FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 215 



Our first natural flower-holder is a great success. 

 Having found a four-pronged silver birch, with a broken 

 top, over in the abandoned gravel-pit (where, by the way, 

 are a score of others to be had for the digging, and such 

 easy digging too), Larry sawed it off a bit below the 

 ground, so as to give it an even base. The diameter 

 of the four uprights was not quite a foot, all told, and 

 these were sawn of unequal lengths of four, six, seven, 

 and nine inches, care being taken not to "haggle," as 

 Larry calls it, the clean white bark in the process. 



Then Bart went to work with augur and round chisel, 

 and bored and chipped out the holes for the glass tubes, 

 incidentally breaking two glasses before we had comforta- 

 bly settled the four, for they must fit snugly enough not 

 to wiggle and tip, and yet not so tight as to bind and pre- 

 vent removal for cleaning purposes. This little stand 

 of natural wood was no sooner finished and mounted 

 on the camp table than its possibilities began to crowd 

 around it. Ferns being the nearest at hand, I crawled 

 over the crumbling bank wall into the Opal Farm 

 meadow and gathered hay-scented, wood, and lady ferns 

 from along the fence line and grouped them loosely in 

 the stand. The effect was magical, a bit of its haunt 

 following the fern indoors. 



Next day I gathered in the hemlock woods a basket 



