130 COME INTO THE GARDEN 



Patience is the greatest of virtues, and most 

 virtuous of handmaidens in all gardening — but 

 nowhere so necessary as here. Yet nowhere is 

 she so likely to elude the gardener as w^hen he 

 stands, anxious and eager and bafHed and per- 

 spiring, before the feeble plant which he is bent 

 on transferring to another spot, and which is 

 equally bent, in its own inert plant way, on 

 staying where it is. Clutching the earth fran- 

 tically, but secretly, it refuses to be budged — 

 and the struggle is one surely calculated to make 

 or break character. The one hope of the toiler 

 is to take time, thereby retaining patience — but 

 even then it is a fierce trial more often than not. 

 I am saying all this that you may be prepared — 

 fully prepared — and hence may approach the 

 task warily and with a chance of victory, moral 

 as well as physical. For the man who has never 

 tried to unplant an established growth, and who 

 attacks the proposition unw^arned and unsus- 

 pecting, needs sympathy — and has mine. 



Begin at the tip of the roots; that is, begin 

 taking off the earth at the circumference of the 

 plant's circle rather than at its center. This cir- 

 cumference can be pretty accurately determined 

 by the spread of the branches, for these usually 

 reach outward above ground about as far as the 

 roots do below. A crowbar or pickax should 



