TEN] AMONG THE FLOWERS 
vines, in order to add largely to your profits and to 
your food; yet with these it is not impossible to 
twine, without detriment to the fruit, a good num- 
ber of climbing roses. Over stone piles let a bitter- 
sweet grow; and if you have stone fences, it will 
take very little labor to start in growth, beside them, 
Virginia creepers. In this way, by simple devices, 
the plainest homestead, where money income does 
not exceed four hundred dollars a year, may be 
glorified so as, first of all, to strike a visitor for its 
beauty. At the same time your windbreaks — 
which should never be forgotten — may be a com- 
bination of the beautiful and the useful in the way 
of crab-apple trees and mountain ash, while under 
the shelter of a Tartarian honeysuckle hedge stands 
half a dozen bee hives, which shall add a generous 
quota to your comfort and to your profit. 
A country home can rarely indulge in costly 
palms and similar decorations for the winter. It 
is not necessary, because a few fresh bouquets of 
Christmas roses, with clippings from your bar- 
berries and your evergreen mahonia and your hem- 
lock hedge will carry you well into midwinter. 
Our best preparation for the white months is to dig 
a few of our common May-flowering shrubs in 
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