future parent of thousands ; he
undermines the character by stirring up
sentiments of virulent hostility in other-
wise peaceable souls ; he becomes a men-
ace not only to existence, but to Christian
character, by developing the savage in-
stincts of our nature ; and, therefore, on
every ground, both physical and moral, he
is an enemy of the public peace who should
be taken in hand by the authorities and be
doomed to extermination.
Should I be requested to provide my
enemy with a more precise name than
Web-worm, not being learned in entomol-
ogy, the only term I dare to vouch for
is Nasticrechia Krorluppia (to be pro-
nounced English fashion).
To this family I am entirely sure he be-
longs, but one of the reports of the De-
partment of Agriculture has a good deal
to say about a certain Hyphantria cunea,
which seems to correspond to him in some
particulars, and the same report furnishes
for him ten more synonymous names that
apparently can be used if necessary.
108
A Struggle with the Web-worm
From this abundance I have selected the
above as the most euphonious and descrip-
tive, for nothing could be more appropri-
ate than the term "Shameless Weaver,"
which, I have been told, is the translation
of these polysyllables. Should my partic-
ular web-worm require a more formal in-
troduction to the public, it is to be hoped
that some entomologist will kindly supply
his real designation to those who seek fur-
ther information concerning this unprinci-
pled reptile.
109
PLANTING TREES ON A
LAWN
The gods who mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race.
ANDREW MAKVELL.
HEN our house was built, and
11 i f 1.1 our first
the lawn prepared for their re- ex ptriment
ception, we made our first ex-
periment in moving good-sized
trees in the month of January, when we
transplanted two large Norway Maples,
given to us by a friend on condition that
we would take them away at that time, as
otherwise they would be destroyed by
some grading that was going on where
they stood.
Fortunately, it was an open winter, with
no frost in the ground, and there was no
difficulty about digging. I personally con-
ducted the procession, and insisted upon
having the diggers begin at the outside,
and work in toward the trunk, so as to
save all the little roots. It was slow and
careful work, and it took all day to move
two trees. They were too heavy to lift
with a ball of earth, as we had no special
"3
The Rescue of an Old Place
appliances for the purpose, for the largest
one measured six inches through, two feet
from the ground, and had a lofty top.
After the trees were carefully uprooted
their tops were cu; off, until the main
stems were only about eight feet high, and
the branches that were left running up
from them were also cut back to within a
few feet of their union with the trunk.
Could we have foreseen the mildness of
the two succeeding winters we should have
been tempted to prune them less severely.
I am almost sure that it was unnecessary,
but moving them at such an unusual sea-
son seemed to make it wise to give them
more root than top. It will take about
four years for them to get back their origi-
nal stature after this severe treatment, but
they perhaps have escaped risks of draw-
backs by the way. Similar trees in this
town, transplanted without topping, though
they have lived, have shown signs of fee-
bleness, and I am disposed to think that
in the end ours will make the finer speci-
mens.
The holes in which they were set were
dug six feet in diameter, and nearly five
114
Planting Trees on a Lawn
feet deep. A gentle rain was falling when
the Maples were set ; six or seven cart-
loads of loam were put around them, and
when the roots were fairly covered, and
the ground trodden closely about them,
water was put into the holes before they
were finally filled up.
These two trees, planted on the south
side of a gravelly slope, so that the mois- tkt* trtt*.
ture must run away from their roots more
than is desirable, have made so heavy
a growth in the last two years, that in
the middle of summer we have been com-
pelled to cut out many large branches to
admit light, and to improve their shape.
In addition to their density of growth,
they have shot up fresh stems, between
seven and eight feet long, in the two sea-
sons they have been fairly growing, for
the first summer they did not accomplish
much beyond a good crop of leaves. By
the end of July we look to see them grow
four or five feet more, as they are fairly
set, and in fine healthy condition. The
ground about them has been kept open
and cultivated, and is heavily enriched
several times in the course of the summer.
"5
The Rescue of an Old Place
They are so near the house that we use
the broad space around them as beds for
Geraniums and Heliotropes, which proba-
bly detracts a little from the growth of the
trees, but at the same time improves their
appearance and keeps the earth moist and
well stirred up about their roots. When
the season is dry they are very thoroughly
watered at least twice a week, by leaving
the water from the hose running on them
from its open mouth for an hour or two at
a time.
In April we moved in the same manner
a Silver Maple, which has grown nine feet
and ten inches, and a stocky White Wil-
low, which has been put quite near the
house to give us immediate shade, of
which we are greatly in need, and which
is to be cut down as soon as the Maples
are big enough. This last tree, set in a
very dry place, has grown a dense head
nine feet six inches in height, so that it
is now a tree seventeen feet high.
These are the best we have to show, ex-
cept a Catalpa, which has made a most
luxuriant growth, for our Ash-leaved Ma-
ple, which was also disposed to make a
116
Planting Trees on a Lawn
record, has been moved twice and so set
back. But this growth on a gravel-bank,
where no one thought that trees could be
made to live at all, is not to be despised.
Some of the other trees have grown almost
equally well, but were not so large to begin
with, so they seem less important.
In that same April the generous friend A generous
who furnished us with the large Willow
and the Silver Maple, kindly sent us, in ad-
dition, a dozen moderate-sized trees which
he was disposed to think would grow faster
than the larger ones ; and these were placed
somewhat at random on the lawn, for they
came unexpectedly, and had to be set
without much reflection, so that some of
them have had to be moved again.
And here we will honestly admit that the
landscape-gardener would have been of
great use to us, for the lack of experience
gives one a feeling of uncertainty about
the result of even his best -considered
arrangement, which is often disquieting.
We know for one thing that we have ciosepiant-
too many trees too near together, because ^"^
we never dreamed they would all make
up their minds to live, and we discover
117
The Rescue cf an Old Place
that JUMfl t^ If ing
tree grow, we cannot
to disturb it for fear it will be in the way
in the future, and so we postpone the evil
day. Possibly they wfll do better in their
wind-swept situation for not being widely
separated, and for the next generation,
which will be unrestrained by oar senti-
ments, we hare provided some small Elms
that ought to be good trees by the time
the short-lived Maples are beginning to
shoffie off their mortal coil We know
five us, unless we emulate old Parr, and
the
fired to the age of a
And died by a faD
Ebm*ir AH we ask is that they wfll hurry to shel-
t*f ter us from the burning afternoon sun, to
which our front is exposed, and when their
task is done, the noble Elms, which are
"a hundred years growing, a hundred
years standing, a hundred years dying^**
shall be our monument when this ItOTiff
like its ancient predecessor, shall have
crumbled to ruin.
118
Planting Trees on a Lawn
Impatient as we are to achieve miracles
of growth, we might forget how much our
little trees are doing were it not for a pho-
tograph taken in 1888, which shows them
scudding under bare poles, that makes
their present height quite imposing by
contrast
In the five years which we claimed of
our critics in the beginning, we are now
sure that all air of newness will have gone
from the knoll, which, even in the second
summer, astonished the passers-by, who
were most of them unused to the results
that can be attained by unremitting exer-
tions.
Against these trees we have no charges
to make of either stubbornness or ingrati-
tude ; given the conditions, the results are
all, and more than all, we had a right to
expect. The only ones that have not been
what we could wish are the Hemlocks,
which object strenuously to the dry, windy
situation, and only live under protest In
vain do we plant nursery trees with good
roots ; they dwindle and pine, and refuse
to profit by their advantages. Out of over
forty trees planted on the lawn and its
119
The Rescue of an Old Place
slopes, they are the only ones that fail to
give satisfaction, and we desire to get the
better of them if possible.
No evergreen is so graceful and sugges-
*** tive of wild woodland ways as this feathery
denizen of the forest, that seems to shrink
from the companionship of man. The per-
fume of its boughs reminds one of camps
in the woods, of canoes, of Indian guides,
and silent solitudes. For me it has ever a
peculiar and elusive charm, and I cannot
come in my wanderings upon some majes-
tic old tree beside a granite boulder, as it
loves to grow, without a thrill compounded
of association and admiration. The Hem-
lock seems to possess every beauty that a
tree can have : its form, whether it be
symmetrical with youth, or gnarled and
twisted by age, is always impressive and
noble ; the murmur of its boughs is ten-
derly musical, its fragrance exquisitely
wild and aromatic ; its very shyness has a
charm that seems to breathe distinction,
and, best of all, it is perennially green, so
that its blue shadows on the snow give
one of the loveliest tones in a winter
landscape.
1 20
Planting Trees on a Lawn
Why, then, since I woo it with such
tender affection, such anxious care, does
it refuse to grow for me ? Possibly it is
killed with kindness, and some wholesome
neglect may be what its shy soul desires,
for I notice that the little ones in the
swale, half smothered in grass, do not die,
though left wholly to their own wayward
devices, while the pampered specimens on
the lawn lift bare and ragged branches to
the sky, from out their luxurious beds of
mulching, and are painfully disappointing
and uncertain.
121
XI
RECLAIMING A SAL7
MEADOW
Ye marshes, how candid and simple, and nothing
withholding and free,
Ye publish yourselves to toe sky, and offer your-
selves to the sea.
SIDNEY LAJCIUL
XI
|HE ornamental part of the place
once under way, we had leisure
to give a little attention to
the practical, and accordingly
we began to wish to utilize some of the
waste land lying on the east side of the
farm, where the salt water made free in-
roads during high tides into a half acre
of otherwise good mowing, and here we
learned the meaning of an interesting par-
able in Roman history.
The fable of Metius Curtius plunging M,t
on horseback into the morass which had i
opened in the Roman Forum, because the
oracle had declared that only the best
thing in Rome would be of avail to close
it up, must have been invented simply
to show that the Romans, great engi-
neers as they were, fully recognized that
filling up a marsh was a well-nigh endless
job, which would require the sacrifice of
125
The Rescue of an Old Place
the best blood and treasure of the state
before it was accomplished.
Neman In spite of the illustrious warning given
by M. Curtius, there lives not a man with
soul so dead as not to be fired with am-
bition to make dry ground out of his
meadow, if he is so unlucky as to own
one ; and he always starts in with figures
on paper to show what a fine income of
hay is to result from a comparatively small
investment of labor and gravel. But the
work goes on, then more work and more
gravel, till finally the account of this part
of the business gets mislaid, so that by
the time the far distant hay crop begins to
materialize, a haze has settled over the
amount of capital (literally) sunk, and
only the hay returns are brought promi-
nently to the front.
When we first surveyed the half acre or
so of salt-grass which had been left over
on our side of the fence when the road
was built across the meadow, it did not
seem of much importance, one way or the
other. The English grass grew luxuriantly
down to the edge of it, and the soft, fine
salt-hay was excellent for bedding, the
126
Reclaiming a Salt Meadow
only objection being that it was so palata-
ble that the horses ate up their mattress
before breakfast every morning.
After the causeway was constructed
across the wet ground behind the stable
to Winter Street, there did not seem very
much reason for meddling further with
the marsh, but given a gravel-bank at one
end of a farm, and a swamp at the other,
and you may depend upon it there will be
a marriage between them at no very dis-
tant date.
The intercourse between the two of our Tht km
acquaintance, once begun, was seldom in- ^Ju-
terrupted ; the more the meadow saw of u
the hill the more it wanted to see, and,
with a perversity only to be found in mea-
dows, the more it was given the more it
wanted of the same kind.
At first it seemed as if a few cartloads
of stones dumped in the lowest parts,
where the water stood longest, would be
all-sufficient, but the amount of material
that this anaconda of a marsh can stow
away is, to use the slang of the day, phe-
nomenal.
Piles of stones, rubbish, sand, boughs,
127
The Rescue of an Old Place
A marsh trunks and roots of trees, old crockery,
will swallow , . . ,. . ,
everything, ashes, the debris of our own and other
people's places, it "swallows them all
without any remorse," till the top of the
fence along the road has nearly disap-
peared from view, and still it calls for
more, and continues to subside.
Across the street our neighbors have
tried the experiment before us, so that we
are aware that it is unsafe to put soil on
this gravel until after it has had a chance
to settle for a year or two, otherwise a high
tide is liable to come and wash away all
the loam out to sea.
As the surface rises the fresh water runs
off less easily, so that the enterprise gains
in magnitude as it goes along, and the
space covered promises to turn out a
whole acre instead of half a one, before
the job is fairly completed.
A capacious Still, time and the hill will fill even this
capacious maw, and, though at present in
a transition state, the meadow gives prom-
ise of a beautiful grass field, which, it is
to be hoped, will repay all the labor of its
construction.
The tradition goes that the building of
128
Reclaiming a Salt Meadow
the street behind us across his meadow-lot Building a
was too much for the gentleman who
owned the place at the time it was made,
and that he never recovered from the
shock of having his estate thus divided
and his house-lot spoiled. The enterprise
was a formidable one, for it involved the
construction of a great stone arch across
the stream that drains the meadow, and
the laying down of heavy plank rafts for
the piers of the stone bridge to stand
upon. For years the road would be built
up to a good height every summer, and
then would subside under the influence of
the high tides in the autumn and spring,
till it seemed as if it would never hold its
own, and keep its head above water all
the year round.
But constant renewals of the layers of A good
gravel have at length made of it so sub- "
stantial a causeway, that nothing but the
very highest of spring -tides prevails
against it, and such water as finds itself
on our side forces itself rather under than
over it.
Those of our neighbors who have re-
claimed land from the main meadow on
129
The Rescue of an Old Place
La*drt~ the other side of the road, have done so
by first building a kind of rough dam of
stones and clay, and then gradually filling
in behind this dam with rubbish and stones
and sand until they reach the level of the
street. When properly covered with loam,
after having had plenty of time to settle,
this well-watered foundation affords excel-
lent soil for grass, which grows upon it
with great luxuriance.
As the road acts still further for a dam
between us and the meadow, our task be-
comes simpler, and we can reclaim our
piece of land with far less trouble than
our neighbors have had with theirs, and
we are encouraged to look for equally
good results.
But it is distressing to see the surface
of the hill, which we would fain see rolling
in graceful slopes to the swale, waving
with the forest of our imagination, still
vexed by the presence of carts and horses,
and torn by the torturing spade.
He who undertakes to change the face
* nature must needs have patience. Mon-
archs like Nebuchadnezzar may hang gar-
dens in the air in a few months, or a
Reclaiming a Salt Meadow
Louis Fourteenth may construct a plea- Freakish
sure-ground like Versailles, by the aid of
forty millions and the genius of Lenotre,
in a few years ; but one who has not the
resources of an empire at command must
imitate more closely Nature's own deliber-
ate and tortuous methods, often seeing
the labor of years destroyed in a moment
by an unforeseen freak of the old dame,
who resents being interfered with, or find-
ing to his dismay that his own scheme
has been a mistaken one, and must be
revised.
An illustrious townsman of ours started
like ourselves with a bit of salt meadow,
in which he laboriously constructed a
pond, spending his hours of ease from
the cares of state in building a wall about
it, to make a neat and appropriate curb.
But after this was accomplished, with
much trouble, it proved not to be at all
what he wanted, so that there was nothing
for it but to fill the hole, and with months
of labor bring the meadow into a smoothly
turfed field.
Our day of repentance has not yet
dawned, but we have a fear that it lurks
The Rescue of an Old Place
Htr malice, somewhere behind the horizon. Some
modern Metius Curtius may yet have to
be found to help fill up the marsh with a
horse and wagon, for that Charybdis has
already taken toll more than once from a
dump-cart, though she has not yet suc-
ceeded in swallowing it up in spite of vari-
ous malicious efforts. She has designs
upon the cow, only frustrated by careful
watchfulness, and to her deep treachery
there is no end. The family purse she
long ago put in her pocket, and her mouth
yawns for all the future revenues that
may accrue for her benefit. She has eaten
up a large part of a neighbor's hill, be-
sides taking most unbecoming bites out of
our own, and if ever future generations
weave a legend about the ancient dragon
of Overlea, which demanded a victim every
summer, it will be traced by the unraveler
of myths of the period, to the unremitting
appetite of this hungry meadow.
But who, looking out on some sweet
spring day upon that beguiling distance,
could believe ill of anything so softly
lovely as the picturesque marsh of which
our field is the fag-end. In the foreground,
132
Reclaiming a Salt Meadow
the richest tones of green are gently
blending in the grass ; in the middle dis-
tance a point runs out towards the stream,
laden with fruit-trees in snowy bloom ; the
Willows near and far are putting on their
gray-green coats, making a tender shim-
mer around their swaying branches and
graceful twigs. The little river winds, blue
and full, here and there amid the grassy
stretches, and the distant hills are full of
opalescent hues of emerald and pearl,
with red of tree-stems, and faintest green
hints of foliage, such as Monet would
love to paint. The houses of the port,
not yet quite veiled by leaves, make spots
of white and yellow and red against the
deepening background of Elms and Ma-
ples. A streak of blue still indicates the
harbor ; by to-morrow it will have disap-
peared, for the vision changes like a kalei-
doscope, the white of Pear blossoms
passing like a cloud, to be succeeded by
the rosy blush of Apple buds. Each day
some well-known feature of the winter
landscape grows fainter as the leaves ex-
pand, till of a sudden you look for it and
it has gone, and in its stead are the full-
133
The Rescue of an Old Place
robed trees. Over all domes a blue sky
streaked with faint white cirrus clouds,
only the azure reflected in the placid
stream below.
A picture An impressionist alone could catch this
txquisite, .
butevantt- fleeting beauty of early May to-day one
thing, to-morrow another and fix it eter-
nally upon his canvas. The tender grace
of early spring, and the glowing glory of
autumn are alike evanescent and wonder-
ful expressions on this smiling meadow
face. Like a dream, this hint of ineffable
beauty melts away, and the impression
gives place to a reality of vivid green field
and dark blue water, which wilf make but
a pleasant inland landscape until the Au-
gust sun burnishes it into ruby and gold,
and makes it once more a vision for a
painter.
The exquisite must perforce be evanes-
cent, that no touch of commonness may
mar its distinction. "The tender grace
of a day that is dead" haunts many a
spot, otherwise tame enough, with a mem-
ory and a knowledge of its capabilities,
that make it forever dear and beautiful to
him who has seen it under that enchant-
134
Reclaiming a Salt Meadow
ing glamour lent by a season, or an hour, Memory of
which imprints upon the brain a picture **
that can never be forgotten. And when
at other times of year I look upon this far
reach of often - changing meadow, there
abides with it always a memory of the soft
and tender charm of early spring, that no
reality of November-brown or winter-snow
can wholly drive away.
135
XII
TERRACES AND SHRUBS
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned, but with shrubs and flowers ?
MAXVELL.
XII
ONTINUING our practical ef- Th* lot too
small for a
forts, we were moved to enlarge house.
around our dwelling the space
which, after a year's occupation,
we found rather too contracted to be en-
tirely satisfactory; for, though we have
no especial preference for terraces, which
used to form a feature of many old-fash-
ioned homes, the conditions of our house-
lot have forced them upon us on three
sides. As I have before stated, the flat
top of the knoll is very limited in extent,
so that, even in building, we were forced
to cut our coat according to our cloth, and
support the rear of the house with a high
basement, to serve for laundry, dairy, and
other offices, instead of adding the more
usual L, or wing.
The width of the lot at this point would
not allow of more than ninety feet be-
tween us and the highway, even by set-
139
The Rescue of an Old Place
ting the building as far back as possible ;
and when this was done, leaving a gentle
slope from the front door to the road, the
ground on the north and south sides of
house fell with such abruptness from the
foundations that no room was left even
for a passage-way.
HOW it was This lack was remedied on the north of
the house by constructing a terrace suffi-
ciently wide on top for a tree or two, and
some shrubbery to mask the foundations,
with plenty of space for climbing things
to grow over the veranda. This bank,
supported on the east by the heavy wing-
wall of the house, slopes to a driveway
below, which leads to the stable behind.
It is high and steep, but well sodded, and
rather adds to the commanding effect of
the house, beside serving to break the
height of the building at the back. A
flight of steps at the rear of the veranda
leads to the drive below, and some good-
sized Pines have been planted there to
still further hide the basement.
Fault in the The main approach was not planned
with sufficient consideration for anything
but convenience, and consists of a semi-
140
Terraces and Sbrubs
circular driveway to allow the house to be
easily reached from both ends of the town,
but it would be better if the front door
were only accessible from the north to
carriages, which would give us an un-
broken stretch of grass on the east and
south, whereas now there is a half-moon
of greensward in front, inclosed between
the driveway and the street, thickly
planted with trees, destined soon to form
an effectual screen betwen us and the
dusty road.
South of the house, near the highway, We con-
the ground slopes gently into the swale, terrace.
which, with its groups of trees, forms a
side lawn of uneven surface, bounded at
the rear by the hill, with its rising tiers
of little Pines. Near the dwelling, how-
ever, in order to get any greensward or
shade at all, we were forced to build,
of stones and gravel, a terrace some
twenty-five feet in width at its narrowest
part, to support which about two hundred
feet or more of massive wall were con-
structed. This wall is low in front, and
buries itself in the grassy slope, but where
it curves around the knoll at the rear, it
141
The Rescue of an Old Place
is six feet high, and makes a warm back-
ground for Grapevines, and the hot-beds,
which are placed below the vines, fronting
the south. A steep bank, thickly sodded,
descends from the level of the lawn to the
top of the wall, which is also covered
with turf. This sunny south terrace is
the very spot for the old-fashioned Rose
bushes which we have transplanted hither
from the other parts of the place, and
here, too, is a bed for more delicate speci-
mens, which can be protected by a glass
frame in the winter-time, as well as a tree
to shade the south windows from the heat.
The wall was quite an important con-
struction, and I am afraid to say how
many tons of stone went into it, for the
largest portion of it is underground, th^
results being very solid and substantial.
other ter- Behind the house, on the basement-
level, is still another curved terrace, from
which a grassy cart-path leads down to
the swale and the hot-beds, and here the
various walls are utilized to protect rows
of Currant bushes above, and Raspberry
bushes below, which are easy cf access
from the kitchen-door.
142
Terraces and Shrubs
To cover all this expanse of gravel
foundation required untold quantities of requ "
loam, so much, indeed, that we thought
ourselves fortunate if we could allow an
average of four inches over the whole sur-
face of the lawn, but this meagre allow-
ance seems to afford sufficient hold for
the grass-roots, and heavy annual dress-
ings of compost add continually to its
depth. It is rather a curious study to
watch the formation of soil, and the grad-
ual way in which the sand below is trans-
formed by the roots first into yellow,
and then into black loam. How long, we
wonder, will it take before a foot of soil
is obtained over a surface treated as this
lawn is treated, the fine grass dropped
from the lawn-mower being left upon it
without raking, and the drainage from the
heavily enriched trees always helping it
along, in addition to its own annual dress-
ings ?
The shrubs on the knoll, at first scat- impossible to
, , , . . . mass a fe
tered about rather promiscuously, as they
increase in size we are struggling to group
properly, according to the lights thrown
upon this subject by our reading, but the
143
Lack of
material.
A sketch in
shrubs.
The Rescue of an Old Place
articles we have carefully studied on this
topic presuppose a great number of bushes
of one kind to begin with, and where you
have perhaps three Golden Spiraeas, and
a half dozen Lilac bushes, and a hardy
Hydrangea or two. and a few Deutzias,
and Weigelias, and other heterogeneous
things in variety, the question is to set
them so that they will produce the effect
of twenty-five of each. We have managed
it so that really the shrubbery appears
rather crowded, but it has been done in a
manner to horrify the authorities.
We have treated our landscape very
much as a painter would his canvas. We
dab in a shrub where we think it will pro-
duce the effect of half a dozen, and if,
after a few months, the picture seems to
require its removal, out it is scratched,
and set in another spot, and thus, in true
amateur fashion, we feel our way toward
a final result, for we find things never
look when they are little as they do when
they are fairly grown, the usual experi-
ence of amateur gardeners.
The best that can be said for this
method is, that the results are unconven-
144
Terraces and Shrubs
tional. I have discovered that a land- Mannerism
of the pro-
scape-gardener gets a style, a mannerism, fessionai
like a poet or a draughtsman, and that, *
after some experience, you can detect the
professional manufacturer of a garden by
the receipts on which he works. Twenty-
five Spiraeas here, twenty Deutzias there,
Viburnums one dozen, Lilacs in variety,
Forsythias eight; a bushel or two of golden
Evergreens mixed with Juniper and Ar-
bor Vitae, at such a point ; a hedge here,
curves on this side, straight lines on that,
etc., etc., it is all reduced to a system,
and the results, if repeated in the same
town, are monotonous.
We are bound, having gone in for it, to
defend the natural method. If the results
of the artificial are more satisfactory, the
execution is not half the fun.
Can there be, I ask you, the same en-
joyment in sitting down to watch the
growth of a border of shrubs that some-
body has set out for you, that there is in
dragging the few you have planted your-
self out of their holes and transporting
them to a more becoming place, as you
would a flower on a bonnet ?
The Rescue of an Old Place
Anybody can put in a tree or a shrub
airing. and let it alone, but it takes nerve to
wheel it about like a baby in a go-cart.
We have neighbors who employ the
conventional methods with dazzling re-
sults, but, on the whole, we doubt if their
vast and imposing plantations give them
as much enjoyment as our more personal
intercourse with our little family of grow-
ing things. We are quite sure that each
scrubby little Pine on the hill is dearer to
us than a thicket of well-fed trees planted
by a nurseryman.
" You will know my children," said the
Owl to the Fox, with whom she had made
a compact to spare them, " by their being
the -most beautiful little darlings in the
whole world." But when the Fox came
to the nest full of big-eyed, long-billed,
unfledged frights, he failed to recognize
the description, and ate them all up un-
der a misapprehension. DC nobis fabula.
We are afraid that most people would
pronounce in favor of the upholstering of
the professional, rather than of our pri-
vate efforts at lawn-furnishing, but we can
recommend our method on the ground of
146
Terraces and Shrubs
economy, both of material and of amuse-
ment, for there is no reason why this play
should not go on forever, like a Wagner
opera. It has its surprises too, in the way
of some happy effect that you had not im-
agined, and again, you are horrified at the
outcome of some arrangement that seemed
felicitous. We have got our own shrubs
so beautifully trained now, that they do
not mind moving on the first of May, any
more than an old New York citizen. Up
they come, blossoms and all, and never
drop a petal, but go on blooming se-
renely in their new home as if they had
always been there. One spring we had
from a kind friend a present of a box of
rare and beautiful little shrubs, the very
names of which it took a day to look up.
We knew they were coming, but not what
they were to be, so a bed was prepared
for them within easy reach of the hose,
and, when they came, they were set out
carefully, in the midst of an April snow-
storm, and a cold wind, which nipped
their poor little half-opened leaves most
cruelly.
After they were all arranged, and the
The Rescue of an Old Place
A muddu of weather had moderated sufficiently for
one to study the labels, we found that the
arrangement would have driven a gardener
wild ; future trees, a hundred feet high, hav-
ing been set side by side with burly little
shrubs, which at present look much more
important than their (to be) stately neigh-
bors. What with snow one day, and burn-
ing heat the next, combined with steady
dry weather, those shrubs have had a strug-
gle for existence, in which they have been
sturdily abetted by their natural protec-
tors. The hose one minute, and newspa-
pers and branches of trees the next, were
called upon to supply the deficiencies of
Nature, who was more than ever capricious
during that extraordinary season, and
since at the end of the summer they were
all well and firmly established, it shows
what care will do to defy the inclemen-
cies of the weather. After a year or two
they will have acquired the customs of the
place sufficiently to be moved where they
will make the best show, but before they
reach their final resting-place it is possible
that they may have several halts by the
way. With a ball of earth attached to the
148
Terraces and Shrubs
roots, traveling does not seem to hurt
them much, though no doubt it retards
their growth somewhat, which is all the
better if they are to be kept in proper pro-
portion to the place, which is not adapted
to anything very gigantic.
Of one thing I have become certain in Looking
this limited experience of landscape-gar-
dening, and that is, that the pleasure is in
the doing, in the vision of the mind, in the
ever-expanding hope for the future. When
the trees have grown too large to move,
and the shrubs are irrevocably rooted, we
shall surely be no happier than now, when
they are viewed in a halo of imagination.
149
XIII
EVERGREENS IN SPRING
" Come to me,"
Quoth the Pine-tree,
'* I am the giver of honor.
My garden is the cloven rock
And my manure the snow ;
And drifting sand-heaps feed my stock,
In summer's scorching glow."
EMERSON
O Hemlock Tree ! O Hemlock Tree I
How faithful are thy branches !
Green not alone in summer time,
But in the winter's frost and rime.
LONGFELLOW.
XIII
UT the question arises, will those Depressing
little trees on the hill ever at- $**
tain a satisfactory growth ? We Spri " g '
have various opinions on this
matter, our answer being more or less af-
fected by the season at which it is put,
we have a few ups, and a good many more
downs about it. For instance, I know few
things more depressing than the sight of
conifers in May, when every deciduous
tree is putting its best foot foremost, and
giving promise of a fine crop of leaves.
The Pines and Spruces and Firs which
have gladdened our eyes all winter, with
their fine green masses relieved against
the snow, or standing up bravely from the
brown grass in rich contrast to the bar-
renness around, now begin to show the
sere and yellow leaf. The March sun
and winds have burned and browned their
tips, the winter storms have buffeted their
*S3
The Rescue of an Old Place
branches, and torn great gaps in their out-
line. Their new shoots are all hidden un-
der a little tight white, or yellow, or brown
nightcap that looks dried and wizened, as
if no promise of life lurked underneath.
When the snow melts sufficiently for
one to walk abroad among his plantations,
he views them with a feeling akin to de-
spair, so unlikely do they seem to recover
themselves. Some branches are entirely
dead, the tops of others are winter-killed,
a few have turned copper-color from root
to crown, and, beside the bright green of
bursting buds and springing grass, the
best of them look worn and dingy by con-
trast.
Tk*ypi*ck Not until the middle of May do they
pluck up their spirits, pull off their bon-
nets, and show that their apparent dead-
ness resulted from the fact that they take
their season differently from their gayer
neighbors, and wear their winter furs,
however rusty and inappropriate, far into
spring, while all the others have come out
in their new clothes of brightest hue.
Some years June will be here before they
condescend to put out the green tassels
'54
Evergreens in Spring
which are their first adornment, but
through the month of roses they do their
prettiest, and hang out their banners with
the best.
Some of the authorities recommend the Planting in
month of June as the most desirable for 7
transplanting evergreens, but my experi-
ence would lead me to the conclusion
that with them, as well as with hard-wood
trees, the period before the bursting of
the buds is more satisfactory than the
time when they have already begun to
swell. Seasons vary so decidedly that a
few warm days may hasten the new
shoots, and they may be three inches long
before you think of going for trees, so
that they droop discouragingly after trans-
planting, and sometimes never brace up
again. This is particularly the case with
Pines, which have a way of drooping their
little brown heads despairingly, and refus-
ing to stiffen, in which case, if they can-
not be freely watered, they are sure to die.
This year the warm days in April so Pines need
quickened all vegetable life, that, when "
we set forth in the middle of May in
search of new trees for the hill, we found
155
The Rescue of an Old Place
to our surprise that the green tassels on
some of the trees were as long as one's
ringer, which gave us a pang lest we were
already too late for the best satisfaction.
However, as there had been already
itarch of \ t
some six weeks of unprecedentedly dry
weather, and signs of rain were in the
atmosphere, it seemed that if there was
any chance at all, now was our time. We
accordingly arranged for a morning among
the Pines, and, accompanied by a big
farm-wagon to bring them home in, we
wended our way along the winding coun-
try roads, until we came to where the
young trees abounded, and we could select
our specimens.
There is little doubt that the stocky,
bushy trees of close, heavy foliage, not
more than two or three feet high, are the
most likely to live and do well, but there
are days when one's ambition outruns
one's discretion, and, revolting at the slow-
ness of the growth of the little ones, he
desires to realize his forest immediately,
if only for one summer, and so, like a
child who plants his sand-garden with
blooming flowers, ventures on a load of
156
Evergreens in Spring
trees five or six feet high, in hopes that,
after making a brave show for a few
months, they will be aided by some happy
freak of nature to take root in earnest.
But planting Pines on a dry hillside is A lotttry in
like investing in a lottery the success "
of the enterprise depends wholly on the
sort of weather that immediately follows,
and who can reckon with that ? Talk of
the vicissitudes in the life of a broker
what are his uncertain and incalculable
quantities compared to those with which
the farmer and gardener have to deal ? A
broker can abstain from buying bonds
and stocks if he will, but the farmer has
to plant when the time comes, and take
his chances, and for surprises the weather
can give points to Wall Street any day.
With the largest experience and judgment
you can no more reckon securely on the
coming down of rain, than of Bell Tele-
phone, or Calumet and Hecla.
No sooner are one's trees planted than
he becomes a bear upon the weather mar-
ket, but this summer, Old Probabilities
has made a corner with the bulls, and
kept rain up persistently, so that the wisest
157
The Rescue of an Old Place
calculations have gone agley ; and if IV.ul
plants, and Apollos declines to water,
what then ?
A /ore* To return to our expedition. There
was an easterly tang in the air, a smell of
rain that promised well for the morrow,
though in the shelter of the trees all
warmth and sunshine, and bursting buds.
Upon the rocks the Lady's -slipper was
waving its rosy blossoms, tempting us to
add a few roots of it to our shady garden,
where it has thriven well. The Beeches
and Birches were full of crumpled leaflets,
Anemones were blooming by the wayside,
the oak-tops were reddened with the Hush
of early leaf-buds, the forest was astir.
Along the fences ran the busy chipmunks,
saucily chattering, with their bushy tails
trailing behind them. The wood robins
were singing in the thickets, and the
thrushes challenging us from wayside
bushes. In northern Maine one hears al-
ways in summer the tender song of the
Peabody bird in such places, but here it
occurs but seldom, and I missed it from
the woodland sounds, of which the air was
full. The Witch-hazel stared at us with
158
Evergreens in Spring
its wicked-looking eyes, and the Hemlocks
hid themselves behind the Alders.
When at last we came to the clearing, w come
we found Pines in plenty, but, unfortu-
nately, the soil was rocky, and the trees
were hard to dislodge, and did not come
up with as good a ball of earth as in the
sandy hill where we had found them be-
fore ; but we packed them well away in
the cart, with moss about their roots, and
a rubber blanket to keep off the sun, and
pretty soon the wagon was nodding with
trees four or five feet high, closely jammed
together, and Birnam Wood was on the
march for Dunsinane.
The hill had been dug the day before,
and some twoscore holes prepared for the
new-comers, so that by noon-time those
of the first load were all firmly wedged
into their beds, to be staked and tied later,
to prevent their rocking with the wind,
which gives them at present quite the air
of a paddock of frisky young colts, care-
fully hitched to prevent their getting away.
That night there was a brisk and most
encouraging shower, and the next day,
after the rest of the holes had been filled
159
The Rescue of an Old Place
with a second load of Pines, there came
down quite a respectable rain, so that we
greatly plumed ourselves upon our fore-
sight in having got our trees in the nick
of time, just as the drought " broke."
But, alas, for the prescience of man, and
""' for our corner in Pines! We mulched
them all well with sea-weed, to keep in
what moisture we might, and waited confi-
dently for more rain ; but no rain came !
Two weeks more of dry weather ensued ;
many of the green tassels hung sadly
down, a cold, dry wind blew, twisting and
turning them in every direction, and mer-
cilessly whipped the branches about,
giving the poor things a cruel foretaste of
what they are likely to encounter as time
goes on. If the new trees look about upon
their well-rooted neighbors, they must be
struck with the havoc made upon them
by the northwest wind. It is always the
northwest side of a tree that is brownest
and thinnest, and which shows the most
broken branches, and the greatest number
of withered, copper-colored spines.
Not until the last of May did the rain
come down in earnest, too late for any
160
Evergreens in Spring
but the most healthy of the Pines to reap
the benefit of its invigorating freshness,
and they still had the hot summer before
them.
To show the importance of moisture to A tr**
a Pine, I will add that among the trees
brought, there were about a dozen that
had no ball of earth attached to them,
and reached here with perfectly bare
roots. Knowing it was useless to set
them on the hill in this condition, they
were all planted in a very wet place at the
foot of it, which is kept as a nursery for
decrepit and rootless trees. If from any-
where we receive a tree poorly provided
with roots, or of drooping and unhappy
aspect, or if we bring one home that
looks unpromising, into that moist spot it
goes, and never a tree has perished there
yet, no matter how forlorn a specimen it
was when it went into the ground. This
nursery is called the Tree Hospital, and
we find a year in it is a cure for most of
the ailments that roots are heir to.
In this last experiment, the ten trees
planted there, though quite the worst of
the lot, never showed a sign of wilting
161
The Rescue of an Old Place
through all the dry weather. Their tassels
stood up straight and stiff, of a clean
bright green, and, though so unpromising
to start with, they will probably in the end
leave the others far behind. Even the
Hemlocks, so troublesome on the 1
thrive in this low and sheltered spot, where
we have finally sent the worst of them for
repairs. I have been told, by one who
knows, that what the Hemlock cannot
abide is the March sun. which does mis-
chief, while the blaze of summer is harm-
less to it
I was shown one day at the Arnold
Arboretum, near Boston, the north side
of a hill, steep and rocky, but clothed with
giant Hemlocks from its lofty summit to
the burbling beck at its base. No nobler
sight can be imagined. I entered this
forest at twilight, and I found it a temple,
solemn and silent The majestic trunks
rose from their rocky base at wide inter-
vals, climbing one above the other to the
crest of the lofty eminence they cro\\
Their close-knit branches far overhead
formed a dense canopy through which the
failing light came dimly, as befits a tern-
162
Evergreens in Spring
pie. So wild, so sylvan a spot, within the NO foreign
limits of a great city, can be found in no
European park, however magnificent. It
is unique and singularly imposing. On
the southern slope of that hill no Hem-
lock grows, showing that what this noble
tree demands for full development is shade
and coolness, and shelter from summer
winds, which burn and blight. That
glimpse of ancient woodland, ages old,
will always linger in my memory as a link
between the bustling present and the si-
lent past. The busy city presses around
it, the hum of traffic is near. You step
aside from the highway, pass a gate, cross
a tiny brook that tumbles as carelessly at
the foot of the hill as if it were racing
through the wilds of Colorado, and you
enter a domain apparently as remote, ven-
erable, and silent as when the Indian was
the sole occupant of Shawmut and found
his way through the trackless forest to his
hunting-grounds. A little path worn by
the foot strays along beside the laughing
stream ; other paths may lead over the
hill, but in the dimness I failed to see
them, and the solitude seemed unbroken.
163
The Rescue of an Old Place
The fore tt
cUdusk.
TluDirtc-
ter look*
Night was falling, the air was chill, the
murmur of the leaves far above was barely
audible ; the impression was indescribably
solemn and church-like, as if the aisles of
some great cathedral were there stretch-
ing away into the shadowy distance, full
of mystery.
Stately and strong the old trees stood,
as if they might be as eternal as the rocks
and hill, and beautiful they were in their
silent majesty, uplifting their venerable
heads to the gray evening sky which had
domed over them for centuries.
On an opposite hill a grove of young
evergreens was springing up.
"That, too, will be fine in a hundred
years," said the Director, as we passed out
of the great gate ; and, with a thought of
my baby forest at home which, perhaps,
in a century or two, may be worth while,
I went away grave but rejoicing, for I had
seen a noble sight.
164
XIV
THE LOVE OF FLOWERS IN
AMERICA
Fables were not more
Bright, nor loved of yore ;
Yet they grew not, like the flowers, by every old
pathway.
LEIGH HUNT.
XIV
JHILE we and our neighbors are
doing our best to stock our stattmtnt -
grounds with ornamental shrubs
and blossoms, it is discouraging
to be told by some of our periodicals,
which are probably edited by gentlemen
who live chiefly in towns, that Americans
do not love flowers, because they are
used among the rich and fashionable in
reckless profusion, for display rather than
enjoyment It is also claimed that we are
not a flower-loving people, because we
accept botanical appellations for our indi-
genous plants, instead of giving them sim-
ple, homely names like the charming ones
with which familiar flowers have been
christened in older countries.
To this may be answered, that what os-
tentatious dwellers in towns are guilty of is
by no means to be accepted as a national
trait. The place to study the characteris-
167
The Rescue of an Old Place
fr* tics of a people is not among the very
England . , .
town, rich, but among those in moderate cir-
cumstances, who make up the bulk of
the inhabitants ; those who occupy its
longer settled regions, and best represent
its individual and continuous modes of
thought. And when I see how little these
idle talkers know about what country peo-
ple feel and think, I wish that our urban
critics could walk though this ancient
town, and be introduced to its flower
lovers, and get a glimpse of its interesting
gardens, before they make up their minds
so positively about the tendencies of our
A ust 9j people. Here can be found the American
? race at its best, unadulterated by for
admixture, or perverted from its instincts
by the pressure of conventions ; a people
that has lived on the soil for two hundred
and fifty years, and has had time to de-
velop its characteristics, a much b
test to judge by than the floating popula-
tion of newer towns farther west
Whoever has driven through New Eng-
land or the older middle States, cannot
doubt that there, at least, the people truly
love their gardens, and the house plants
1 68
The Love of Flowers in America
with which their windows, in winter, are
stocked. Even the humblest dwelling has
its row of flower pots, or tin cans, well
filled with slips of Geranium, or other
bright flowers ; and the hours spent over
their gardens by gentlewomen who can-
not afford a gardener, are the best proof
that the affection they have for them is a
real and ardent one. I have known many
a house mother, burdened with domestic
cares, to rise before day to snatch an hour
for weeding or watering her little border,
that its fragrant contents might be of avail
for a friendly gift, or an adornment for
her own table. It is the rarest thing, in a
New England village, to enter a room in
summer and find no flowers disposed about
it ; and in the winter the eager question,
" How are your plants prospering ? " often
comes before the conventional inquiries
after the health of the members of the
household. New varieties are discussed
and exchanged ; there are rare Chrysan-
themums to talk about in autumn, and
choice Tulips and Hyacinths to be com-
plimented in the spring, and each one
knows what her neighbor's garden is most
The Rescue of an Old Place
famous for, and who is the most success-
ful in her general management of her pets.
Many women are experienced botanists
in their own locality, and can tell where
every wild flower of the region is to be
found. They rejoice, too, in the discov-
ery of a new weed with as much enthusi-
asm as an astronomer shows over a fresh
comet. Most of the men who live in the
country are too busy to give much time to
flower-gardens, but they show great inter-
est and pride in those so carefully tended
by their wives and daughters, and are ready
enough to lend a helping hand, even though
they may pretend to begrudge the space
taken from grass or vegetables, for what
they think it their duty to call an idle
diversion. But given a retired merchant
with not much to occupy his mind, and the
chances are that he will soon be wearing
himself out in loving labor among his
Rhododendrons and Roses, taking pride
in having the earliest and largest blossoms
in his parterre, and conferring in a friendly
way over the fence with his neighbors, who
stop to consult with him on the best way
of dealing with insect pests. Of course,
170
The Love of Flowers in America
in the remoter West, life is too strenuous
to leave much space for flower-gardening.
Flowers are often seen growing in a little
inclosure on a frontier sheep-ranch, which
cost not only labor but self-denial, and yet
they are hardly seen once a year by any
save their owner. The care which it cost
the mothers and daughters among the
early emigrants to transport seeds, and
slips, and roots of the old home flowers
from New England, to brighten new homes
in the West, has often been described,
and the love with which these flowers are
cherished by their descendants is well
known.
It is to these people we must look to
discover whether the love of flowers and
gardening is implanted in a people, not to
the wasteful and luxurious dweller in the
town, who only uses flowers as a pretext
for wanton expense. It should not be
forgotten that aside from this extrava-
gance, which may show itself in the pur-
chase of flowers, as in the purchase of
other luxuries, simply because they may
be rare and costly, great numbers of peo-
ple in the city buy flowers habitually
'7'
The Rescue of an Old Place
because they love their beauty and fra-
grance.
Tk* common As to the nomenclature there is this to
be said : In older countries the people and
the flowers lived together long before the
botanist appeared, while here the bota-
nists came with the early settlers to an
unexplored field, found the new flov
and named them before the people had
become familiarly acquainted with them.
The State flower of California was intro-
duced to the children of that common-
wealth as the Eschscholtzia before they
could spell it, but this does not prove
any lack of love or admiration for it on
their part They have a pet name for the
flower, too ; and in all the older settled
parts of the country, wherever a plant or
flower is so abundant, or useful, or obtru-
sive that there is need to speak of it, a
name is found at once. The children of
New England call the wild Columbine
Meeting-houses, from their shape, no
doubt, and with them Viola pedata is the
Horse Violet, perhaps from its long face.
The Houstonia, which is Bluets in some
places, is Innocence in others. In north-
172
Tbe Love of Flowers in America
ern New Jersey, the Marsh Marigold of
other regions (Caltha palustris) is invaria-
bly a Cowslip. Some children, gathering Ptt ****$
Dogtooth Violets by the handful within {"
sight of Trinity Church spire, when asked et
the name of the flowers, expressed much
surprise that the inquirer had never heard
of Yellow-bells. Even Shortia, which hid
away from botanists for a hundred years,
had a name which was common enough
to answer every purpose, and the man
who first discovered it in any quantity
was told by the dwellers in the mountain
hamlet, where it was spreading over acres,
that it was nothing but Little Coltsfoot
Even where botanical names have not
been adopted outright as common ones,
they have often been changed, just as
Pyxidanthera has become Pyxie to all the
dwellers among the New Jersey Pines.
There are plenty of common names in
every locality which have never found
their way into the botanies.
American women wear flowers for adorn-
ment more generally than the women of
any other country. This of itself is proof
of the genuineness of their love for flow-
173
The Rescue of an Old Place
ers. It is absurd to imagine that a custom
so universal is based on any sham or pass-
ing fashion. The desire for display is
prevalent enough, beyond question, but if
any one doubts whether the admiration
for flowers is an acquired taste because
it is fashionable to wear them let him
carry a handful of them through a city
street among groups of children, where
unsophisticated nature will find expres-
sion. The keen delight of these little
ones, who will always accept such a
shows that the affection for flowers is an
original instinct, which is as strong in this
country as it is anywhere. Fashionable
freaks and follies pass away, and flowers
would have their brief day like any other
craze, if the regard for them was artifi-
cial or fictitious. The flower-dealers of
the country need have no apprehension
as to the future of their industry. It is
based on one of the elementary wants of
our nature. Flowers will be loved until
the constitution of the human mind is
radically changed
To those writers who maintain, quoting
Miss Wilkins's stories to prove it, that
'74
The Love of Flowers in America
"flowers are an accident, not a daily in-
terest, in village life " in New England,
I would say that he who takes this ground
can scarcely be familiar with the old coun-
try towns of that section to which one
must look for the typical aspects of New
England life. Like all the sentiments of
its people, the love of flowers is there, not
paraded, but profoundly cherished ; and
if there is no gaudy display in the door-
yard, there is sure to be found a corner
behind the house, easily accessible to the
kitchen, where old-fashioned plants bloom
gayly, and are cherished often from some
tender association with the past. Any
country doctor in one of the older New
England villages can tell these critics that
there are almost no houses so homely,
but that he finds in them, in* winter, a few
plants in the window, and in summer some
bright flowers in a tiny garden, cultivated
and watered often by feeble and tired
hands. Hard and dreary as are many of
the poor little lives of New England vil-
lagers, this one touch of color and per-
fume is there almost invariably, to show
that the thirst for beauty is unquenched.
175
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
New EHS~ If, with its ungrateful soil and torment-
ing climate, New England cannot rival
^^ Old England in the gay surroundings of
its cottage doors, the same love of flowers
is there, finding such expression as it may,
under the cruel conditions of a sterile
earth, and burning summer heats and dry-
ness, alternated with sharp east winds,
which make a labor as well as a pleasure
of a garden.
XV
THE ROSE-CHAFER
All the fields which thou dost see,
All the plants, belong to thee ;
All the summer hours produce,
Fertile made with early juice.
Man for thee doth sow and plow,
Farmer he, and landlord thou !
ANACREON.
XV
UT however much we New Eng
5 visitors
landers may love flowers, there tread u^on
are drawbacks to their cultiva- &
tion in the pests that beset
them. Each plant has its enemy, and
there is no interim between our summer
visitors. No sooner is the trunk of the
last caterpillar packed than the rose-bug
arrives, bag and baggage, to take his place.
The half -eaten leaves that have been res-
cued from the jaws of the web-worm are
in a few hours riddled with the bites of
these winged pests, which are even harder
to destroy than their predecessors, for
they hunt in couples and fly, and cannot
be stamped out of existence.
An imperturbable imp is the rose-
chafer, descendant on one side from the
scarabaeus ; and if his Egyptian ancestor
was half as hard to kill as this other flying
beetle, no wonder the ancients used him
as an emblem of immortality.
179
The Rescue of an Old Place
That horrid This voracious summer boarder arrives
with unpleasant punctuality upon the
tenth of June, that is to say, the ad-
vance-guard of the great army shows it-
self in the shape of a scout or two, who
merely precede the main swarm, which
comes in a cloud, and settles everywhere,
and stays nearly four weeks.
The opening roses are their nominal
prey, and are soon disfigured with their
dingy yellow-brown carcasses ; but that is
not the worst of them. Grape blossoms
are their dear delight, and nothing but the
most unremitting attention will save the
future bunches from their greedy depreda-
tions. There are at least two to every ra-
ceme of fragrant blossoms, and by the
time one has disposed of that pair, another
is flying about all ready to take their
places.
Arsenical poisons have no more effect
upon them than a cold shoulder on an of-
fice-seeker. They may kill the plant, but
never the rose-bug, which will crawl un-
dismayed over its ruins, seeking new
worlds to conquer. Having no delicate
sensibilities, they are undeterred by whale-
180
The Rose-Cbafer
oil soap, which disheartens most things, Thty enjoy
and even a dusting with hellebore does <>ap?
not even make them sneeze. The great
unterrified eat on, in spite of all you can
do to them, and no sooner is one set slain
than you find another in its place. They
remind one of the Jesuit monks in Bolivia,
whom the inhabitants finally regarded as
supernatural beings, because, no matter
how often one cowled and sandaled form
was laid low, another succeeded it, till the
natives came to believe that the friar was
an immortal, whom they vainly sought to
destroy.
As to the rose-bug, hand-picking into a
bowl of kerosene or hot water, begun at resource.
morn, continued till noon, and not inter-
mitted till dewy eve, is the safest resource
against the marauders, which devour not
only Grape blossoms and Roses, Spiraeas
and Syringas, Peonies and Snowballs, but
cover Birches, Oaks, Elms, and even Wil-
lows with their ugly little forms, and
leave behind them a lacework of veins in
place of leaves.
Nothing pleases them better than a
Smoke bush in blossom, the future fringe
181
The Rescue of an Old Place
of which they will completely destroy in
a few hours. We tried the experiment
this year of tying ours up in mosquito-net-
ting, but it seemed to accomplish nothing
better than the excitement of the curiosity
of passers-by, who could not make out
whether it was a ghost on the lawn, or a
balloon waiting for a Fourth of July infla-
tion. The indomitable chafers perched
on the outside by the hundred, and chewed
at the blossoms through the meshes, so
that, what with their attacks and the
confinement, the smoke came to nothing
after all, for when the cover was removed
nothing was to be seen of the fringe but
a few bare green stems.
Probably the rose-bugs do not publish
a - a morning paper, or they would learn that
the lawn at Overlea is an unhealthy situa-
tion for their race, and that their unprece-
dented mortality in that region ought to
be a warning to them. Certainly in the
height of the season the hecatomb of vic-
tims amounts to a thousand a day, but
the cry is still, They come.
We hoped that the long, cold, easterly
storm of June would prove a discourage-
182
The Rose-Chafer
ment to them, but the minute it stopped They prefer
raining they reappeared, more numerous
and hearty than ever, and made up nobly
for lost time. They show a curious pref-
erence for old-fashioned Roses, and will
devour them, leaving a bed of hybrids of
modern varieties almost untouched, and
they never are found here on the Tea
Roses. They will eat the hardy Hy-
drangea voraciously, but do not affect the
Weigelia. They spoil the Snowballs, but
do not meddle with Lilacs. We have
some young Canoe Birches that are strug-
gling for existence, and I always imagine
the departing caterpillar exchanging com-
pliments with the arriving rose-bug, and
recommending them to his particular at-
tention, after the fashion of guzzling Jack
and gorging Jimmy :
Here 's little Billee, he 's young and tender,
They 're old and tough, so let 's eat he,
Positively, if, during three or four weeks Thy de
of their stay, those insects were not fought
tooth and nail, there would not be one
leaf left upon those unhappy little trees.
As it is, when the brutes depart, the
183
The Rescue of an Old Place
Birches look like a design in skeleton
leaves.
This year our hopes were roused by a
remedy called sludgite, which was war-
ranted to kill, not only the rose-bug, but
the Colorado beetle and all other insects
fatal to vegetation. Though scoffed at
by incredulous friends, we dared to send
for a can of this evil-smelling mixture, and
applied it to the creature, with whom it
undoubtedly disagrees. It is made of the
residue of petroleum and soap, and smells
to heaven, but, alas! the rose -bug has
no nose, at least no nose that takes
offense at bad odors. Sludgite is a thick,
semi-solid substance that mingles readily
with water and is applied by a spraying
pump or a hand syringe, and kills by con-
tact. The rose-bug and the Colorado
beetle keel over with all their heels in the
air as soon as the gummy fluid comes in
contact with their wing coverings, but,
curiously enough, it seems to have no
power to destroy the larva of the potato-
bug, and, not being a poison, it seems to
have no deterring effect upon the little
worm that eats the leaves of Rose bushes,
Rose-Chafer
or even upon the thrip, which whale-oil
soap banishes for a long time. Therefore,
I judge that the mixture clogs the wings,
and interferes with the breathing of beetles,
or, possibly, whatever virtue it possesses
lies in the volatile essence which escapes
from it, for the fresh mixture is much
more deadly than that which has stood
for some time.
But the sad thing about its use is, that ft* *-<>**-
bug draws
the rose-bug is a being that draws no no moral.
moral from any tale, and he is totally de-
void of sentiment. I cannot find that the
corpses of his relations take away from
his appetite in the least. Possibly the
numerous attendants we see at the fune-
ral come for a wake, and they are full as
hungry and thirsty as Conn the Shaugh-
raun's cousins, on the same melancholy
occasion.
Though I am disposed to think that the
chafers may not be quite so ready to at-
tack a bush or tree freshly anointed with
the unsavory fluid, I am not sure but that
the wish is father to the thought. In any
case, it is not practicable to shower a bush
every five minutes with anything, however
85
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
deadly, so that it is almost as discourag-
ing as hand-picking.
A distinguished horticultural authority,
who takes very little stock in my new dis-
coveries, declares that muscle is worth
more than faith, and shows me perfect
roses, as large as his fist, to prove it.
This is all very well if you are lucky
enough to have unlimited muscle at your
command, as in an arboretum for instance,
where every rose-bug has a man to catch
him, but both hand-picking and insecti-
cides are alike failures in a private family
with one factotum. What the world de-
mands is a warning of some kind that the
chafer who runs may read, a something to
convey to his insect-mind or nostrils the
information that " no rose-bug need ap-
ply," and whoso can make this discovery
palpable to the enemy will have his for-
tune in his red right hand.
The legends connected with the rose-
bug are numerous. They tell us that he
will not molest a Grapevine or a Rose
bush close against a house, though he will
devour the Virginia - creeper against the
lattice of your veranda. He is supposed
1 86
The Rose-Cbafer
to object to the dust of the road and to a
sprinkling of coal-ashes ; but on our own
windy hill neither of these deterrents can
be made to stick.
Another legend belongs to the potato- ^ i*ge*d.
beetle, which some of the farmers in this
neighborhood vow will not trouble pota-
toes planted in a hill with beans ; but
this is merely a legend. We have tried it,
and find the creatures as lively as ever.
To return to sludgite, I would say that
its highest practical use is upon trees and
shrubs without blossoms, for the sticky yel-
low fluid cannot be sprinkled upon roses
without spoiling their fairness. So far it
does not seem to damage foliage, but we
cannot answer for the effect of such a vis-
cid decoction if used many times a day.
We have never tried it more than twice in
twenty-four hours. It kills or drives away
the insects that are there, but others ap-
pear immediately, so that such insecticides
are little better than substitutes for hand-
picking.
Our struggles with the hated rose-bug,
and the hopeless nature of any prolonged
encounter with an inferior organism of
.87
The Rescue of an Old Place
overwhelming numbers, find such clear
expression in the words of a correspon-
dent, that I subjoin an extract from a let-
ter of a lady who has had similar suffer-
ings with another insect :
"I am passing through the discourag-
ing season of gardening, and am realizing
more than ever the nature of Adam's curse.
It sounds like a fine thing to be told we
shall have dominion over the birds of the
air and the beasts of the field, but what
gain is there in that if we are to be beaten
in the end by the angle-worm, the ant, and
the snail ? To fight with a snail, and be
beaten, is n't that humilation ? But I stand
in the place of the vanquished, and it is
the snail that has done it. I was born
a sentimentalist, and had scruples about
' taking away the life thou canst not give/
that once hindered my career as a gar-
dener. Now I grieve over the imperfect
nature of the snail's nervous system that
makes even death apparently painless.
" But he keeps up with the times, does
the snail ; he reads the seed catalogues,
and he knows that Asters cost more than
Marigolds ; he has an eye for beauty, too ;
188
The Rose-Cbafer
he knows a foliage plant very early in its
career, and his taste is always for red
rather than green.
" The snail is a much underrated power ; rtu mail**
his calmness, his persistence, his retiring tatdfrrated
nature, his thick-skinned endurance, make
him a type that is bound to survive, and I
predict for him a glorious future. If he
can only find enough fools to cultivate
gardens for his use he will enter in and
possess the land, and develop into some-
thing quite grand." All of which quota-
tion, with slight variation, will answer for
our winged pest.
I was quite touched by the prediction
of a member of the horticultural society 55S
of that State, that apparently the whole of
southern New Jersey will have to be aban-
doned to the rose-bug. This adds a new
terror to the already complicated legisla-
tion of that unhappy region, for I am con-
vinced, from my experience, that if the
rose-bug wants anything he will get it, and
no doubt we shall live to see him sitting
in the gubernatorial chair.
189
XVI
SUFFERINGS FROM DROUGHT
In heat the landscape quivering lies ;
The cattle pant beneath the tree ;
Through parching air and purple skies,
The earth looks up in vain for thee.
For thee, for thee it looks in vain,
O gentle, gentle summer rain !
W. C. BENNETT.
XVI
[JOR are the insects the only
plagues which menace our cher-
ished gardens, and our carefully
planted wood-lots ; there are
weather conditions that no vigilance can
elude, which add tremendously to the dif-
ficulties of the planter of flower or tree.
On the south shore of Massachusetts
. tveathtr OH
Bay almost every summer sees a long thts<mtk
period of rainless weather. The thunder-
storms that gather portentously after hot
days, are apt to drift away to the north,
with only the tiniest sprinkling of our dusty
roads and parched fields, to pour their
wealth upon the crags of Swampscott and
Lynn, Beverly and Marblehead. With
jealous eyes we watch the rain descending
upon our opposite neighbors of the North
Shore, while we continue to dry up for
want of it.
This period of dry weather usually be-
193
The Rescue of an Old Place
gins about the last of June and continues
titntal season. n A i i- M
well into August, which is ordinarily wet
and muggy, but the spring and summer of
1891 seemed disposed to defy precedent.
April, which from time immemorial has
been depended on for showers, this year
completely spoiled its record, and only
gave us an inch and a fraction of rain.
This was followed by a dry, cold May, and
then came the first half of June without
a drop, culminating in two days the like of
which we seldom see, the mercury touch-
ing ninety -seven degrees in the shade.
Then, at last, down came the floods with
a rush, and refreshed the parched and
thirsty earth for days, the first continued
rain-storm for three months, sorely needed
by the suffering hay-crop and the dwin-
dling trees.
During drought in this region, where the
soil is light and sandy, the care of lawns
and gardens has to be incessant. Fortu-
nately our old town has a fine supply of
aqueduct water brought from a nearly
inexhaustible pond within its limits, and
the hose can be brought to bear with
effect upon the worst places ; but this,
194
Sufferings from Drought
like other restoratives, must be used with
.
moderation. Too much water cakes the inf
soil and draws the roots to the surface, so
that, once begun, it must be continued or
the plants die. It is better, we find, to
water heavily two or three times a week
than to keep up a continued sprinkling.
If the water plays upon trees and shrubs
during hot sunshine, the leaves are apt to
scorch and shrivel, and the same is true
of vegetables, which are well known to
resent being watered on a hot day.
At Overlea the garden, which lies low
along the edges of the meadow, can get
along very fairly without watering. Even
this year the strawberry crop, which is
very sensitive to a lack of moisture, did
not suffer from the dry weather, possibly
owing to heavy mulching with straw while
the ground was moist from showers. The
worst of droughts in June is never so bad
as the same dryness in July, for plants,
which are then in fullest vigor, can better
bear the strain upon their constitutions at
that time ; it gives them a set-back, how-
ever, which prevents a vigorous growth.
Grass is the greatest sufferer, and the first
The Rescue of an Old Place
hay-crop is often ruined by lack of rain,
as was the case this year in our neighbor-
hood.
Upon the sandy knoll where our house
tt in is situated, and especially along the street,
in places only accessible to a very long
hose, the trees and turf suffered greatly,
and the sudden drop of fifty degrees of
temperature, at the end of the period of
drought, had a most disastrous effect upon
the leaves, which shriveled and curled and
turned red, and dropped off in many in-
stances. A vigorous young Catalpa on
our lawn, which, after the cautious man-
ner of its kind, only ventured to put on its
spring gown after the first of June, and
then undertook to blossom freely, was so
distressed by the changes of the weather,
that after the storm we found at least two
bushels of leaves strewing the ground be-
neath it, and many others in such a con-
dition that the lightest touch would detach
them. Enough remained, however, to pro-
tect the blossoms, which are wonderful
productions for a tree to bear. If each
one grew in a garden on a single slender
stem one would value it for its exquisite
196
Sufferings from Drought
painted beauty, and delicate perfume ;
and to find a great spike of them deco-
rating a burly tree is a constant source of
astonishment at the prodigality of Nature.
It is like the appearance of a fine gentle-
man of the last century in a ruffled shirt
and diamond shoe - buckles, among the
more plainly coated fin dt s&clc beaux of
our own day.
I have a great admiration for a Catalpa ; rtu parrot
. . and the Co*
its huge vivid green leaves give it a semi-
tropical air, and its sensitiveness to cold
and storm shows that it comes naturally
from a warmer clime than ours. I try to
console it for its exile by lending it in sum-
mer-time our Amazon parrot for a com-
panion, and there is no prettier sight than
the vision of this lovely green bird, of ex-
actly the shades of the sunlight and shadow
on the Catalpa leaves, pluming himself un-
tethered upon the inner branches, only
caged by the dome of the great boughs
with their verdant canopy. When the
leaves are in their prime he is perfectly
concealed from view by his color, even
when he takes a fancy to perch upon an
outer bough ; and there he mocks and
197
The Rescue of an Old Place
jeers at the passers-by with songs and
laughter and merry cries, till you would
think a whole primary school was let loose
upon the lawn and all the pupils calling
each other by name, or else that this was
a lunatic asylum.
To return to the line of trees that bor-
der the street. We find that it is not safe
to leave them without a heavy top-dressing
to act as mulch, and this application hav-
ing been delayed this year by press of
business, we found one good-sized Elm,
that we imagined to be settled for life,
dropping its leaves and turning brown in
a most unbecoming manner, while the
smaller and more recently planted trees
were also showing signs of distress. A
good dousing and dressing brought them
all to, however, and when the mowing of
the swale after the rain allowed us to
make the rounds of the plantation, we
discovered that the only serious sufferers
were our newly set Pines, which are bring-
ing the hill into disrepute by their brown
and sear condition. This eminence natu-
rally suffers severely from drought and hot
weather; the little Oaks and Chestnuts
198
Sufferings from Drougbt
burn up, and the Pines wilt distressingly,
but they are so numerous that there is
nothing to be done for them but to await
the survival of the fittest. An Oak once
rooted is rooted forever, but it is a ques-
tion of time as to when it can maintain
its top, and ours have burned off year
after year, until now they seem to have
gained vigor enough to hang on in spite
of fate.
Among the searching questions that are
put to the members of the Society of
Friends, in their meetings for the investi-
gation of personal character, one of the
queries is, " Has any Friend entered into
business beyond his ability to manage ? "
This question we are obliged to answer A *uian-
in the affirmative when we take time to
ask it of ourselves, for, having outlined tkri "'
work enough for a dozen men, it becomes
a puzzle how to carry it on with only the
aid of one factotum ; extra hands being
very hard to obtain in this village during
the summer months. Much that we do
is accordingly a makeshift. I am sadly
obliged to confess to the existence of
weeds where no weeds should be, of neg-
199
The Rescue of an Old Place
lected spaces, of trees on the hill smoth-
ered by grass, of rose-bugs unslain, and
caterpillars left at large ; of a struggle for
general effect, rather than a realization of
neatness in detail, all of which is most
reprehensible and melancholy. We look
at our neighbors' neat gardens with re-
morse and envy, and can only console
ourselves by reflecting that when they are
gone the weeds will have their way, but
that in our struggle with nature in the end
the trees will win, and trample the weeds
under their mighty feet, and rear their
stately heads proudly, while the beets and
carrots of a future generation are still
struggling with their yearly foes.
The weeds' In a recent visit to the shores of the
Merrimac, I have seen hills carpeted with
the fallen leaves of haughty Pines that
have numbered some centuries of growth,
and I can smile at the flaunting Daisies
of the hill, which overtop our baby ever-
greens, and threaten to exterminate them.
Your days are numbered, O weeds ! Wave
now and dance in the sunshine while you
may, for the first nails are being driven in
your coffins. Little you reck that the
200
Sufferings from Drought
small brown spines, that disappear at your A
roots, are the first drops of a rising tide '*
that is to bury your bright blossoms, and
strangle your weedy growth. For a few
years to come you may preen yourselves
upon the hillside, but the tiny seedlings
below are rising higher and higher, wider
spread their green arms, thicker falls the
brown shower, which at first nourishes
your gaudy uselessness, but at last shall
arise and overwhelm it forever. The gay
and trivial have their little day of sunshine
and triumph, but the strong roots of seri-
ous vigor endure when the sunlight fails,
and the winter winds blow. Everything in
the lower is typical of the higher life, and
the ephemeral for a time seems brighter
and stronger than the eternal ; but not
forever. Though speed may tell in a
short race, it is bottom that wins the long
ones, and it is the patient who inherit the
earth.
This is the great lesson of the forest, the The lesson
philosophy it plants in him who nourishes
it and awaits its growth. In the faint rus-
tle of the tiny leaflets I hear the murmur,
" Wait ! " and as I wander under the
201
The Rescue of an Old Place
Wait!
Counsel of
thf trtts.
shade of trees a hundred years old, I hear
the echo far above me of that tender cry,
in a solemn whisper : " Wait ! They, too,
shall be as we are, giants in their day.
What matters it that thy little life will be
long over ? for thee the weeds and battle,
for others the shade and rest. Plant
thou ! that is thy mission, and the joy of
him who reaps the fruit of thy labors shall
be no greater than thine. Knowest thou
not, O thou of little faith, that to look
forward is the best of joys ? Thy reward
is renewed to thee daily in thy hope.
Learn patience, and content thy soul."
And so the young trees and the old
alike, give counsel to him who can under-
stand their language, whether he bends to
listen to the soft voice at his feet, or lifts
his head to catch the diapason of the over-
arching forest ; encouraged by the lesson,
we take up our burden anew in our
case the burden of a watering-pot and
do battle with the drought with a braver
heart and sturdier resolution.
202
XVII
THE BLESSING OF THE RAIN
The garden trees are busy with the shower
That fell ere sunset ; now methinks they talk,
Lowly and sweetly as befits the hour,
One to another down the grassy walk.
Hark ! the laburnum from his opening flower
This cheery creeper greets in whisper light,
While the grim fir, rejoicing in the night,
Hoarse mutters to the murmuring sycamore.
What shall I deem their converse ? Would they
hail
The wild gray light that fronts yon massive cloud,
Or the half bow rising like pillared fire ?
Or are they sighing faintly for desire
That with May dawn their leaves may be o'er-
flowed,
And dews about their feet may never fail ?
ARTHUR HALLAM.
XVII
EFRESHING, indeed, are the
long storms that succeed these
i 1 i *
burning days ; and it is a joy to
see the thirsty grass and plants
drinking in life with every drop. I am
convinced that the true way to render
yourself indifferent to inclement weather
in the country is to plant trees. No rain
can ever hurt them, and, when they are
freshly set out, each shower is a satisfac-
tion to their owner, for it seems as if they
could be seen to grow under its kindly in-
fluence, and thus a day or week of hard
rain, instead of a weariness, becomes a
positive delight. I am not sure that this
would bring compensation to the young
for having to forego their active pleasures,
but the more I become interested in gar-
dening the more I am convinced that it is
the appropriate pleasure for middle life
and old age.
205
The Rescue of an Old Place
Youth hates to wait for anything, and
wishes to realize its dreams so soon as
they are conceived ; but as we advance in
years we take a sober satisfaction in wait-
ing a little for our pleasures, and also we
like something that can recur, and that is
interminable. Most other delights once
experienced are exhausted, but gardening
grows by what it feeds on. It is the same,
and yet never the same ; it can be forever
renewed ; it can be indefinitely extended ;
it is within the reach of all dwellers in the
country, where home amusements are most
needed. It can be compassed by the
slenderest purse, and it will give a man a
chance to spend a fortune if he so desire.
It has its agreeable economies, and its fas-
cinating extravagances. It can be made
to satisfy the most orderly dispositions,
and also return beauty and grace from
careless and wild arrangements. It can
be utilitarian and lucrative, it can be
merely aesthetic and ornamental, or all
four, just as the fancy takes you. In fact
it may be briefly characterized as happi-
ness for the million, with no patent on it.
Added to all these charms is its whole-
206
The Blessing of the Rain
someness, its absorbing character, and,
best of all, a certain humanness about the m
occupation that brings one into pleasant
relations with all sorts of people, and af-
fords one a topic of conversation and a
meeting-ground, even where he is limited
to the most unpromising companions. The
village crone forgets her gossip when you
talk to her about her Rose bushes, or her
last new Geranium slip ; the farmer waxes
eloquent over the merits of a new potato,
or a way of protecting melons, and you
find yourself always interested and in-
structed, instead of bored, since almost
any one you meet in the country can tell
you something you are glad to know; or
else he is eager to learn what you are do-
ing yourself, which is a sure way to afford
you entertainment, since every man is
happy when allowed to ride his own
hobby. All of which has a connection
with rain, however little obvious it may be,
since the moral of my discourse is, that
when one becomes not only resigned to
rain but glad of it, he has taken a step
toward true philosophy.
A garden after a shower has always an
207
The Rescue of an Old Place
Beauty of a especial charm ; everything is sweeter and
hower. r fresher, even in its often bedraggled con-
dition. I have a passion for dabbling in
water-coloring of this description, and can-
not keep my hands from the weeds and
flowers, when I venture forth to see how
my favorites have borne the storm. It is
a delight to put one's arms about a boun-
cing peony, with its red cheeks all cold
and dripping, and tie a string around it
to keep its bright faces clean. The for-
ward flowers kiss you as you struggle to
encircle them ; the wet leaves box your
ears, as if you were taking a liberty. It is
some time before you can accomplish your
purpose, and you arise from the encounter
quite breathless and dripping, with the
pink and white faces, huddled up together,
all laughing at your condition.
It is June, and the last of the Fleur-de-lis
are quite broken down, their pearly petals
draggled in mud and defaced by water.
This delicate French beauty will put up
with no plebeian touch, but withers and
dies if brought in contact with the earth.
The Roses stand up, after their bath, quite
fresh and shining, but the buds, which are
208
The Blessing of the Rain
so blighted by a heavy rain that they do
not open afterward, remind me of the Aus-
trian violinist in " A Week in a French
Country House," who greatly admired an
English beauty, but confided to a friend
his reason for not offering to marry her :
" She vould vash me, and I should
die."
Many things are broken down and re-
quire tying up. If the rain has continued
for several days the chickweeds are ram-
pant, and overrun everything. New plants
that have been on the anxious seat during
the dry weather have decided to stay, and
are putting forth satisfactory leaves.
The joyful Pear-trees shake their drops The cat-bird
, f i i converses.
down upon you, the cat-bird sits on the
grape trellis and inquires what you are do-
ing there. It is a way he has. He lives
in the Box arbor, and thinks he owns the
earth, and that our strawberries are his.
He scolds the cat, and defies the robin,
and has such a trig, gentlemanly air about
him, with his well-brushed dark coat, that
one might christen him Sir Charles Gran-
dison. He makes me a bow, and says
civil things (or uncivil) in his own tongue,
209
The Rescue of an Old Place
which, unfortunately, I . do not under-
stand.
"I thought you told me this parrot
could talk ? "
" So he can ze parrot lankwich
you don't expect all ze lankwiches for ten
tollar, do you ? "
Thus our cat-bird, which costs us no-
thing but strawberries, discourses in a jar-
gon which we would fain comprehend, so
as to answer him according to his deserts ;
and sometimes of a Sunday morning he
sings us a glorious tune.
When the rain comes, Apollo, the par-
rot, climbs to the top of the tree in which
he is perched, and spreads all his bright
feathers to catch the shower. Elongating
his wings, he makes them meet over his
brow in the very attitude of the cherubim,
and then, turning a somersault, he hangs
head downward, that the water may thor-
oughly drench his plumage. With all his
gold, and red, and green glittering with
raindrops, he resembles some superb
blossom quivering on a stem, and makes
a beautiful spectacle of himself. When
his bath is done he chatters and laughs
210
The Blessing of the Rain
with glee, and sings his merriest song, with
some disregard of rhythm and tune, but
none of harmony, till all the smaller birds
begin to pipe in company.
The dusty foliage emerges brilliantly
shining and fresh. Every shower seems
to bring a new spring, and the world never
fails to be surprised at the renovation
which succeeds the rain. There seem, in-
deed, to be new heavens and a new earth.
The drooping evergreens lift up their tas-
seled heads and take courage ; to them
it means life and new hope. The vines
throw out their tendrils, and the Honey-
suckle emits a keener perfume. The white
Lilies that come to rejoice us just as the
Roses are going, gleam in the twilight, tall
and fair. Who falsely says that it is merely
a license of the poets to mingle Roses and
Lilies, since they do not blossom at the
same time ? With us the Irises and the
white Flower de Luce linger till after
the Roses are in bloom, and then, before
the queen is wholly out of sight, come Th*flou*r
these stately princesses, her followers, like
train-bearers of high degree, all clad in
white and gold, nearest the throne, if not
211
The Rescue of an Old Place
rivals for the ' ighest place of all. Is it
the thorns that make the Rose the royal
flower, by rendering her difficult of ac-
cess, and surrounding her with a body-
guard of lances 1 Who shall say 1 There
are moods in which her sumptuous beauty
and heavy fragrance seem less regal than
the haughty, willowy grace of her rival
flower, and we hesitate to choose.
Mistaken And not the flowers alone rejoice in the
life-giving drops, but the "sweet smale
grass," refreshed and strengthened, lifts
its green blades like the spear-heads of a
rising army. The dusty mantle that has
veiled its gentle beauty falls from it, and
the wonderful variation of its tints again
delights the eye. Those artists who set
our teeth on edge with verdigris and
arsenic floods, to represent this dearest
and homeliest garment of our mother
earth, seem to me never to have entered
into and possessed its secret, the secret
of myriad shadows, of myriad lights, each
catching a reflection from its neighbor
blade, the brown earth below, the azure
sky above. No greenest green of foliage
or meadow ever shocks the most sensitive
212
The Blessing of the Rain
vision, for Nature, truest of painters, never Nature it
fails to break her colors with such subtle
mixtures, that only the utmost training of
eye and hand enables the artist to hint
her secret upon canvas ; and he who, with
a palette of crude pigments of raw pri-
mary colors, seeks to render the shifting
emerald of spring, the topaz of the new-
mown field, or the gold of harvest, is as
one who would catch the flash of the dia-
mond, or the burning heart of the ruby, on
the brush's point, and think to imprison it
forever.
There are some lines of Matthew Ar-
nold that a wet garden always brings to
mind, in which the poet has truly caught
the spirit of the fragrant scene. None
but a frequenter and true lover of gardens
could, in a few words, have thus pictured
the mingled dismay and hope with which
one views his garden-plot after a rain has
both distressed and refreshed it :
So, some tempestuous morn in early June,
When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,
Before the roses and the longest day
When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor
With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May,
And Chestnut-flowers are strewn
213
The Rescue of an Old Place
Th* garde* So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
in the rain. From the wet field through the vext garden
trees
Come, with the volleying rain and tossing
breeze ;
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I !
Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go ?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-william with his homely cottage smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow ;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening star.
214
XVIII
DISCO URA CEMENTS
Even now the devastation is begun,
And half the business of destruction done.
GOLDSMITH.
O rivers, forests, hills, and plains !
Oft have ye heard my cantie strains ;
But now, what else for me remains
But tales of woe ?
ROBERT BURNS.
XVIII
HERE are other things beside Gardening
. . . a snare.
drought to depress the spirits
of the planter, who has often
reason to wonder why he en-
tered upon his disheartening career.
It was, I believe, Sir George Cornewall
Lewis who declared that life would be a
very enjoyable thing were it not for its
pleasures, which is convincing proof that
he must at some time or other have inter-
ested himself in gardening, since this pur-
suit, which at first seems, of all others, the
most gentle and enticing, leads the un-
wary dilettante from woe to woe before it
has done with him.
As soon as our forest is tall enough to
show above it, we are talking of erecting
an arch at its most obvious point of en-
trance, with the appropriate inscription,
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here !
our experience leading us to think that
217
The Rescue of an Old Place
the only way to enjoy a prospective wil-
derness is to find one's blessedness in
being among the happy few who expect
nothing, and therefore can never have any
but agreeable surprises. This arch, which
perhaps will more appropriately take the
form of a lich-gate, is to be sculptured
with high reliefs of the woodchuck and
the field mouse, while the rose-bug and
the wire-worm are to find a prominent
place in the general decoration. This
architectural step has been suggested by
the appearance of a new enemy, which
has destroyed the last vestige of our confi-
dence in conifers, and is a new proof of
that perversity in trees to which I have
before reluctantly called attention.
Early in July we noticed a tendency to
/S*f ^ droop in the leaders of some of the Pines
and Spruces, but concluded it might be
the dry hot weather which had affected
their uprightness. A week or two more
passed, and the new tassels of the year's
growth all began to turn yellow, and to
hang down disconsolately. We then sup-
posed that some one in passing might
have given the tops of the little trees an
218
Discouragements
unfriendly twitch, from which they were Trees in
suffering but as the days went by and a tr
stout little Norway Spruce near the house
began to lose its topknot, and Episcopus
himself showed a bad droop in his mitre,
we thought it worth while to look into the
matter more closely, so we chopped off
the head of one of the sufferers, and gave
it a post-mortem examination. Dissec-
tion revealed ravages, and the fatal secret
was out. There was a worm at the core !
And not one worm, but many, small,
white, plump and persevering, indifferent
to resin, and coolly tunneling their way
down the inside of the stem toward the
ground. Certain leaks on the outside,
and port-holes of their own construction,
showed the exact length to which they
had gone, so that by cutting just where
these signs disappeared, we had the satis-
faction of ending the earthly career of the
leading invader, by snipping his fat un-
pleasant carcass neatly in two.
We pursued our insidious foe from tree ^ insidious
to tree with the shears, and beheaded him
with great slaughter. But, alas ! it was
only a realization of the old nursery sneer,
219
The Rescue of an Old Place
about cutting off your nose to spite your
face, for when we had decapitated the
worm, we left a headless tree to serve as
his monument, and, in some cases, the
wretched little monster compelled the
destruction of three years' slow growth.
A fly a/per- The parent of the worm, being a fly of
ambition and taste, invariably picked out
the biggest and showiest of the poor little
struggling trees to lay her eggs in, so that
after the day of judgment was over, and
the ins(ect)urrection crushed, our pride
was crushed with it, for the borer, not
being, alack ! the baseless fabric of a vis-
ion, left an awful wrack behind, both of
our Pines and our vainglory.
Small comfort do we find in the assur-
ance that the Pines will be none the
worse for topping, for, with a life and trees
so short as ours, " a few years " are not
to be lightly regarded, and the poor hill
had precious little good looks to lose, and
has been waiting for its beauty already
quite long enough. Moreover, what assur-
ance can we have that every summer will
not bring with it fresh devastation ? It
takes a year or two for insects to find you
220
Discouragements
out ; but their first call is never their last.
If the borers have intelligence of the exist-
ence of Pines on " Doctor's Hill," they
will come again as sure as the tax-col-
lector, and new woes are in store for us
from their visitations.
Moved by that desire to find consola- Norway
tion in our neighbor's ills, to which La fermg from
Rochefoucauld cynically alludes, we go
about spying at the tops of other people's
evergreens, and find that this is the borer's
year. Driving, a few days since, in a
neighboring village, I saw, with concern,
a long row of tall Norway Spruces at least
forty feet high, that inclose a public gar-
den, all suffering from the attacks of our
fell marauder. Luckily, their tops will
hardly be missed, while ours Wae 's
me ! as Carlyle would moan.
Now the question arises, Is there any
prevention as well as cure for this inflic-
tion ? Is there any application obnoxious
to the borer's mamma that can be put
where she would lay her eggs, and so
induce her to move on ? Has she any
avowed distaste for whale-oil soap, or coal-
tar, or kerosene emulsion, or any other un-
221
The Rescue of an Old Place
pleasant odor ? And if there is such a
deterrent, where should it be applied
on the very top of the leader, or at the
place where the new shoots start from the
old year's growth ?
When a person sets out to plant a tree
?KS of' or two he scarcely bargains for having the
****' study of entomology thrown in, with a
course of chemistry into the bargain, not
to mention toxicology, and the trade of
wholesale murder, until he might as well
begin the career of gardener by serving
an apprenticeship to the Czar of Russia.
I am horrified by the bloodthirstiness de-
veloped by this seemingly innocent diver-
sion j still, this but confirms the view of
pleasures before quoted. Indeed I am not
sure but there is an opening for an essay
on the Dangerous Moral Tendencies of
Gardening. The only objection to it is,
that if the Legislature of Massachusetts
got wind of such a thing it would pass
a law which might prove inconvenient.
There are advantages in having your
morals legislated about by a paternal, not
to say puritanically paternal, government,
but there are drawbacks also one does
222
Discouragements
not always wish to be virtuous by act of
Parliament. Still, if the legislation can be
brought to bear upon worms, we will not
complain.
An eminent Philadelphia physician, vis-
iting Boston, was struck with an inscrip-
tion in the Public Garden, " Dogs forbid-
den to swim in this pond on Sunday,"
and remarked that he knew that education
had been carried to an advanced stage in
Massachusetts, but he had not learned be-
fore that even the dogs had been taught
to read ! How delighted we should be
to learn that the gypsy moth has been
warned off by the General Court. So far
we of the South Shore have been left to
cope, somewhat ineffectively, I admit, with
our own insects, but if the famous moth
finds us out we may expect the govern-
ment myrmidons at its heels, and let us
hope that they will carry the web-worms
with them. But a commission ramping
about the fields, even for so praiseworthy
a purpose, has its terrors.
Another discouragement comes in the
worm which saws off the small branches
of the Oaks, and leaves the ground strewn
223
The Rescue of an Old Place
with twigs, as after a storm ; but that su-
percilious insect disdains trees the size of
ours, and he is still to be anticipated.
Upon some of the dwarf evergreens
we have discovered a white scale insect,
something like a mealy-bug, which covers
the trunks and branches with its white
spots, but that seems to yield to the dis-
suasive effects of soap and water, and
disappears after a good scrubbing.
A Brob- The Hemlocks are to be watched with
a new anxiety, since the newspapers tell
us of a worm that is destroying the foliage
and killing the timber in Potter County,
Pennsylvania. This creature infests the
trees in great quantities, to the dismay of
the lumbermen, who are unable to destroy
them. It is hard enough to persuade a
Hemlock to grow, any way, but if a beast
is lying in wait to devour it, we may as
well give up altogether. I am told that
there is a book as big as the Bible, pub-
lished by the Agricultural Department in
Washington, about nothing in the world
but the insects injurious to forest-trees,
which seems enough to discourage the
planters, even of a wood that can be cov-
224
Discouragements
ered by a pocket-handkerchief, like our A giant
own ; but, to crown all, we rashly took a
Brobdingnagian in the tree-line to walk in
our Lilliput one day a Brobdingnagian
to whom the largest Elm in Hingham is
but a walking-stick and, looking down
upon our three-inch Oaks, he complained
that there were not trees enough ! Lucus
a non lucendo fancy a forest with that de-
ficiency ! Having, moreover, discovered
that our favorite Beeches were Black
Birches, he contrived to impress us with
the fact that the best of our forest was
the prospect, and that, when the trees
were grown, we should not even have
that ! That Brobdingnagian was a terror !
Luckily he had not much daylight to see
the place in, or we should never have the
courage to go on, for wherever we had a
good-sized tree he advised that it should
be cut down, and if there was a square
inch of territory without a seedling he
thought it would be a good plan to put in
a handful ; and he even showed a disposi-
tion to discredit our crack story about a
yield of forty bushels in the palmy days
of our great Pear-tree, Methusaleh, but
225
The Rescue of an Old Place
HetaJus
tribute.
A vista in-
sisted upon.
that may have been because we tried to
make him believe they were barrels.
So much for taking a Man-Mountain
into Lilliput. I would not have trusted
that one alone upon the premises with a
pair of scissors, for there is nothing less
to be depended on than the cutting mania.
Granted that one ultimately accepts the
situation, the moment when your tree
comes down is always one of anguish. It
takes so long to grow, and is so easily de-
stroyed. Our Brobdingnagian took his toll
at last, for he pointed out the fact that the
flourishing little Elm I have been cherish-
ing to shade the seat in the Box-arbor
from the noonday heat, was really injur-
ing the Box and should come down, which
it did forthwith, as a tribute to his supe-
rior knowledge, a nice tree, too, that it
would take ten years and more to grow
again.
We have another disturbing visitor who
insists upon a vista, which involves the
sacrifice of a fine clump of Lilacs and
Buckthorn, that shuts off a view of the
northern part of the place. We are dis-
posed to think that it would be an im-
226
Discouragements
provement to get a glimpse of the great
Elm-trunk and the green grass beyond ;
but, suppose we do not like it when the
bushes are down, what then ?
Even given on his part the best artistic
perception, does it follow that another
man's views of what you ought to like
always suit your own ?
May it not perhaps be wiser to work The contra-
i i ^ riness of hu*
out your own problems in your own way ?
Human nature is so constituted that it
yearns for authority, and when it gets
authority it chafes thereat, and each man
cherishes his own unwisdom as dearer
than the knowledge of another. Such con-
trary beings are we that it is always what
we have not that seems the greater bless-
ing, and we seldom know when we are
well off. The hardest state of mind to
attain is content, and so little do we know
the essence of happiness, that finding the
contented man, we forthwith compassion-
ate him for his lack of ambition, or gird at
him for supineness, and pride ourselves
upon our own divine unrest.
Even thus do the educating influences
of the garden lead us round to philoso-
227
The Rescue of an Old Place
phy, and the vista through the bushes
opens out a moral perspective.
It is only by what we suffer that we
learn what is worth while, and, judging by
the amount of suffering our amateur gar-
dening gives us, we ought in time to have
the wisdom of Solomon, which, ranging
from the Cedar of Lebanon to the Hyssop
on the wall, must have given him a good
deal to undergo. No wonder that he dis-
covered that "all is vanity." Probably it
was borne in upon him by finding a borer
in his own pet Cedar, or a caterpillar crawl-
ing over the remains of his last Hyssop.
We, struggling along after that illustri-
ous gardener of Israel, have at least mas-
tered one lesson, the important one that
Nature, the rudest of task - mistresses,
takes pains early to impress upon her
pupils, sternly reiterating,
I teach by killing, let the others learn !
228
XIX
A WATER GARDEN
Little streams have flowers a many,
Beautiful and fair as any ;
Typha strong, and green bur-seed ;
Willow-herb with cotton-seed ;
Arrowhead with eye of jet,
And the water violet
There the flowering-bush you meet,
And the plumy meadow sweet,
And in places deep and stilly,
Marble-like, the water lily.
MARY HOWITT.
XIX
O long as our friends profit by The order
our mistakes, and gain the re-
sult of our experience, we have
a compensation for our failures ;
but let me give this bit of advice to the
would-be gardener : if one is unable to se-
cure ample assistance, and is obliged to
develop a place slowly, the order of plant-
ing should be trees first, shrubs second,
flowers last of all.
Trees may be considered as the skele-
ton, the framework upon which the whole
scheme is constructed, giving it strong
substantial outlines and decisive meaning.
Shrubbery plays the part of muscles and
flesh, covering the unsightly bare places,
rounding out the form, supplying the essen-
tial, and giving grace and symmetry to the
inclosure ; while flowers may be regarded
as the clothing with which the completed
body is finally adorned. Naturally, one
231
The Rescue of an Old Place
cannot resist sticking in a few flowers as
he goes along, but their disposition is not
final, and they take up a deal of time, and
are, consequently, to be relegated to a
subordinate place at first, and looked for-
ward to as the occupation reserved for
those future unemployed hours when the
woody plants can be left to grow, and ful-
fill their mission.
w neglect Here, where the watering during sum-
our flowers. mer ^ an( j f re q uent digging about and top-
dressing, to retain moisture, are absolutely
essential to trees and shrubs, flowers that
have to be weeded and tended are much
neglected, and only those hardy perennials
that will take care of themselves and defy
weeds, have as yet any kind of a show.
But we are always dreaming of a period
when the ligneous plants can be let alone,
and we can turn our attention seriously to
the purely ornamental.
In the mean time, such wild things as
come up of their own accord, on the hill
and in the meadow, are full of interest,
particularly in early spring and in late
August, when the stock of hardy garden-
flowers runs comparatively low.
232
A Water Garden
At the latter period the little spot that Frogs in the
I call my water garden is really quite a ** **"
sight for such a humble affair, a mere
mud-hole as it were, formed by a spring
at the foot of the hill, which makes a tiny
frog-pond, about ten feet or less in diame-
ter. The frogs themselves are quite orna-
mental, wearing, as they do, the most gor-
geous yellow and green coats, and being
quite sociable and friendly, ready to sit
on a chip and croak when we pay them
a visit, and making music for us in the
spring before the birds are fairly abroad.
The old bull-frog, with a hoarse cold, is
not always a comfort, for he has a way of
coughing at night, like an asthmatic old
gentleman, that is sometimes distressing,
if you lie awake to listen, for it makes you
sure his family must be anxious about him ;
but the piping little ones have quite a
cheerful note, which blends agreeably with
the chirpings of the grasshoppers.
On the marshy banks of the little pool,
which cannot comfortably be reached with-
out overshoes, some slim Willows are
bravely growing, which I fear will some
day make it too shady for the flowers, but
233
The Rescue of an Old Place
at present they serve to give the spot a
cosy and protected air, and the sunlight
shifts through the light foliage, and falls
kindly on the bright group of blossoms
that make it so gay at the end of summer.
Wild flow- The pool is close to an old gray fence,
/* ' over which the wild vines clamber, and
against which the Milkwort, with its stiff
stems and smooth leaves, stands up erect,
its panicled pink blossom a-top ; not a
very choice plant, but a sturdy one, and
the vivid color " carries " well against the
green, and composes agreeably with the
masses of Arrowheads that are at this
season full of blossoms and tall-stemmed
sharp leaves, like a group of Amazons
with their shafts drawn to the ear.
At the edge of the pool a mass of
sedges has been left unmown, and here
are clumps of the creamy blossoms of
the wild Foxglove, mixed with all sorts of
Goldenrod, and some budding Asters,
while the flowers of the Grasses are them-
selves beautiful and various in their own
quiet way, some with plumes and some
with spears, as if ready to oppose the Ar-
rowheads.
234
A Water Garden
The wild Caraway and the Yarrow
show white among the grass, and there is
a wonderful rosy hue in the tall spikes of
Dock that are blooming near by. The
Forget-me-nots are still full of blue blos-
soms, and spread out into the water far
and wide, the earliest to come and the
last to go of all the simple ornaments of
the water garden.
But the glory of the pool is the Cardi- Water-lay
nal-flower, of rich dark red, which lifts *r<! *
its bracted racemes proudly, and with the
dignity of a true hierarch. This shows to
advantage for the first time this year, hav-
ing before fallen a victim to the careless
scythe, so that its blossoms, which it per-
sisted in putting forth in spite of discour-
agements, were only a few inches high.
But this summer no mower was allowed
to come within six feet of the spot, and
we are well rewarded by the glow and
stateliness of this superb flower, which
would be an ornament to the proudest
parterre. The Water-lily bulbs that we
got from a nursery in the spring have
proved a failure, whether because they
were planted too deep in the mud or be-
235
The Rescue of an Old Place
cause the bulbs were defective, it is im-
possible to say. It may be that the spring
is too cold for them, and that they require
the warmer water of a pond ; but they
should not be difficult to raise, for I saw
a pink Water-lily blossoming this summer
A ncky in a rocky pool, with nothing to grow in
but the ball of rich mud in which it had
been tightly packed before being gently
laid in its stony bed. The picturesque
pool is a feature of a small terraced gar-
den, built out from the rocky side of a
steep hill that descends abruptly to the
seashore of Massachusetts Bay. The ter-
race is approached from the level on
which the house above it is built, by a
rough stone stairway, that has for a balus-
trade a huge granite boulder, overgrown
with Ivy, and surmounted with trees.
Great rocks inclose the terrace on three
sides, and down the almost perpendicular
face of one of them trickles the thread-like
stream that falls into the pool below. The
overflow wanders away in a small grassy
channel, along the edge of which tiny
water-plants grow, and Cardinal - flowers
blossom. In the basin a pink Water-lily
236
A Water Garden
is blooming, dainty dweller in a fairy home,
and somewhere in the shadows a goldfish
has a lurking - place. On the stone curb
a blue jug, and a Japanese drinking-vessel
formed of a shell, with a handle of bam-
boo, give the requisite touch of human
needs and uses to this lonely dell.
The little green-turfed terrace is encir- Ati*yt*r-
cled with flowers that thrive in this warm "
nook, where the morning sun shines hotly,
and where its southwestern rays are tem-
pered by the shade of great forest-trees.
So steep is the hill that the shining waters
of the ocean are seen through the topmost
branches of tall Oaks and Hornbeams
and Pines, while others stand far below.
The brown seedy spike of a Dock-plant
hangs out against the lichened crag, and
forms a spot of rich color amid the pre-
vailing gray, while all about, from crevices
in the rocks, and from shady recesses be-
neath them, spring Ferns and Grasses,
with wild flowers and picturesque weeds.
Some young Sassafras - trees, or rather
bushes, near by, which have sprung up
of their own accord, have a particularly
pleasing effect with their yellow -green
237
The Rescue of an Old Place
leaves, and down the face of the rock
straggles a Blackberry-vine, as perfect in
outline and graceful in sweep as if it had
been drawn by the hand of a Japanese ar-
tist, each cluster of finely serrated leaves
having a distinct value against the mottled
stony background, which also gives a fine
relief to the groups of flowers and ferns
that cluster at the base of the pool.
In such a situation nothing showy
should find place, but only those things
which might naturally grow around a for-
est-spring. The little Cresses along the
brook, the tender Forget-me-nots, the fine
small Grasses, the water-weeds and ruby
Lobelia, that have been wisely set here to
enjoy the moisture, add to the wildwood
charm of the pool with its tinkling water.
A 7AsM Taste has gone hand in hand with na-
ture and produced a lovely picture, deli-
cate in detail, fine in color and grouping,
harmonious in general composition. Mi-
nute the space is, almost, as a Japanese
garden, but the effect is dignified and po-
etic. It is not mere prettiness that charms,
but the true artistic feeling with which the
idea has been conceived and executed.
238
A Water Garden
The little scene touches and captivates,
while gratifying all the senses with sound
and sight and color, and soft touch of
ocean breezes and of waving leaves.
Another feature of the picture is a
second semicircular terrace below, with
Clematis-clad wall, to which one clambers
by another flight of steps hewn in the
rock to find more flowers, and more lovely
weeds and grasses, and a second space of
well mown turf, with a fine outlook on the
tossing sea. From this a rugged path
leads by devious ways to the beach below,
where are boats and a yacht riding at an-
chor, and the wide stretch of the great
deep, with white sails upon the surface
and whiter clouds overhead. These ter-
races form a bit of artistic naturalness
that would enchant even a critic from the
Flowery Kingdom, and they were the re- R ts *it <>/<
suit of a charming woman's skillful plan-
ning, and fine sense of the picturesque.
But, returning to our own water garden,
we find higher up the bank the Hawk-
weed showing its yellow stars waving on
slender stems, and the Prunella displaying
its stiff blue clusters, while more Asters
239
The Rescue of an Old Place
blossom, and tufts of Goldenrod cling to
the hillside, and entice us to a climb
among the Pines.
Here we find that the dry summer has
made havoc. Of thirty-five planted in
April we shall barely save a dozen. This
is discouraging, but we have gone bravely
to work to set some more, and try whether
August skies will be more propitious in
the way of rain. We have also put in a
few Savins, though we hear they take un-
kindly to transplanting.
of The little Oaks and Maples have
thriven, and are showing green against the
already withering grass. The soil is yearly
improving by letting it lie fallow, and the
foot sinks into the soft cushion the uncut
hay is making as a covering for the sand
and gravel. If it were not for endanger-
ing the seedlings, quite a crop could be
harvested. It is not soil the hill lacks
so much as rain ; but the long drought
parches and distresses the plantation, and
will do so till the trees can shade the
ground and preserve its moisture.
The small Chestnut group of which I
boasted in the spring has made very little
240
A Water Garden
progress, and hardly looks larger than it
did last summer. Insects injured the
early growth, and there was no later
growth for lack of rain. But the trees
are alive and healthy, so that we have
something to be thankful for. Our one
Mulberry- tree bore fruit plentifully, but
failed to make much leaf-way. None of
these trees were either top-dressed or wa-
tered, or they would have done better. It
is impossible for us to keep everything in
high condition, so that we must content
ourselves with the slow progress that na-
ture affords when unassisted. It really
seems as if sunshine and water are the
prime essentials, and that feeding is not
half so important as drinking. With this
view, it is hard to understand why it would
have upset the economy of nature to have
a shower every night in summer, to re-
fresh the fields and gardens of the world.
Possibly in time, when the new system of
producing rain has been brought down to
a fine point, there will be twice a week in
villages a pyrotechnic display, accompa-
nied with explosions, that will transform
241
The Rescue of an Old Place
the year into a perpetual Fourth of July,
to the delight of the infant mind.
Seriously speaking, should this new en-
tknahtrt terprise prove successful, what a revolu-
tion man is to produce in nature ! To
trust such powers to his pygmy hand is
dangerous, for the consequences of his
personal gratification may be fatal to mil-
lions. Fertilize the Desert of Sahara, and
you cool off the south of Europe. Alter
the temperature of Spain and Italy and
southern France, and what is to become
of the British Isles ? It may be that thus
the future of the Dark Continent is to be
fulfilled. Migrations southward may be-
gin. Norway and Sweden, like Greenland,
may be left principally to the inferior
races, while new colonies spring up in
lands now tenanted but by the wandering
Bedouin or the swarthy Soudanese.
Given new conditions, results are incal-
culable, and if the rain, as well as the
lightning, is to be harnessed to the Char-
iot of Man, who can tell what disaster
shall await the Phaeton who dares to
drive such mighty and resistless steeds ?
Shall he too be hurled to ruin as a punish-
242
A Water Garden
ment for his overtopping ambition? or
will he prove master and lord even of the
elemental forces from whence he came ?
What is most sure is, that before they
yield themselves wholly to his bidding he
must suffer the consequences of his rash-
ness, and win his way to control only by
ghastly sacrifice of human life.
2 43
XX
LANDSCAPE GARDENING
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains ; and of all that we behold
From this green earth ; of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half create
And what perceive.
WORDSWORTH.
XX
ROM unrelated detail upon a An
place, we are gradually led
towards broader effects, and
a desire for more simple rela-
tions of parts to the whole, while a wish
to bring subordination to some central
idea that shall give purpose to the pic-
ture is gradually born in our minds. Thus
our work becomes an education in the
higher principles which must underlie all
beauty.
When we first purchased this old farm A quiet vit-
no dream of landscape gardening crossed
our minds. It was not to found a coun-
try-seat that we bought it, but simply to
get a place to live in, a quiet village home,
as indeed it is, where a lovely view would
gladden our eyes, where we should have
elbow-room, with enough land to cultivate
to provide us with an interest, and where
we could raise hay for our horses, and,
247
The Rescue of an Old Place
perhaps, a few vegetables for ourselves.
A tree or two to shade us, and some
Pines on the hillside to relieve its dreari-
ness, were in our programme, as well as
the Willows along the street ; but we felt
that we had twice as much land as we
needed, and should probably part with a
lot on each side of us before very long,
instead of wishing, as we now do, for a few
acres more.
As in everything else that one begins
in an amateurish way, we looked no fur-
ther along the road we are to travel than
the end of its first enticing curve, and lit-
tle we recked where it was to lead us.
To get rid of barrenness was our obvious
business, but there was no method in our
endeavor beyond the mere putting in of
all the trees and shrubs we could muster
from the resources of the place, or through
the kindness of our friends.
For the first two years it required our
f *?*** best energies to make these live, and there
was not much thought beyond dip
around them, watering them when dry, and
pruning them into shape. But the third
summer, when the bare poles began to
248
Landscape Gardening
have perceptible tops on them, and the
little shrubs to occupy a substantial space
of the earth's surface, we began to be con-
scious of defects of arrangement, of a lack
of meaning and purpose in the picture,
and to feel the necessity of a more artistic
disposition of our forces. The needs of
the place, too, became apparent. The
trees that had been planted for shade
either showed that they would throw no
shadows at all within the next ten years,
at the proper hours, or else would throw
them where they were not particularly
needed. The shrubs in groups looked
crowded, the single ones gave a spotty
appearance to the lawn that was not to be
borne, the driveways were too wide and
their curves unsatisfactory, while the ex-
panses of turf were too brief for beauty.
Each effort at improvement seemed but
to make us the more conscious of our
lacks, and while our neighbors were com-
plimenting us upon the improved appear-
ance of the farm, which no longer looked
like an abandoned sand-hill, we ourselves
were taking counsel together, and coming
to the conclusion that the place was a
249
Tke Rescue of an Old Place
schoolmaster to bring us unto knowledge,
by the painful road of ignorance and
failure.
/w/ The conviction that you know nothing
ivutctd is always a hopeful, if a depressing sign.
When the painter feels that his finished
picture is a wretched daub, when the
writer knows that his last romance is but
a thing of shreds and patches, it is a
proof that he is still growing, that he has
a stronger note to strike, and that his end
is not yet.
One of our leading novelists says that
his stories are to him like those tapestries
wrought by the workman from behind, of
which the weaver sees only the wrong side,
the knots and ends of the worsted, the
seams of the foundation, so that when the
public views his finished work with de-
light, recognizing its sincerity and dra-
matic truth, the satisfaction of his readers
is to him a wonder, since from his own
point of view he knows not whether he
has wrought well or ill.
All great successes, I fancy, must be
surprises to the men who make them, for
the discontent of the artist with his paint-
250
Landscape Gardening
ing, of the poet with his verse, of the The pott
playwright with his play, is a penalty ex- "painter
acted by the ideal for which men strive, s *^ fr '
and which all the more surely eludes the
greatest, whose imagination is the most
far-reaching. When a man is satisfied
with what he has done he has reached his
limit ; from that point he goes down-hill,
imperceptibly it may be at first, but none
the less surely.
Our own discontent with our landscape-
gardening convinces me that we have a
future before us for a good while to come.
Our picture will bear a lot of working on
for many years yet, and in the mean time
we have room for a succession of despairs,
which will serve to keep us properly
humble.
But that we have on the north of our A landscape
house a landscape to evolve that is a true *"*
picture, no one can deny who looks out
upon the ever-changing meadow from the
bowery veranda from which we view it
with never-failing joy. Not a far-reaching
view, but such a one as Englishmen like
to paint, a distant hill, a few clustering
cottages, a level stretch of meadow with a
25
The Rescue of an Old Place
A ***** winding stream ; some Willows near at
hand. So far, so good ; but the fore-
ground is the puzzle. It is a muddle at
present, being a sacrifice to the utilities,
and is more or less disfigured with fruit-
trees and vegetables, and piles of sand
that have been dumped upon the marsh.
A good deal veiled it is, fortunately, by
the bending boughs of Pear and Apple
trees laden with fruit, which is their plea
for life, and when one is seated the balus-
trade of the veranda is an efficient screen,
so that one can freely enjoy the pleasing
prospect.
The French talk of the St. Martin dcs
femmes, which comes to them after the
beattte du diable has long gone by ; and our
meadow, too, has its fleeting glory of
youth in early spring, with Apple-bloom
flush, and delicious verdancy to match,
and then, after a commonplace summer
of good looks, it comes to its Martinmas,
and bums, and glows, and smiles, with a
richness and warmth that are the precursor
of the
Hectic of the dying year.
In this mature beauty, which is far more
252
Landscape Gardening
permanent than the more exquisite spring Autumn
,. beauty of tk*
loveliness, there is a great charm. The
monotony of July greens has yielded to
the deeper tones of the woodland in Au-
gust. The declining sun casts longer
shadows in the afternoon. The grass
along the winding stream, now at its low-
est, stands up high from the surface of
the water, with darkly shaded edges the
more apparent that its prevailing tones are
russet with bright golden lights, where the
hay has not yet been cut. Here and there
the broad expanse shows a hay-cart and a
few moving figures, the one touch of life
wanting at other seasons to the landscape.
The rounded hay-cocks in the distance
are lightly shaded on the side opposite
the light. There are streaks of red-brown
where some of the grass is in blossom, and
of vivid green where masses of sedges
line the low banks of the tiny winding
river, in which their reflections tone the
blue through soft gradations to the deepest
shadow. A solitary heron floats above
the marsh, beating the air with slow
strokes of his broad wings. In the even-
ing sometimes the clanging of the wild
2 53
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
geese is heard, the first deep tone in the
knell of dying summer. Now and then
a white flight of gulls comes up from the
harbor searching for fish, pouncing down
behind the grass after some luckless perch
in the water. The shadows of the dis-
tant Oaks are darkest blue, and some
far-off Elms fleck the front of an orange-
colored cottage and subdue it to harmony.
The gray roofs and red chimneys of the
distant houses and barns, half-buried in
foliage, seem an essential of the picture,
giving it that touch of humanness without
which a landscape lacks its final charm.
The veranda rail, with its drapery of Wood-
bine, gives a strong accent that brings out
the values of the middle distance, while
the tops of two old Apple-trees, laden with
fruit, make a pleasing curve in contrast to
the level lines of the party-colored marsh,
elsewhere broken by the ashy-green foli-
age of some graceful Willows across the
invisible road.
So much, at least, our landscape gar-
dening has accomplished ; the ugly line
which killed our predecessor has been
obliterated by our border-plantation, and,
254
Landscape Gardening
to all intents and purposes, the great
stretch of grassy meadow, with its winding
stream and its bounding masses of Oak
and Maple woods, is our own park, for
none of its owners get the good of it as
we do. For us it glows with sunshine, or
frowns with a passing cloud ; ours all this
wealth of jasper and chrysoprase and tur-
quoise ; as much ours as the silver sheen
of the Willows which wave so softly gray
against it, and rest the eye from the daz-
zling tints in which the old marsh arrays
herself for the mowers. But the problem
that vexes our spirits is that unshaped
foreground, and how it may be made to
blend more completely with the meadow
into one harmonious whole. If the great
Apple-tree could but change places with a
certain Elm, that is of no use in the land-
scape where it stands, the matter would
settle itself. Two more Apple-trees to cut
down, and you have a composition.
But a Seek-no-further, which bears sev-
. . must not be
eral barrels of early apples that are very
good eating, is not easily to be sacrificed,
even to the demands of a landscape, to
which it is also advantageous from its
255
The Rescue of an Old Place
height and mass, that could not be re-
produced by any tree planted in our day,
unless, indeed, we had the purse of Miss
Catherine Wolfe to spend thousands in
moving giants. If it could be had for the
asking, I think I should choose a low,
wide-spreading Oak rather than a stately
Elm, or possibly the view might be im-
proved if we had no tree at all, but that
effect we have from an upper window,
which may have its balcony some day.
A dtoriif A whirlwind swept up the valley on the
twelfth of August, and very nearly settled
the question for us by making a clean
sweep, but, luckily, contented itself with
two or three great boughs full of apples,
which are left hanging now by a slip of
bark, in hopes that they may get sap
enough through this narrow channel to
ripen, but it looks doubtful.
The same storm made havoc in the
garden with such tall Hollyhocks and
Poppies as had carelessly been left untied,
and then whisked a branch from off our
great Elm, and split in two a large Swamp
Maple on the other side of the street. A
five-minute tornado it was, with pouring
Landscape Gardening
flood that swept the main street of the
village, and littered it with fallen trunks
and limbs twisted off in its whirling flight.
As brief, but more violent a gale I have
seen in Maine, cutting a forest into wind-
rows, as a mower would cut grass with his
scythe.
To make a landscape garden one must
live with it and study it, putting in a touch quirts study.
here and there, as the painter treats his
canvas, now effacing a spot, again adding
an accent, blending, harmonizing, even
destroying, if need be, and beginning
once more. Advice you may listen to,
but be not over-hasty to accept sugges-
tion. Weigh each idea well before you
admit it, look at it from all sides, for it
will always have more than one. It is you
who will have to live with the picture, and
it is your mind that should lend the indi-
viduality that will make the scene your
own. It is, after all, the personal touch
that is worth while.
A fair woman, who is a summer neigh-
bor of ours, took me the other day through
interesting grounds, which her own taste
and care had brought into a wild and yet
257
The fescue of an Old Place
controlled beauty. Boulders draped with
vines, and shrubberies of native growth,
lined the long avenue that wound up a
wooded and rocky hillside to a home
which overlooks Massachusetts Bay. But
A vifwof the finest feature of the commanding pros-
pect was a glimpse of the rounded hills
cZZtttt. and silver-shining water of Hingham Har-
bor, toward which the eye was led over
miles of treetops. Just in front was a
lawn of perfect turf, golden-green in the
low sunlight, and a little way off, against
the blue dome of sky, stood up some heavy
Cedars, their black masses of foliage giv-
ing just the required force of accent to
the foreground, throwing far away into
the remotest distance the lovely outline
of the Blue Hills of Milton.
An abiding Such a picture one cannot forget. In-
tclligcnce and taste have added to it the
last refining touch. Remoteness is here,
and sylvan wildness, contrasted with the
gentle charm of well-swept turf, and skill-
fully subordinated groups of flowering
shrubs and plants, that complete, but form
no jarring note in the beautiful scene. To
me it seemed perfection, but with the eye
258
Landscape Gardening
of the true artist who loves his work, my
hostess noted a ledge here, an obtrusive
Oak-top there, which, to her fastidious
taste, seemed to intrude. For the true
lover of nature works forever at his pic-
ture, ever sensitive to a new charm, watch-
ful for a fresh effect, rejoicing in each
change, painting with a palette of the
great Mother's blending, on a canvas of
her own contriving, with an impression-
ism that cannot falsify, and a detail that
is never intrusive. In this great school
one learns breadth without vagueness, in-
tensity without violence, and softness that
cannot be effeminate. The value of at-
mosphere, the glory of the sky, can never
be out of key with the picture, and the
" seeing eye," by careful study and patient
waiting, can here evolve ideal beauty from
material form.
259
XXI
THE WANING YEAR AND ITS
SUGGESTIONS
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulnessl
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.
KEATS.
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her ; 't is her privilege
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy.
WORDSWORTH.
XXI
RUR season's labor draws to its
close, and with it comes a pe-
riod of rest and reflection, as
we turn our thoughts back
through this pleasant summer of work and
hope.
The charm of a long autumn is very Autumn
great, but seldom permitted by our capri-
cious climate, which is apt to spoil the
garden in September, and then make the
misfortune the more apparent by a suc-
cession of mild October days, when flow-
ers and green leaves would suit the soft
warm weather.
This year, which has made eccentric
shifts of all the months in turn, giving
us a dry April and a cold July, bestowed
upon us a most enchanting autumn, mild
and free from storms, so that vegetation
remained perfect till late October, and the
harvest-time was most propitious.
263
The Rescue of an Old Place
A d*iay*d No early frost blighted the cornfield, or
marred the golden pumpkin's fairness.
No rain made the apple and pear gather-
ing a disappointment and a sorrow. Late
flowers lined the garden -walks in un-
chilled splendor until mid-October, while
the soft September haze and the mellow
glow of the suceeding month showed Ma-
ples in full green leaf, and Oaks with
only a touch of ripened crimson.
When the autumn comes thus slowly to
maturity, a tinge of russet and gold creeps
softly into the landscape. Here and there
is the accent of a red leaf or branch, like
the note of a trumpet in an orchestra. Soft
browns steal into the meadows, and form
a shade on northern slopes. Dead are
the Goldenrods and Asters, faded the
roadside flowers. The Rose-hips make
ruddy gleams in the bushes, and a few be-
lated Barberries cling to their thorny stems
in wizened splendor, while other berries,
purple and black, cluster by the fences,
and the nut-trees hang out their smooth
or prickly burrs, promising a harvest of
brown fruit
This is the green old age of the year,
The Waning Year and its Suggestions
cheery and fruitful, bountiful and rich. Tkeoidagt
J 0f the year.
Gone are the hurry of spring and the bur-
den of summer, the slow harvest has been
gathered, and repose has come to the
teeming earth. Now must the gardener
look forward and plan for the coming sea-
son, and set his bulbs for spring blooming,
and clear away the rubbish of dead stems
from the flower-beds, and transplant pe-
rennials that they may blossom freely the
following summer.
It is well in planting a garden to ar-
range for this season, which is so pleasing,
by having a profusion of hardy plants that
are not easily disheartened by a chill, and
make a brave show as the year wanes.
This is a care often neglected by public
gardeners, who stock their parterres with
ephemeral blooms that the first cold
breath destroys, leaving but a dreary
group of dry sticks behind.
Well mingled with these more delicate Late u<>*-
plants should be those hardy perennials *
that lift their gallant little heads and smile
in the very teeth of winter. The hardy
Chrysanthemum, the Marigold, and Calen-
dula are a delight in the late autumn, with
265
The Rescue of an Old Place
their cheery tints. The Salvia, less hardy,
is the glory of a September garden, and
many another flower, with a little shelter
at night, will make a walk gay and cheer-
ful that would otherwise be gloomy with
decay and desolation. The Japanese An-
emone is a treasure at this season, and
those bushes bearing ornamental fruit,
which hangs on even amid the snows of
winter, should never be omitted from a
border.
Comfort Like a happy temper in adversity is a
gleam of color in the garden in the late
autumn. One draws a lesson of good
cheer from a Calendula, so undaunted and
gay even when the snows are falling on its
golden head. A cluster of red berries on
a dry stem gives a distinct joy in early
winter, and life is made brighter by the
aspect of hardy blossoms and hardier fruit
when all the trees around are stripped of
foliage.
In summer the charm of a garden is in
its coolness and shade, in the dark shelter
of thick trees and the quiet of a shaded
arbor. In the autumn we seek the sun-
shine and desire color and warmth, wish-
266
The Waning Year and its Suggestions
ing to forget the coming cold and the
swift fading of leaf and flower.
It is like the natural clinging of man to
.. r ... . dreads death
life which increases as years steal upon it*s than the
him. Youth does not dread death as age age
shrinks from it. The habit of living be-
comes stronger as we descend the hill,
and the suggestion of interruption seems
impertinent. The late scentless flowers
are more precious than the summer Roses,
for their time will soon be gone. Nature
cheats us with her autumn splendor, which
beguiles the mind into forgetting that it is
the precursor of decay. While we admire
the glory of a Maple grove, we do not real-
ize that the storms of winter are gathering
behind the forest. When the mountains
are purple in the low sunlight, we forget
the snows that shall soon whiten their
summits, and there is wisdom in this
natural instinct that forbids foreboding
when joy is at hand, which can enjoy the
present without seeking to lift the curtain
of the future.
Let us rejoice, then, in the autumn flow- Rejoice i*
ers ; in the soft atmosphere that clothes
the world with beauty; in the great
267
The Rescue of an Old Place
moon's yellow light; in the round, soft
clouds, and the wild scurry of the dun
rack that scuds across the heavens when
the breeze rises. Full soon will that
searching wind scatter the jewel -like
leaves, and tear the last petal from the
shrinking flowers, while the grass grows
brown and sear, and the soft earth stiffens,
like a body from which life has departed.
Too soon will the valiant head of the last
Daisy be buried in a mantle of snow, and
the leaden sky bend low above a frozen
earth. Let us be glad then while we may,
for the days shorten, and with them our
summer joys, and the lives of the autumn
flowers.
A it**** But as the summer wanes, and we turn
once more from nature to our own minds
for refreshment and solace, we begin to
consider what the year's efforts have
brought to us, and to reflect what is the
serious lesson taught by all our labor, and
to sum up our inward experiences, before
we take that account of our material stock
with which this simple record is to close.
No experiment is really valuable which
does not conduce to the mind's growth,
268
The Waning Year and its Suggestions
and therefore amid these frolicsome rec-
ords of disaster and enjoyment, I would
wish to insert this one didactic chapter,
which may easily be skipped by those who
seek amusement only, in reading this little
book, in which I can emphasize in a few
words the effect of out-of-door interests
upon the mind and moral nature of those
who enjoy them. And I do this the more
willingly because I believe that a taste for
gardening is one of the elemental impulses
of humanity. There are individuals with-
out it, as there are people without sight or
hearing or a sense of smell ; but, on the
whole, to dig comes naturally to man, and
at some time or other in the course of his
existence the desire to own a portion of
the earth's surface is apt to seize upon
him, and demand satisfaction.
This impulse is of maturity rather than A *.
... maturuy.
of youth, for gardening in its larger sense
is a thoughtful pursuit, appealing to the
broader qualities of the understanding.
It is not merely the desire for healthful
exercise which stirs a man, but also the
wish to learn the secrets of our common
mother, to force her hand, as it were, and
269
The Rescue of an Old Place
compel her to reward his toil. The fable
of the giant Antaeus, who renewed his
strength when he came in contact with the
earth, has a subtle meaning, for it is by
this contact that many weary souls have
found rest and arisen refreshed.
To him who is tired of mankind the
solitude and peace of a garden have a
rare charm. Many a great statesman
has turned from the cares of state to till
his fields, or cultivate his flower-beds and
trees, his alert brain finding full range
for its activity in some scheme of land-
scape, or some great project for fertiliz-
ing a barren waste and rendering it pro-
ductive.
/M/r Gardening gratifies the thoughtful mind,
because it does not look for immediate re-
sults. It inculcates patience in all its
teachings, patience not only with pro-
cesses, but with results, for disappoint-
ments have often to be met ; the best of
schemes fail of accomplishment, new ene-
mies arise on every hand, visible and hid-
den. To combat them requires perse-
verance, fertility in resource, promptness
in action.
270
Tbe Waning Year and its Suggestions
The gardener's life can never be purely
contemplative. However fair his domain,
he must perforce keep his eyes open in it,
and his mind active. Vigilance must be
his attribute, or he will have cause for re-
gret By watching he learns what to do,
and what to leave undone, the habits
of the plants he tends, their needs, their
uses, the different phases of their beauty.
Unconsciously he becomes educated, and
his mind lays up new stores of facts and
deductions for future use.
The planter also grows in unselfish zeal
TJ toil htlps tkt
as his plans increase in scope. He pre-
pares for the future race, not alone for his
own joy. The trees he disposes for an-
other generation to sit under; he plants
timber for the heir to cut ; he adds to his
broad acres that he may leave them to his
children. For himself the toil, for others
the fruit of his labors ; and thus, setting
aside his own recompense, he comes into
a larger manhood, into that fullness of life
which only belongs to him who has for-
gotten self, and lives for an end he cannot
hope to see.
From all this training should result en-
271
The Rescue of an Old Place
Moral train- durance of unavoidable evils, fortitude in
l ga/d^ a disappointment, serenity of mind. Thus
the garden shows itself to be a school of
the higher virtues, of patience, of tranquil-
lity, of vigilance, of fortitude, of unselfish-
ness and high serenity.
More lessons than these it teaches,
therefore small wonder that the g-roping
soul of man, ever seeking higher things,
turns to this simplest pursuit as a child to
its mother, finding in her arms comfort
for his unrest. Unconsciously he seeks
this school, which is so great a help to his
spirit, and thinks often it is the pure air
and exercise alone that have given tone to
his nerves, and fresh vigor to his under-
standing.
itt best efftct But, after all, the best thing the garden
does for man is to imbue him with a love
of home, to anchor him to that one spot of
the earth's surface which he calls his own,
and to which he can impart some portion
of his own individuality. The acres he
has tilled, the garden-plot he has watered,
will always be dear to him and to his chil-
dren, and it is this desire for a home and
an inheritance for those who shall come
272
The Waning Year and its Suggestions
after him, that drives him to the purchase
of land and the beginning of agriculture.
A man who owns a freehold in his Tkeimpor-
. tance of a
country becomes of account at once ; it freehold.
lifts him from the position of a transient
into the dignity of a resident ; he gives
hostages to fortune ; he becomes an es-
tablished citizen, in place of a possible
tramp, and is of more value in the com-
munity forthwith. The effect upon him-
self is elevating and composing. It stills
his restlessness, allays ennui, turns the
current of his mind into new channels,
provides him with an amusement for his
leisure hours, while giving occasion for
healthful exertion, as well as stimulating
wholesome thought. It is opposed to
morbidness, it forbids subjectivity, it
rouses the imagination, and gratifies the
love of beauty.
There is that fine largeness of quality
in it as an amusement that appeals to the
simplest minds, as well as to the most
comprehensive. It is this which proves
that it is elemental and human to love a
garden, to enjoy the soil, to find comfort
in watching the development of plants
273
The Rescue of an Old Place
and trees, and joy in their blossom and
fruitage.
In America we need just this to give us
stay and balance. In the older world,
where habits are more established, the
taste is strong. Here it is overgrown by
many things. In so great a land as ours
one portion of the soil seems not enough
for the citizen. He wants a ranch in
Colorado, an Orange-grove in Florida, a
seaside home on the coast of Maine, in
addition to his city dwelling. But as the
crowd increases, and the nation ages, more
and more will men concentrate their ener-
gies upon one spot, and the love of home
and locality will grow more intense, as it
is apt to do in the human being when
years bring greater quiet to his spirit, and
make rest his choicest blessing.
When we are at last sure that our chil-
/ dren will be content to reap what we have
sown, to repose under the trees that we
have planted, solidity and peace will come
to us, and life will grow more simple and
more pleasurable to our people. Then
will the garden be the true pleasure-
ground, and its wise stillness will pervade
The Waning Year and its Suggestions
the character of the men who find its cul-
ture a real education, and there learn the
needed lessons of perseverance, and pa-
tient waiting for the good the future
brings, leading lives without hurry, full
of calm interest in their surroundings, and
with no wish for change.
275
XXII
UTILITY VERSUS BEAUTY
Happy art thou, whom God does bless
With the full choice of thine own happiness ;
And happier yet, because thou 'rt blest
With prudence how to choose the best :
In books and gardens thou hast placed aright
(Things which thou well dost understand.
And both dost make with thy laborious hand)
Thy noble, innocent delight.
ABRAHAM COWLBY.
The trumpet of a prophecy ! O wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind ?
SHBLUHT.
XXII
spite of all the moral effects A trial to
, ... tht temper.
of the garden upon the philoso-
pher within us, I am constrained
to confess that it has its trials
for the average temper, and that in that
development of patience for which it
works, there is a good deal of stumbling
by the way, during the battle between the
useful and the ornamental ; for on any
moderate-sized place, with only a man or
two to do the necessary work, there is a
constant conflict between what is of pres-
ent importance, and what serves for future
adornment.
This is one reason why we like to have
as many things done in the autumn as
can safely be accomplished at that time,
because of all seasons of the year the
spring is the one when everything comes
at once, and your factotum is more than
279
The Rescue of an Old Place
ever distracted by the various calls upon
his time and attention.
I used to wonder why fanners were
always behindhand with their work, and,
while apparently idle part of their time,
were driven to death for about two thirds
of the year; but I have discovered that
the weather is responsible for a good deal,
first by being cold and perhaps wet in
the spring, so that the ground cannot be
tilled until late, and then suddenly sending
everything ahead by a few unseasonable
days of heat and sunshine. Then there
is a scurry for the hitherto impracticable
digging of the vegetable-garden, a head-
long rush to get the seeds in ; the grass,
which always interferes at unseasonable
moments, demands the lawn-mower, and
will not wait a minute. The shrubs that
you have been waiting to move until the
weather should be mild enough to permit
your superintending the operation (one
can cope with a piercing east wind for
this purpose, but not with a northwest
snowstorm) shake off their icicles, and
all at once begin to leave out ; in a day
or two it will be too late. If there is
280
Utility versus Beauty
a tree that you have intended to plant
at this season the complications are in-
creased, for setting a tree properly is a
work of time, and delay here is danger-
ous.
The perennials need overhauling and
replanting in the flower-garden ; the weeds
are rushing ahead and choking every-
thing ; you want your man to attend to
them when he has to be putting in peas
and potatoes for your future sustenance.
The whole spring is one breathless
moment, through which you are rushed
helter-skelter, leaving half your needs un-
attended to ; and while you are still en-
deavoring to catch up with the work, all
of a sudden our headlong summer bounces
into haying time, and the hapless beautifier
is worse off than ever.
Of what account are trees and shrubs
and flowers, or even the ever-clamoring
lawn itself, when the fields are to be
shorn, and possible thunderstorms lurk
low along the horizon ? This is the weeds'
moment, and they avail themselves of
it promptly. Up comes the Chickweed
among the peas and corn ; the flower-
281
The Rescue of an Old Place
garden fairly bristles with Plantains and
Mallows, and the paths are slippery with
Purslane. On the lawn the Dandelions
begin to intrude, and go to seed when
they are only an inch high, lying down
deceitfully under the lawn-mower, and
poking up their white plumes the minute
it has passed in the most imperturbable
manner.
1* i s * no use to summon any one.
" That grass must be cut to-day," or " the
hay must be turned, or forked over, or
got in, or whatever " there is no appeal ;
harvest-claims take precedence, and the
weeds nod their heads at each other, and
say " Come along ! " and life is to them a
beautiful holiday.
By the time the last load of hay has
been safely stowed away, these same weeds
have to be coped with, for they have be-
come a forest, and that still further post-
pones the time when the aesthetic side of
your place can really have any considera-
tion given to it. At last, when you do get
round to it, it is too late to do anything,
and one can only sit down and make plans
for another season, which will again be
282
Utility versus Beauty
buried out of sight, in the rush which is
sure of a periodical return.
For this reason August is a month Auf^ta
which I delight in, for then there is a *
moment's breathing-space before the fruit
harvest and the terrible " second crop "
are again upon the carpet. It is a good
time for grading and sodding before the
autumn rains. With care, and a ball of
earth, some of the hardy shrubs can be
moved ; if it has been a dry summer, now
is the chance to put in some evergreens
and to remodel your beds of dwarfs. But
no sooner do we get fairly to work, and
the general effect begins to improve and
ideas to take shape, than the marsh,
which usually claims the whole late fall,
and the months of March and April, puts
in an appeal for drainage, and, presto!
the men who were engaged in ornamental
work are whisked away, and you can only
see the tops of their heads above the edge
of a pile of dirt, as they burrow their way
along an unsightly ditch.
Then comes September with its pears p fars atfrf
and apples. Your own fruit is a fine thing somfcare -
to have in theory, beautiful to look for-
283
Tbe Rescue of an Old Place
ward to, something to be proud of, but it
is a tremendous burden when it comes.
The gathering is an important labor, but
taking care of it when it is gathered is in-
finitely worse. The pears, especially, must
be watched daily, turned and selected,
and the refuse rejected, till their owner
would be happier if he never saw a Bart-
lett or a Jargonelle again. The early
apples, welcome and useful as they are,
demand the closest attention, and it is not
until the last Russet is gathered, and bar-
reled, and stowed away in the cellar for
winter use, that the amateur farmer can
have an easy mind.
Profit m a Perhaps it would be wiser to choose be-
ftirdtn afttr t
-//. tween ornamental and useful management
of a place to begin with, and content your-
self with either a farm or a garden, as the
case might be ; but in this event, though
one would probably have better results to
show, he would miss much of the fun of
the more helter-skelter methods of land-
scape-practice, as well as the profits of
orderly market-gardening, which can never
be very successful in the hands of ama-
teurs. There is, however, a sense of profit
284
Utility versus Beauty
in your own garden as an accessory, what-
ever statistics show, which is not to be fore-
gone ; and, as to the pleasure of getting
trees and shrubs in their proper places,
who that has read these chapters can
doubt that they are a source of amuse-
ment and instruction alike, even to the
most unpractical of their protectors ?
The problems of the old place will con-
tinue to develop and add puzzle to puzzle Sr"
in our uninstructed minds; we may pay
dear for our whistle, but we shall have
the whistle anyhow. After a few more
years of experiment and failure, or suc-
cess, as the wheel turns, we shall proba-
bly come to the conclusion to let the grass
and shrubs grow as they will under the
trees, and let the rest go, which will, I am
disposed to think, be wholly to the advan-
tage of the looker-on. But while some
vestige of vigor is left to us, we shall think
the puzzle part more interesting than the
solution, and so struggle happily on, set-
ting for ourselves ingenious examples, to
be painfully worked out perhaps to a
wrong result. Interest in the place will
be less when we can no longer tinker at it
The Rescue of an Old Place
to advantage, but to that excitement will
possibly succeed the calm enjoyment of
those who sit under the tree they have
planted, and partake of the fruits of their
own vine.
As we look up to-day to the trees, upon
whose tops we could look down three
years ago, we begin to realize the profit of
our labors, and to feel that we may even
live to take pride in them. The birds which
sing in their branches, and build their nests
among the twigs, thank us sweetly for the
shelter thus provided, though their harmo-
nious chatter adds to the precariousness
of a morning nap. The shrubs expand
with vigor, the flowers we have planted
flaunt gayly, the vines are climbing to the
roof-tree. The spot not long ago so deso-
late and unpromising is now sheltered and
verdant. The dull red walls of the house
have taken on a mantle of green, as it
begins to nestle into the shadow of the
upreaching branches, that will erelong
overtop its chimneys. The raw freshness
has largely disappeared, the new place is
melting into the old, and in a few years
more people will have forgotten, as they
286
Utility versus Beauty
so soon do, the former conditions, and
will cease to realize the importance of the
changes made.
The beauty of stately expanses, of deep
solitudes, of extensive lawns, and broad
park-like spaces, we can never attain, but
travelers on the village highway will look
kindly through the overarching trees and
say, " A pleasant home is there, and a fair
outlook on a quiet scene."
Already the Willows of the boundary Summer Jr
stretch up to hide us from the rear. The
Pines are showing dark once more, against
the hill sunbrowned by the September
sun. Yellow leaves are shining on the
Elms and Birches, and the shrill wind
streaks the green grass with bright-hued
foliage, torn from the Maple boughs. The
gay-colored blossoms of autumn flowers
gleam from the shrubberies, and the low-
declining sun casts long shadows across
the turf. Soon will a nipping frost bestrew
the lawn with wrecks of summer glory;
the birds are gathering for their southern
flight ; the year is past its prime. A few
short weeks of hectic color, and then
the end, the sleep, the long dull silence of
287
The Rescue of an Old Place
winter, the sheets of snow, the chains of
ice, that bind the earth until her re-awak-
ening.
How swift the silent succession of the
'' months ! September seems to tread upon
the train of June, it is so quickly here, so
quickly gone. The Goldenrod is the first
plume of the year's hearse, yet when its
earliest yellow feathers wave we burn un-
der the hot breath of summer, but ere they
lose all their gold, the hand of death is
on the grass, and the brown leaves have
fallen.
Autumn A cold rain patters on the gravel walk,
and the branches of the trees are dripping
as they hang unstirred. The sky is gloomy
and leaden, one vast gray cloud sullenly
enwraps the heavens. There is no hope,
no outlook ; all is sad and drear, rain
over head, a wet earth under foot Sum-
mer has gone ; the chill of autumn is here.
But hark ! what is that murmur ? It is the
northwest wind blowing his distant horn,
and in a twinkling the leaden skies are
broken with windows of light. The gray
scud whisks up toward the zenith, the
wet trees shake off their burden, and wave
288
Utility versus Beauty
"
joyfully in the keen breeze. October October
comes ! What though his tramp is over
the dead leaves i He comes like a warrior
from battle, fresh and strong, inspiriting
and brave. " Be not cast down ! " he
cries, " by the death of fair summer. Bold
winter succeeds to the throne. He is a
king worth having, and his reign shall re-
store your vigor, men of the north ! He
helps to make you what you are ! Behind
him, hidden by his furry mantle, lurks the
spring, and then once more the dead sum-
mer shall be reborn, and the world shall
be again all blossom and music ! "
So with this bracing note, October
passes on, while, cheered by hope and
softened by memory, we leave the old
place to sleep awhile, and turn to our win-
ter fire, and the companionship of men
and books, in lieu of birds, and trees, and
flowers, which have gladdened us for half
a year.
289
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