THE PLACE AND THE PROSPECT 5 



fit the arctic predictions of our city-bound friends. 

 But it has never been "Freeze Hill!" 



This is to be a story of the growing garden, and 

 it begins in the month of first possession, the 

 snowy Christmas month. What is the place, and 

 what the prospect? 



The place had been rather aptly described to us 

 as "two acres of San Jose scale with a house 

 attached." In addition to the scale, there were in 

 sight weeds, and weeds, and more weeds, but now 

 the snow has made flowers of their aftermath. Of 

 garden there is nothing, and the street plan upon 

 which access depends predicates grading that will 

 probably mean much raw soil, scantily arable. 

 The trees are noble, but neglected and dilapidated. 

 There are no walks save those that will have to be 

 changed, and back of a great old arborvitse hedge 

 are the fallen ruins of a greenhouse and an ice- 

 house — which we cannot hope to restore. 



One or two Norway maples that had been 

 planted have, through years of neglect, established 

 everywhere thousands of their seedlings from an 

 inch to twenty feet in height, sometimes sucking 

 dry and killing portions of the great evergreen 

 hedge, and sometimes just impudently declaring 

 an intention to entirely possess the land. The 

 once fine old pear orchard is dead, dead, of San 



