OUR COUNTRY HOME 



designed for the gentlemen orange-growers of California. These 

 were given me by a kindred spirit, and are one of my most cher- 

 ished possessions. They have a strong and easy cut and yet are 

 small enough to be held comfortably in the hand. Inch staples for 

 the big vines and double pointed tacks for the smaller ones, with a 

 few hairpins to coax back refractory brambles from the path, 

 complete the outfit. After I have tucked in my small Bird Book, 

 hung the glasses around my neck, and snatched a few peanuts for 

 the squirrels, I am ready for work in any direction. 



Like the little girl who was asked to choose between a white 

 candy and a pink one and answered, " Both, "so when I was asked 

 to choose between a wild-flower garden and a dear little shut-in 

 garden of old-fashioned blossoms, I too chose both. Just beneath 

 my window, at the edge of the terrace steps, lay a level or nearly 

 level bit of ground just the right size for a tiny garden, with plenty 

 of sun, protected on the north by the kitchen-house and service- 

 yard wall, and on the west by the forest. It measured fifty by sixty 

 feet. We put around it, first, a beautiful barberry hedge, not 

 a clipped hedge, but one heavy with graceful sprays of crimson 

 fruit. This proved anything but practical, for it was sharp and 

 inhospitable, and grew bare and brown below, I think the tech- 

 nical term is "leggy." Then we piled up a loose boulder wall. 

 This was better, but too rustic to be in keeping with the terrace 

 wall which it joined. Finally, we continued the terrace wall, three 



and a half feet high, of split boulders laid in cement. It has three 



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