150 WOOD AND GARDEN 



especially take much too long to decay. This is, no 

 doubt, the reason why nothing grows willingly under 

 beeches. Horse and cart and three hands go out into 

 the lanes for two or three days, and the loads that 

 come home go three feet deep into the bottom of a 

 range of pits. The leaves are trodden down close and 

 covered with a layer of mould, in which winter salad 

 stuff is immediately planted. The mass of leaves will 

 soon begin to heat, and will give a pleasant bottom-heat 

 throughout the winter. Other loads of leaves go into 

 an open pen about ten feet square and five feet deep. 

 Two such pens, made of stout oak post and rail and 

 upright slabs, stand side by side in the garden yard. 

 The one newly filled has just been emptied of its two- 

 year-old leaf-mould, which has gone as a nourishing 

 and protecting mulch over beds of Daffodils and choice 

 bulbs and Alstromerias, some being put aside in reserve 

 for potting and various uses. The other pen remains 

 full of the leaves of last year, slowly rotting into whole- 

 some plant-food. 



With works of wood-cutting and stump-grubbing 

 near at hand, we look over the tools and see that all 

 are in readiness for winter work. Axes and hand-bills 

 are ground, fag-hooks sharpened, picks and mattocks 

 sent to the smithy to be drawn out, the big cross-cut 

 saw fresh sharpened and set, and the hand-saws and 

 frame-saws got ready. The rings of the bittle are 

 tightened and wedged up, so that its heavy head may 

 not split when the mighty blows, fiung into the tool 



