178 A Little Maryland Garden 
ragged-looking tops. Every branch end is 
decorated with seed balls like green marbles, 
and it is pleasant to cut them off at this 
stage, before they scatter and sow a thousand 
little altheas in the borders, and in every nook 
and corner. I wish some other plants would 
come up with the same alacrity. They are 
irrepressible, and good soil and bad, light and 
shade, are alike to them. 
This pruning is a very amusing occupation, 
and when one begins lopping off branches, it is 
hard to know when to stop. We are all 
iconoclasts. From the time we are babies, 
and build block towers for the pleasure 
of knocking them down, and snip our dolls to 
see the sawdust run out, it is as interesting 
to destroy as to build up, so that pruning 
satisfies a deep-seated instinct. There are 
two plants in the garden, the one so greedy 
and aggressive, the other so strong, that I 
can depend my energy on them, and enjoy 
to the full the pleasures of pruning,—the 
click of the shears, the fall of branches on the 
lawn about me, the slim and almost prudish 
