298 MY FARM. 



on his after-dinner strolls to the thickets, the planter 

 will no*t forget his pruning-knife and his saw. 



A little patch of good, and thoroughly tilled nur- 

 sery-ground is very convenient as a tender upon 

 these wood-groups, as well as upon the orchard. - 

 Within a small one of my own of less than an 

 eighth of an acre, I have now thriving hundreds of 

 hemlocks, white-pines, birches, maples, alders, vines, 

 beeches, willows, kalmias, with which I may at any 

 time thicken up the skirts of the established groups 

 to any color I like, or plant a new one upon some 

 scurvy bit of land, which has proved itself unremu- 

 nerative under other croppings. 



Altogether, these shows of forest foliage, with 

 here and there an exotic, or a fruit-tree thrown in, 

 involve less cost than one would give to an ordinary 

 crop of corn ; and when the corn is harvested, the 

 crop is done ; but with my shrubberies of which I 

 know every tree from the day of its first struggle 

 with the changed position the weird, wild growth 

 is every year progressing every year presenting 

 some new phase of color or of shape : every spring 

 I see my trees rejoicing in a flutter of young leaves, 

 and then wantoning like grown girls in the lusty 

 vigor of summer : in autumn I look wistfully on 

 them, wearing gala-dresses, whose colors I dare not 

 name, and when these are shivered by the frost, 



