July, 1920 
4i 
Between the roadside wall and 
the grassy strip stone steps 
were set in the hill, bordered 
by iris 
jecome a garden — of sorts! 
Iris and roses came first, with 
i few tried-out old garden stead¬ 
ies and espalier peach-trees, trel- 
lised around the windows on the 
south wall. 
We were not gardeners. Con¬ 
sequently, we shied at competing 
with the neat beds and borders 
of more experienced friends, or 
those able to afford the luxury of 
a gardener. We therefore lim¬ 
ited our land-scape-architecture to 
a broad, grassy strip, iris-bor¬ 
dered, too wide to be called a 
path and too wee for a lawn, but 
connecting, harmoniously enough, 
the rose-laden wall that protected 
us from the street and the wild 
things among the rocks, where 
began the steep, unreclaimed 
woods. 
A bird-bath, stone flagging 
around the kitchen door, and 
some straggling stone 
steps, set in the grass, 
were the happy re¬ 
sults of several Sun¬ 
day afternoons mess¬ 
ing about in cement. 
In the minds of the 
babies, the birds’ 
pool compared fa¬ 
vorably with the 
Lake of the Swans 
in Central Park. 
Maiden-hair and 
forget-me-nots mir¬ 
rored themselves, 
and one day we 
counted thirty blue¬ 
birds splashing in 
it. Robins, most 
persistent of bathers, 
have been known to 
break the ice in it for 
their daily plunge! 
One day came 
along a government 
inspector. He con¬ 
demned all our hick- 
The stone wall has a history. It was lifted bodily and put up before 
the house to keep the stranger off and to preserve the privacy of this 
roadside half-acre. At one end was placed a green gate—a strong, 
sturdy green gate that half the family can swing on 
& 
’ i * 
Winter’s snow broke the 
precious dogwoods and robbed 
the half-acre of its woodsy 
character 
There is a tiny vineyard on the 
first terrace, vegetable garden 
(enough for a small family) of 
tomatoes, bush-beans, egg-plant, 
peppers, parsley, mint, radishes, 
and such, on the next—limited, of 
course, to those things which re¬ 
quire little space and less care. 
On the bottom and last terrace 
are a seed-bed and rows of flowers 
for picking. 
We have had to civilize and 
curtail and contrive and make 
over and readjust many times 
both our ideas and our half-acre, 
but in the doing we have learned 
not a little gardening—and even 
more philosophy. And though 
Nature and Man (if Real Estate 
Companies can be classed as hu¬ 
man) have done their worst, the 
homing instinct would out. 
There’s no denying it—the lure 
of that little half-acre was irre¬ 
sistible. Call it pride 
of ownership, if you 
will. Call it the 
compensation that 
came for all our 
struggles to reclaim 
that devastated sub¬ 
urban lot and make 
it a happy place to 
.live in. The name 
makes no difference. 
We had simply ex¬ 
perienced one of the 
great romances of 
life — making a 
home—one of the 
great adventures. 
This was the relentless 
road and pink brick 
sidewalk that encroach¬ 
ed on the half-acre. 
The high stone wall, 
however, saved the 
place. Roses and honey¬ 
suckle grow over it now 
and the devastation of 
the lot is no more 
ories. They were diseased. We cut them 
down—seventeen. . . . Our place looked 
not unlike Belleau Woods after the Amer¬ 
icans had driven Fritzie out of it. 
In a moment of utter despair, again we 
put the little place, now shorn of most of 
its shade, on the market. And then, one 
hot night, we hastily withdrew it, realizing 
quite suddenly that with the thinning out 
of the trees, we had acquired cooling breezes, 
straight and unobstructed from the unseen 
Sound, five miles ’cross country—and a de¬ 
lightful view, winter and summer, out over 
the valley below, and a sheltered, sunny 
slope, and firewood enough for two years! 
So we dug out the seventeen stumps and 
continued the straggling stone steps to lead 
down to a little, lower garden, which liter¬ 
ally hangs on the side of the hill, shored 
up by three terraces and surrounded by a 
hedge of blackberries that yield fruit the 
size of small plums. 
