THE COUNTRY HOME [CHAPTER 
and pastures contain varieties that are seldom seen 
about our houses. Some of these are overlooked 
only because common. I have discussed them suf- 
ficiently in another chapter on lawns and shrub- 
beries, and here I refer to them only for their 
flowers and their fitness for winter foliage. The 
world holds nothing finer than those fringes along 
the forests of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Vir- 
ginia, where the laurels and the rhododendrons in- 
terweave their arms over hundreds of acres, and 
seem to begrudge room for other shrubs equally 
glorious. Along the Susquehanna nature has 
miles of gardens finer than those of the Tuileries. 
I have looked down the mountain-sides of Penn- 
sylvania over such vast fields of flowers that I have 
felt the utter impotence of any landscape artist to 
plant a garden. You must learn to see the beauty 
of what is common. You will be especially inter- 
ested in studying the variations in every-day shrubs 
—in growth and in bloom. I have found a superb 
weeping choke cherry, and although weeping 
things are mostly morbid freaks of nature not to be 
multiplied, this is elegant both in form and fruit. 
It is constantly to be borne in mind that shrubs, 
when once planted, make comparatively little work, 
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