TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 249 



for the windbreaks, so we at once began the work 

 and are giving two days a week to the digging and 

 transporting and the other four to watering. That 

 is, Bart and Larry are doing this ; I am looking on, 

 making suggestions as to which side of a tree should 

 be in front, nipping off broken twigs, and doing other 

 equally light and pleasant trifles. 



Our system of transplanting is this: we have any 

 number of old burlap feed bags, which, having become 

 frayed and past their usefulness, we bought at the 

 village store for a song. These Larry filled with the 

 soft, elastic moss that florists use, of which there is 

 any quantity in the low backwater meadows of the 

 river. A good-sized tree (and we are not moving any 

 of more than four or five feet in height ; larger ones, it 

 seems, are better moved in early winter with a ball of 

 frozen earth) has a bag to itself, the roots, with some 

 earth, being enveloped in the moss, the bag as securely 

 bound about them as possible with heavy cord, and 

 the whole thing left to soak at the river edge while 

 the next one is being wrapped. Of the small hemlocks 

 for the windbreak, and we are using none over two or 

 three feet for this purpose, as we want to pinch them 

 in and make them stocky, the roots of three or four 

 will often go into a bag. 



