l66 STATE POMOLOGICAIv SOCIETY. 



times I have done just that thing, planted a strawberry bed and 

 moved and let somebody else pick the fruit. Now the man 

 and the woman who live on a farm have the opportunity to 

 make the home which is the best home on the face of the earth. 

 And here lies the chief opportunity of the young woman. There 

 are fields open to her in these lines of agriculture. She may 

 succeed commercially in farming. She may succeed as a 

 farmer; she may succeed as a landscape gardener. There are 

 plenty of fields for her to succeed in, salaried positions, but 

 above all her opportunity lies in making the farm home the best 

 home it is possible to make. Now that home, it seems to me, 

 should be something more than a place which contains merely 

 the comforts of life. Every woman wants her home to be 

 something more. She tries to make it just as beautiful and 

 attractive within as she can make it ; she adorns it with tapes- 

 tries ; sometimes she is very dissatisfied, nevertheless she tries 

 to make of that home the best possible home which she can 

 make. Now, I want to think more of the outside of the home. 

 I want to make a plea for the surroundings of the home. 

 Because as I have passed through this State of Maine, I have 

 seen neat farmhouses, neatly painted, tidy, but there has been 

 very little, almost nothing of ornament about those homes out- 

 side. Of course you have a hard climate — it is not like the 

 climate farther south, but nevertheless there are plenty of things 

 which thrive here — must be — which would beautify these homes. 

 Now when we start to plant about a home to make it attractive, 

 what can we do? We may set out a plant because we admire 

 the flowers that plant produces. We usually set out a rose bush 

 because we admire the roses, not the bush on which the roses 

 grow. We may put out a plant because we admire the plant 

 itself for its beauty. We may set out plants because we can 

 make a pattern bed, as we see so oftentimes about railway sta- 

 tions and places of that kind. But better than all, we can put 

 that plant in as a part of one picture, of the scene as a home, 

 which shall help to make the other surroundings of that home 

 a scene which is attractive from all points of view. Now the 

 canvas upon which we must paint that picture is the greensward, 

 and we must never lose sight of that. We must never fritter 

 it away. We want to preserve the open lawn in front of the 



