12 WITH EARTH AND SKY 
himself. I do. Independency of spirit should 
grow in every garden, whether the garden stuff 
grows or not. 
Now if a chicken—note I return to the chicken, 
but that is because he returns to the garden and 
has to be dealt with. He is a difficulty: and 
difficulties must be faced by the brave. Now, 
if you hoed up a chicken, he is a weed and can 
be thrown over the fence. But it has been shown 
that that is not conducive to neighborliness. 
Hence let us give over thought of that method 
of dealing with this chicken weed. The next 
plan is to burn him, which I interpret as frying 
him. It prevents cold storage. Depend upon 
it, that this method frankly and steadily pur- 
sued will change your neighbor’s chickens from 
a gardening impediment into a facilitation of 
the gardening process. 
Thus will the hoeing up of the chickens become 
a spring picnic of hoeing. 
You have to pursue this chicken weed. It is 
like running down a tumble weed, which is pos- 
itively exhilarating. Neighbors may think you 
are running a race, whereas you are humbly 
hoeing a chicken down or up, I know not which 
adverb to use. Both will do. Agility is educated 
in hoeing up chickens, which comes from no 
other weed. Now, this weed once down or up, 
the burning, otherwise frying, begins. I think 
that the best way yet discovered to deal with 
this particular weed. It ends the weed and does 
