MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



mon ferns; a Rose-geranium, a Daphne, a 

 common Monthly-rose, are the rarest plants 

 I boast of. But there are wood-mosses with a 

 green sheen of velvet ; they cover a broad tray 

 of earth in rustic frame-work, in which the 

 Geraniums, the mosses, the Daphne, and a 

 plant of Kenilworth-Ivy coquette together. 

 An upper shelf is embossed with other mosses ; 

 there is a stately Hyacinth or two lifting from 

 among them, and wild ferns hang down their 

 leaves for a careless tangle with the Geraniums 

 and Ivy below. Above all, and as a drapery 

 for the arched top, the Spanish moss hangs 

 like a gray curtain of silvered lace. 



A stray acorn, I observe, has shot up in the 

 tray, and is now in its third leaf of oak-hood ; 

 in the corners, two wee Hemlock-spruces give 

 a background of green, and an air of deeper 

 and wilder entanglement, to my little winter- 

 garden. A bark covering, with bosses of 

 acorn-cups, and pilasters of laurel-wood, sharp- 

 ened to a point, make the lower tray a field of 

 wildness, — fenced in with wildness. The over- 

 hanging bridge (I called it an upper shelf), is 

 a rustic gallery — its balcony of twisted osiers 

 filled in with white mosses from old tree- 

 stumps, and the whole supported by a rustic 

 arch of crooked oaken twigs. Finally, the cor- 



334 



