APPLE ORCHARD IN FULL BLOOM = 97 
the hole is deep enough and wide enough and 
the ground within mellow enough to put your 
hands in it and mix the soil (cool and sweet the 
soil is, and clings like a curl about the fingers), 
and then with ample gentleness to dispose the 
roots and rootlets of the tree-to-be but shrub 
that is, and sift earth about those thready roots 
and cover them up very gently, as you would 
a grave in which lay a dead robin redbreast; 
then when all the babying process is concluded 
to press the moist earth with your foot until 
you surmise the roots are bedded and feel at home, 
and so, rising, do the like with another tree. 
That’s fun. Men want pay for doing it, but 
*tis infamous. They should pay for the priv- 
ilege of doing this poetical thing. An orchardist 
should not plant too many trees at once lest 
the labor tax the poetry in him and he do a 
lovely thing in an unlovely mood. I would 
plant a few at a time and vary the kind I planted 
—here a lilac, here a dogwood, here a wild crab, 
now a sycamore, now a hazelnut, now a white 
willow, here a Niobe willow, here a cottonwood, 
here a wild rose, now a Dorothy Perkins, then a 
bittersweet, now a red bud, now a fruit tree 
for fruit, now fruit trees by clumps for spring 
flowers and autumnal leaf-glory (say, a group of 
pear trees which when autumn burns is mem- 
orable and their watch fires have a strange glory 
on them), here a clump of cedars, here a stray 
pine, then a birch, and here sassafras for autumn 
