84 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



in the plum and quince almost a herculean task after neglect had 

 allowed the disease to gain headway to remove cancer-rot from the 

 older trees, paint the bruised wood and then fill the cavity with cement ; 

 and to fasten with iron rods controlled by turnbuckles the large limbs 

 that threatened to split away from the parent stem, but which with 

 care would live for years, all this was most fascinating. 



Haphazard Forest Thinning. 



No ruthless gang of wood choppers cleared our woods, for an 

 hour of ignorant labor might have destroyed the matchless growth of 

 many years, so we blazed for cutting such trees as checked the develop- 

 ment of the best, but allowed among others dogwood, laurel and 

 sassafras, as well as bitter sweet and native clematis (virgin's bower) 

 to grow as nature willed.* 



The cup-shaped tulip, with its cone shaft of verdure; the fra- 

 grant, sturdy, right-angle growth of the sassafras even the scarred 

 and blotched buttonwood or sycamore, which is a veritable giant, as we 

 in the east know trees, and gives up in a day its first crop of delicate 

 green leaves to its inveterate fungus enemy, then immediately reclothes 

 its denuded branches were all represented on the farm. 



The maple family in varied form and coloring has few peers, 

 from the dwarf, split-thread-leaf maples of Japan, some of which 

 retain their form for weeks after being picked, through all their 

 varieties of gold and crimson to the graceful native maples that dot 

 our landscape, and again the variegated vicing in color with the varie- 

 gated arbutilon, among others the purple maple with its blood red 

 under leaf, the tri-striped bark variety, also Wier's cut-leaf, of rapid 

 growth, with gracefully festooned branches, its only bitter enemy the 

 "four winds of heaven." 



"Clean as a maple" was rarely a misnomer. All were grace- 

 ful and beautiful whether seen in massed outline or close detail. 



Colors from a purple which crowded black, to the lightest hues 

 of green and bronze flashed in sunlight and waved with the breeze. 

 In bark they ranged from the rugged cork to those as smooth as a 

 beech and shaded from dark brown to the white and green striped. 



Maple Sugar Harvest. 



When summer's reign was ended, and the frost-laden north 

 wind wrapped the sugar maple in its wonderfully beautiful mantle 

 of yellow and red, we were glad to have planted this tree with such 

 prodigality, with the idea of a farm industry in future years. Bar- 

 ring a wandering rose bug and the borer, the maple has few insect 



We uprooted the lamb-kill variety of laurel which grew sparsely in the sheep pasture 

 and from which the bees distilled poisonous honey. 



