The Busy Woman s Garden Book 



mould lies right at hand in every bit of outdoors. 

 What nature does in a field and woods she will 

 do in one's dooryard if one will only watch her 

 methods and co-operate with her. In the woods, 

 for instance, she shakes down the ripe leaves from 

 the trees, cuts with frost and age the undergrowth 

 and sends the wind to drift them into piles where 

 she waters and compacts them until in process 

 of time they lose their identity as leaves and 

 plants and become a fine, black mould, fine and 

 warm to the touch and blended with a clean, 

 sharp, white sand, or silicate. To imitate her 

 methods successfully we have only to collect the 

 dead leaves in the fall instead of wastefuUy burn- 

 ing them, pile them in a heap in some convenient 

 place ; surround them with a frame to keep them 

 from being distributed about the premises by 

 fowls or wind and to the nucleus thus formed 

 add any waste matter — animal or vegetable — 

 that will decay, about the place — the weeds from 

 the garden, the wastings from the house and 

 laundry. It is amazing, once one has started 

 to conserve fertility, how much one can find to 

 add to this compost heap ; I recall that one spring, 



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