The Ragged Month 67 



see how important a good breadth of forest 

 trees is to arable land. Their deep roots suck 

 up the waters under the earth, and send them 

 out in fine invisible clouds to invite the clouds 

 visible. But the trees distill in these clouds 

 only water. What the water brought to them, 

 they keep for their own enriching, mysteriously 

 transmuting elemental substances into cells, 

 sugar, starch, gum, oil, and woody fiber. The 

 leaves are their laboratories. The leaves have 

 done their perfect work in August. There is 

 rich sap ready to swell and ripen every man- 

 ner of fruit or nut, also to go down for the 

 refreshing of the roots, and on the way, build 

 up a ring of new wood. 



Trees felled as the new wood is hardening, 

 give the very best timber, provided the trunks 

 are at once lopped of boughs and branches. 

 Should they lie as they fall, with all their leaves 

 and twigs, the wood becomes brash and life- 

 less, warping easily and hard to work. It 

 never splits freely, but with a ragged eating-in 

 of the grain. Windfalls, which are very plenty 

 thanks to August thunderstorms, thus are 

 often of no value, except for firewood. But 

 whether wind-felled, or ax-felled, the timber 

 lasts twice as long as that cut in May or June. 

 Big trees do not sprout after August cutting, 

 and even tenacious shrubs like sassafras often 

 die of it. Indeed, there is a short period in 



