THE FARM HOUSE AND LAWN. 177 
Country life is the beautiful, beneficent bird with golden feathers; Nauda 
is the farmer who is so anxious to become quickly rich that he strips this 
beautiful, God-given thing of every lovely, golden feather and leaves it an 
unsightly, unresponsive object of pity. 
In the first. place, it is not an extravagance. The best land is worth 
$50 to $70 an‘acre. Half an acre at the very least can easily be spared for 
the lawn proper, or, better than this, an acre. 
Happy is the farmer who finds his farm already supplied with oak, elmand 
maple, or other indigenous Minnesota trees, but if they are not there already 
the expense of securing and planting them is slight. Then, of course, this 
yard needs birches and one or two staminate willows, for grace, and some 
evergreens on the north and west sides for winter beauty. 
One thing, more than all else, marks a lack in American country places 
over those in England, and that is shrubbery. In our climate there are 
many things which we can not have, but the golden-leafed elder, syringa, 
spiraea Van Houtii, purple-leafed and common barberry, lilac, snowball, 
roses of all sorts, hydrangea,—these are a few of the many, many beautiful 
shrubs to which Minnesota extends a welcome. 
For the grassy part—which for ease in its care should be as unbroken as 
possible—blue grass and white clover are inexpensive and satisfactory. 
As for the care of these things, none of us who have spent hours early 
and late in shaking, raking, burning, spraying, to rid our trees of the terri- 
ble oak caterpillar, can say it is an easy thing, and if help had to be hired 
it might seem an expense if not an extravagance; but none of us count the 
hours spent in caring for friends who are ill a hardship, and the pleasure of 
saving a tree is reward enough for all the labor expended. The cutting of 
the grass is another problem. If the lawn is large and unbroken much can 
be done with a field mower, and on much frequented roads it can be partial- 
ly solved by fitting it to that other problem—tramps. At least half of them 
have been found by experience to be glad to mow the lawn or remove from 
it, for the sake of a dinner, the esculent, beautiful but ubiquitious dandelion. 
A most charming addition to a lawn, where possible, is water—a pond, 
a brook, a fountain or even an artificial aquarium. It is not always feasible 
but is so more often than one might suppose. 
The apparent size of a lawn or house surroundings may be facaeaeed 
by the judicious arrangement of the adjoining parts of the farm. Some 
beautiful farm houses, with well kept yards, lose much of their beauty and 
general effect by having by their side almost the only unsightly thing a 
farm can produce, a hog yard, which, by proper planning can be in some 
inconspicuous place. 
An orchard is just as beautiful in its way as the most perfectly kept lawn, 
and one should always be situated where it can add to the beauty of the 
house surroundings. A horse lot or sheep pasture adjoining the lawn may 
be effective. 
Two things should be kept in mind: what the farmer sees from his win- 
dows should be beautiful, and what the passer-by sees in looking at the 
house and house surroundings should be beautiful. 
And the reason for all this? Who of us has not been filled with right- 
eous anger at words of Hamlin Garland, in a recent book, words false in 
_ spirit and false in fact, about the drudgery, lack of art, lack of literature, 
lack of pleasure in the country. But the most painful thing is that in a few, 
a very few instances, it is partly true. What poetry is to prose, that country 
