MAKING THE HOME. 149 



gled their fragrant pink flowers across the carriage way. 

 The roses, that came to us in cigar-boxes, ran riot over 

 frames and covered one end of the house, reaching above 

 the attic window at the peak of the roof and disputing the 

 march of a no])le English ivy ; verbenas covered the ground 

 in hixuriant masses, petunias flourished and bloomed, 

 sometimes becoming perennials, while, for six months or 

 more of the year, phlox of all conceivable colors and 

 shades made the ground one brilliant mass of color, sow- 

 ing itself season after season, just as buttercups, dandelions, 

 violets, and daisies dot the fields at the North. The vines 

 had clambered to the very top of the lattice in one tangled 

 mass and spread out below into a dense mass of foliage. 

 The evening jasmine towered above the piazza roof, shading 

 one end completely, and filling the air with its delicate fra- 

 grance, almost too powerful, however, as the sun went down. 



More important than all, the back-bone of a Florida 

 home, the orange trees, had aspired above their two-feet 

 stature into goodly trees of eight to ten feet high ; lime 

 trees, one foot high when planted, towered to the attic 

 windows and were loaded with fruit ; guavas, raised from 

 seed sown two years before, bore fruit enough to supply 

 the^ table ; Florida lemon trees were loaded with yellow 

 fruit, and some fine budded sorts were in bloom. 



All this in three years from the wilderness, with no com- 

 mercial fertilizers, and on exceptionally poor soil. So you 

 see it is not so fearful a thing as it looks to be, this making 

 a home in the Florida woods. 



We have not thus related our own experience from ego- 

 tism, but because we could better thus depict the methods 

 and result of intelligent, refined labor, and so dispel the 

 dread that is doubtless felt by many would-be Florida set- 

 tlers at the idea of starting a new home out of virgin ma- 

 terials and on virgin soil. 



