II 



MONEY IN THE BACKYARD 



I MIGHT already have said that this is 

 not to be the ordinary kind of "garden 

 manual " for the amateur. Such texts 

 often remind me of the criticism raised 

 by the housekeeper of moderate means, 

 upon reading a comprehensive cookbook. "It's 

 all very well," she said, "for them to direct 

 you to 'take a tender, two-inch beefsteak,' or 

 'prepare a fat, young broiler,' or 'beat up the 

 whites of eight eggs,' but in these days of five- 

 cent eggs and two-dollar chickens, it would be much 

 more to the point if they told you where you were to 

 'take' them from." In the same way, I always feel 

 a desire to ask the author of a treatise on fruit- 

 growing, who starts off with "in planning for a 

 home orchard, choose a slightly rolling, well-drained 

 area, preferably sloping to the south, with a deep, 

 loose soil not too heavy, underlaid by a gravelly 

 clay subsoil, and within easy hauling distance of 

 the barnyard and railroad" — I always want, I 

 say, to ask him what we are going to do if such a 

 piece of land is not on our farm to choose, or whether 

 we had not better take our neighbor's front lawn, 

 which seems to answer the requirements. In a very 



