i! y Walter Prichard Eaton 
Photographs by H. H. Saylor and Ella M. Boult 
Editor’s Note:—As the year rounds into the full glow of the autumn, conies the last chance to urge the natural planting of our roadsides. Why 
should we not permit Nature to spread our gardens beyond the fences and give to America its distinctive natural charm of wayside border that is 
surely as beautiful as the famed hedge rows of England? If we do not "resow our highways with their natural loveliness,” we at least can make 
it our duty to see that roadside timber bordering public roads is not -want only destroyed and wayside gardens not uprooted. 
A MOTOR pulled up at the cross roads this morning evidently 
waiting until my dog and I reached the spot. Three gog¬ 
gled fat women sat on the rear seat. A 
goggled fat man and a goggled chauffeur 
sat on the front. All five were covered 
with dust. The goggled fat man had a 
map spread out on his fat knee. “Pardon 
me,” he said, running his fat finger over 
this map. “but can you direct us to Great 
Barrington? We can't quite make out the 
road.” 
I gave them the directions, and the 
chauffeur backed the car half-way around, 
cut out his muffler, and sent the machine 
with a leap and an explosion like a battery 
of Gatling guns tearing down the road. It 
disappeared in a cloud of dust. 
“Barney,” said I to my dog, “they are 
seeing the Berkshires.” 
Barney looked up. wagging his tail, and 
then set off into the field on a woodchuck 
scent. I continued my plod up the side 
road till presently I reached the Berkshire 
garden which I sought, and the perfect 
view of Monument Mountain. There 
were no motor tracks in the road here, 
since it leads only to a little pond and a 
farm or two, ending against the wooded 
hill. It was a clear autumn morning, 
crisp without chill, and fragrant as new 
cider. Already the pageant of the season 
was being staged over hill-slope and 
Down the vista of the country road between 
the shaggy trunks of the sugar maples are 
the pictures that enrich the real country 
swamp. The red banners of October Were flying in the woods, 
and with every gust of wind a little battalion of dead leaves 
roused into life in the road at my feet and 
rushed forward as upon some foe. 
The spot where I paused was on a slight 
elevation of pasture land, commanding a 
wide prospect. The road was bounded by 
low stone walls, gray and half hidden with 
careless briers. A few hundred rods 
ahead, where the road dipped through a. 
tamarack swamp, lay a little pond, re¬ 
flecting now the autumn foliage on its 
banks like colors laid on a palette of black 
glass. To the right, across the fields, a 
mouse-gray farmhouse nestled in an or¬ 
chard, two piles of bright red apples un¬ 
der the trees adding a rich and cheerful 
note. Immediately at my feet, on either 
side of the brown carpet of fallen leaves 
and extending to the gray stone walls, 
were two delicate, and exquisite garden 
beds, sown with the careless symmetry of 
nature. They held little blue asters, some¬ 
times called iron weed asters; just that 
and no more, save a few feathery tufts of 
dead grass between the clusters of blooms. 
These little asters, which flower after the 
frost, hold a faintly faded blue of sum¬ 
mer in thin tiny petals, and spread a bit 
of sky along our New England roadsides 
more satisfying and suggestive to me than 
any formal border on the grandest estate.. 
(222) 
