MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



vember, are thriving in my thickets. The 

 swamp Azaleas, and the Kalmias I have trans- 

 ferred successfully, in their season of flower- 

 ing/ There are also to be named among the 

 available native shrubs, — the Leather-wood. 

 (Dirca palustris) with delicate yellow bloom, 

 glossy green leaves, and an amazing flexibility 

 of bough, on which once a year my boy forages 

 for his whip-lashes; the Spice-wood (Laurus 

 benzoin) is always tempting to the children by 

 reason of its aromatic bark, and in earliest 

 spring it is covered with fairy golden flowers; 

 the black Alder (Ilex verticillata) is a modest 

 shrub through the summer, but in autumn it 

 flames out in a great harvest of scarlet berries, 

 which it carries proudly into the chills of 

 December; the red-barked Dog-wood (Cornus 

 sanguinea) supplies annually a great stock of 

 crimson whips, and a charming liveliness of 

 color fcTr any interior rustic ornamentation, 

 which a wet day may put in hand ; the Swamp-- 

 willow is the very earliest of our native shrubs, 

 to feel the heat of the March sun, and season 

 after season, the little ones bring in from its 

 clump, its silvery strange tufts of bloom, and 



*A much safer way is to give the young plants a sea- 

 son or two of domestication in a patch of nursery 

 ground. 



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