CHAPTER VIII 



COMFORT ME WITH APPLES 



" What can your eye desire to see, your eares to heare, your 

 mouth to taste, or your nose to smell, that is not to be had in an 

 Orchard ? with Abundance and Variety ? What shall I say ? 

 iooo of Delights are in an Orchard ; and sooner shall I be weary 

 than I can reckon the least part of that pleasure which one, that 

 hath and loves an Orchard, may find therein." 



— A New Orchard, William Lawson, 1618. 



N every old-time garden, save the 

 revered front yard, the borders 

 stretched into the domain of the 

 Currant and Gooseberry bushes, 

 and into the orchard. Often a row 

 of Crabapple trees pressed up into 

 the garden's precincts and shaded 

 the Sweet Peas. Orchard and garden could scarcely 

 be separated, so closely did they grow up together. 

 Every old garden book had long chapters on 

 orchards, written con amore^ with a zest sometimes 

 lacking on other pages. How they loved in the 

 days of Queen Elizabeth and of Queen Anne to sit 

 in an orchard, planted, as Sir Philip Sidney said, 

 "cunningly with trees of taste-pleasing fruits." 

 How charming were their orchard seats, " fachoned 

 for meditacon ! ' Sometimes these orchard seats 

 were banks of the strongly scented Camomile, a 



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