52 MY GROWING GARDEN 



or there will be trouble if it is not enough; where- 

 fore the path of ease and certainty hes along the 

 planting ways of proper times. 



Several of the seven old horse-chestnuts that 

 too closely embowered the mansion-house at 

 Breeze Hill were considerably decayed, I found that 

 first spring. Two of them were cut out entirely, 

 admitting sunlight to the home, and giving room 

 for the remaining five to fill out more comfortably. 

 To these five the attention of my old friend John 

 Davey was asked; and he found them badly split, 

 and that their trunks were partly rotten. Later his 

 men came and practised ^'tree surgery" upon these 

 same trunks, and with the most favorable results. 

 In one trunk, split at its forking a dozen feet from 

 the ground, a nut from the tree had germinated, 

 and had so grown in the rotting wood of its own 

 parent tree as to have more than two feet in length 

 of bushy roots! This tree was the "sickest" of 

 all; but cleaning out the infection, putting in strong 

 iron bones in place of its decayed wooden heart, 

 filling with cement, bracing with chains, started it 

 to growing most vigorously and happily. It has 

 not failed any spring to be covered with its lovely 

 blooms, and the young growth is "rolling" over 

 the opening in the trunk as if it intended to make 

 a complete covering. 



