144 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



It will start from the corn hill where it is pro- 

 duced and go down the row fifteen feet, then 

 climb a corn stalk, leap to the fence six feet away 

 and eventually hang a row of Hubbard squashes 

 around a neighbor's pet pear tree. The wood- 

 chuck stopped all that. He began early in the 

 summer on the vine tips and worked inward 

 well up to the stump at each meal. The vines 

 were husky and had more latent buds than I had 

 believed possible. Every time the woodchuck 

 cut them back they started something in a new 

 place for his incisive pruning shears. Some 

 people trim evergreens on their lawns into gro- 

 tesque shapes. My woodchuck invented that 

 sort of thing all over again on Hubbard squash 

 vines. After some weeks I had a new and 

 strange race of decorative plants that, like Ka- 

 tisha's left elbow, people came miles to see. But 

 they did not produce squashes. Dilettantism 

 doesn't. 



In the end, of course, like the small boy at 

 whose house the minister was to take dinner, I 

 had to get the woodchuck, after which the garden 

 was more productive if not so picturesque and 

 romantic. 



