The Days of a Man 1893 



nent official residence; but as things turned out, 

 we ourselves never felt like making large additions, 

 and academic needs seemed always to forbid our 

 asking the University to provide a suitable home, 

 even with the rental placed on a business basis. 



At Mrs. Stanford's request we retained the site 

 indicated by her husband, northwest of the original 

 Roble Hall, apart from the other homes and en- 

 circled by a dozen superb live oaks. These trees, 

 among the finest in the state, were preserved by a 

 former occupant, Jerry Easton, whose abode had 

 The stood in their midst. One of them is of remarkable 

 "^" interest, being probably the largest and most perfect 

 tree"' "woodpecker tree" now in existence, and bored full 

 of acorn holes from top to bottom by the California 

 red-headed woodpecker Melanerpes formicivorus. 

 This bird, otherwise much like its Eastern cousin, 

 has the unique habit of thus storing in the fall the 

 long, slender live-oak nuts against the days of need 

 during the dry season of California. 



About the house we planted a great variety of 

 trees and shrubs which ultimately grew into a 

 crowded, incongruous, but delightful jungle. I 

 resist my botanical impulse to name them all, not- 

 withstanding the fact that their appellations are as 

 honey on my lips and that nearly every quarter of 

 the globe, equator and poles excepted, has its rep- 

 resentative. Among them the Australian "bottle 

 brush tree" Callistemon the Minnesota crab- 

 apple, and the Japanese cherry stand first in my 

 affections. From Christmas, at which time our 

 spring begins, until June, when the fields turn 

 yellow, the thicket is joyous with bloom. In the 

 fall the flame-thorn Pyracantha with its orange 



