394 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



ITEMS. 



^ EOPLE who enjoy the happy luxury of working on the land in the 

 open air, may well be contented with their lot as viewed from a 

 standpoint of health and pure enjoyment, if they compare their 

 condition with the large majority of those who are confined in rooms 

 where the percentage of pure air is very moderate, and the muscular 

 effort required to till the soil is so conducive to the enjoyment of 

 food and rest, and the absence of bustle and anxiety so promotive 

 of thoughtfulness and meditation, that to call it a luxury to work in the open 

 air, is by no means a misnomer. 



Especially is this true when labor is connected with intelligence and a 

 degree of management to prevent one's labor from degenerating into a slavish 

 routine of mere manual effort. A man with a thinking head on his shoulders, 

 must have some brain interest in what he is doing, or his physical plodding will 

 wax irksome, and if he is of a poetic, sentimental, or a religious turn of mind, he 

 must see something in his employment to respond to the yearnings of his 

 peculiar temperament, and it is safe to say that in the management of a piece 

 of land, if not too small, there is ample scope in coming in contact with Dame 

 Nature and her many conferred favors, to interest the tastes and desires of the 

 most unmovable, if he has any degree of appreciation whatever. Only do not 

 let money-making be the ruling motive, desirable as that may be, but health, 

 contentment, love of Nature, and a field for the enjoyment of a meditative spirit 

 which is always a source of rich occupation of time, for 



*' A soul without reflection, like a pile 

 Without inhabitant, to ruin runs." 



Well, coming down to more practical or temporal details in one's experience, 

 let me say to those who are trying to garden on a piece of flat rich land, that to 

 get rid of the surplus water in the most profitable way, is much to be desired. 

 In raising strawberries, I have tried moulding up ridges 3^ feet apart and 

 setting a single row on each to allow the water to settle between the rows as 

 the snow melts off in the spring, to prevent freezing around the plants, which, if 

 allowed, is apt to prove certain destruction, in most cases. This year I am 

 ridging up nine or ten feet wide, and putting three rows on a ridge, and think 

 it will prove as effective as drainage, as the other way, and the rows be more 

 easily cultivated. As to varieties, I have found the Williams the best all round 

 berry of any 1 have tried, and if I were to be shut up to two varieties and forced 

 to plant no other, I would choose the Crescent and Williams, considering all 

 things. Of course my experience has not run over 28 varieties, so my opinion 

 is not worth as much as some others. Raspberries with us this year were next 

 door to a failure, not one-third as much of a crop as the year previous ; freezing 

 down to the snow line being the cause, as we do not bury down for protection. 



