168 HOME LIFE m FLORIDA. 



We would add, too, in one corner, a Scuppernong grape 

 canopy, which would give a gloriously dense shade under 

 which to swing one's hammock on a summer's day. 



All these things are easily obtainable and cost very little 

 money; but they are worth hundreds of dollars to the 

 health and buoyancy of the home life. Natural beauties, 

 like songs, go deep. 



There are plenty of fruits that may be set in the house- 

 lot in addition to those we have mentioned. 



Peach, loquat, Japanese persimmon, fig, and pear trees, 

 guavas, limes, and bananas, these are the fruits to scat- 

 ter around the house. These and flowers and shade trees 

 and grass, surely they are quite enough without the larger 

 growing trees, whose proper place is in the grove where 

 they may spread and stretch their great and thorny arms 

 without knocking down the house or breaking the windows. 



Grape-vines, trained on canopy arbors, afford a pleasant 

 shade, and it is ornamental as well as useful to run an ar- 

 bor on each side of the w^alk leading from the house to the 

 chicken-yard — an arbor with a top — and train grape and 

 other vines over it. 



The chicken-yard should not be too far from the house, 

 and, unless it opens on a woodland where the fowls can 

 range, it should be of ample dimensions, for they will not 

 keep healthy unless they have plenty of room to range. 

 The yard should be inclosed by a picket fence, high, if the 

 common Florida chickens are to be kept in it ; for they 

 are veritable " gad-abouts," and are as quick to skim over 

 a five-foot fence as to pick up a grain of corn. 



Select the site for the chicken-yard with a view to con- 

 vert it into a vegetable or fruit garden after the chickens 

 have fertilized it for two or three years. It will be the 

 richest part of your land. 



Let the chicken-house be built of slats, placed about 



