98 HOW TO MAKE A COUNTRY PLACE 



Soil and varied conditions on hill, meadow, at brookside, in 

 lowland, and deep woods of our two hundred and fifty acres made 

 it possible, with the aid of the birds, for a wide range of plants to 

 find a footing within our borders. There were man-of-the-earth and 

 jack-in-the-pulpit, the bitter tasting corms of which gave Sir Bruin 

 when he formerly ranged our marsh land a bog onion breath, 

 near the skull-cap and squaw-root or cancer-root, the latter fasten- 

 ing tightly to the roots of the beeches; maiden hair, the uncan- 

 nily named corpse plant, commonly called the Indian pipe ; also 

 dragon-arum and dragon-root and prince's feather, St. John's wort, 

 and St. Peter's wort. The pokeweed, which carries in its root 

 death to humans, we destroyed. Great masses of ragweed, bur- 

 dock, and mullein infringed on territory belonging to their 

 betters, beggar's tick often tagged our best store clothes and tumble 

 weed through fall winds tumbled dire trouble to our corn and 

 potato fields. Sitfast (Ranunculus repens) fought hard for even 

 standing room. Mushrooms, lichens, and mosses grew wherever they 

 could gain a foothold. Jewel weed, rosin or compass plant, ladies' slip- 

 per and ladies' thumb and smocks and tresses all flung>their offerings 

 at our feet, keeping pace with the seasons. These wonderful floral out- 

 bursts of nature repeated before our very eyes the ever present and 

 unsolved enigmas of birth, life, death and resurrction as they have 

 been repeated year after year and century after century. 

 "Our birth at best a sleep and a forgetting, 



The soul that riseth with us, our life's star, 



Hath had elsewhere its setting, and cometh from afar. 



Not in entire forgetfulness 



And not in utter nakedness 



But trailing clouds of glory do we come 



From God who is our home." 



The Wild Garden. 



One walled-in meadow was in the main left as a wild garden. 

 In it was a diversity of plants and flowers, its boundary 

 walls and crevices covered with the purple berried ivy of lusty, 

 bushy-headed growth, often by contact so poisonous to humanity 

 that because of its searing touch and brilliant hue it might be called 

 the trail of the fire serpent, but eaten with impunity and well relished 

 by horses and cattle. It was allowed to remain for the sake of its 

 glorious golden-red autumn coloring, in contrast with the intense 

 fire-red of the woodbine with which it was intertwined and often ran 

 races, the goal being the topmost branch of some tall cedar whose green 

 background brought out vividly their combined and rarely beautiful 

 autumn shades, but any growing near the house was uprooted in 

 deference to its malarial reputation as well as its poison blight, in 

 fact, poison in leaf and rootlet lurked in woodland and meadow. 

 The poison ivy, prickly nettle and pokeweed warred as far and 



