106 HOW TO LIVE IN THE COUNTRY 



from our gardens, and she tells them where to plant 

 them. 



This is good for the birds for it will give them 

 their future food, and to us it gives butternut groves 

 and maple groves for nuts and for sugar, besides 

 acres of poems, rhododendrons, and lawns of mint 

 and forget-me-not. A few of her shrubs are pro- 

 vided with roots that run under other roots and so 

 get hold of the ground in spite of rivals. In this 

 way we find great patches of sumac along the hill- 

 sides and big patches of elders in the hollows. 



She plants her forests in the same way, her great 

 hemlock woods and her beech groves but always 

 with shrubberies fronting them. I cannot forget the 

 deep glen, visited in my boyhood with only my dog 

 for a companion, where a projecting promontory of 

 blue and red shale was grasped and held together 

 with long naked roots of a single huge hemlock. 

 These roots grasped every bit of dirt, feeding and 

 trailing until they reached the brook below. I 

 dragged rails and fenced in the whole glen, and to- 

 day when I visit that glen I sit under the huge trees 

 that look over the precipice and listen to the brook 

 song among the wild raspberries far below. 



Witch-hazels have found soil enough for their 

 roots, and wild strawberries creep up and down. 

 Everywhere there is a shrubbery of all sorts of wild 

 things, out of which have risen, by competition, tall 

 lindens, straight as arrows. Some one has removed 

 the rails and with sharp tools cut away at the glen 



