HINDRANCES AND HELPS 



sufficient; and on his after-dinner strolls to 

 the thickets, the planter will not forget his 

 pruning-knife and his saw. 



A little patch of good, and thoroughly tilled 

 nursery-ground is very convenient as a tender 

 upon these wood-groups, as well as upon the 

 orchard. Within a small one of my own — of 

 less than an eighth of an acre, — I have now 

 thriving hundreds of hemlocks, white-pines, 

 birches, maples, alders, vines, beeches, willows, 

 kalmias, — with which I may at any time 

 thicken up the skirts of the established groups 

 to any color I like, or plant a new one upon 

 some scurvy bit of land, which has proved it- 

 self unremunerative under other croppings. 



Altogether, these shows of forest foliage, 

 with here and there an exotic, or a fruit tree 

 thrown in, — involve less cost than one would 

 give to an ordinary crop of corn; and when 

 the corn is harvested, the crop is done; but 

 with my shrubberies — of which I know every 

 tree from the day of its first struggle with the 

 changed position — the weird, wild growth is 

 every year progressing — every year presenting 

 some new phase of color or of shape: — every 

 spring I see my trees rejoicing in a flutter of 

 young leaves, and then wantoning — like grown 

 girls — in the lusty vigor of summer: in au- 



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