36 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



of comeliness. It was a small attempt to make a side 

 hill look like a plain, and such efforts will always fail. 



After you have made a thorough study of what 

 you have purchased, you are ready to plot it on 

 paper. I advise you to do this work yourself. A 

 landscape gardener is likely to express an ambition 

 and set you to working that out. He will almost 

 surely undertake too much. After you have com- 

 pleted your work, you might allow him to look it 

 over and make suggestions, but the real plotting 

 should be between you and Nature. I am talking 

 to those who are going into the country with capital 

 enough to command a small homestead and work out 

 their own ideas. 



The teamster and the clerk, as a rule, must con- 

 tent themselves with properties already plotted and 

 near the city. But even these can find many ways 

 for expressing themselves in their new homes. This 

 can be done in the garden with flowers, and in a 

 hundred little byways and hedges. I could show 

 you a two-acre plot, level as your kitchen floor, but 

 unique at every point, and expressive of the character 

 that made it. I have helped a good many at this 

 landscape work, but I always refuse to do it for them. 



The first thing to plant is yourself, working into 

 the ground your own views and opinions and even 

 notions, as well as tastes. If you have a good piece 

 of property it has lots of expressive features. Do 

 not stop studying it until you have found out all that 

 can be done. We understand that your conceptions 



