it was not with the girl they agreed upon but 
rather this Holly I have been telling you about. 
DUG HOLLY WITH AXE 
One day I decided to wait no longer and went 
to the woods with spade and shovel but found 
the little Holly different from others. It does not 
seem to make sense but the fact that it was so 
hard to dig was what really made it valuable. 
I believe it to be the only tree I ever dug with an 
axe. It grew in a large stump the inside of which 
had rotted completely away. A small quantity 
of soft wood remained but in some manner the 
stump had become almost completely filled with 
leaf mold. The outside rim remained solid—hard 
dead wood that required much labor to cut away. 
This done I did not use shovel or spade but sim- 
ply lifted the tree with roots intact. 
A glance at the root ball showed a near miracle. 
Instead of sparce, leggy roots such as I had 
found on those previously transplanted, this spe- 
cimen had thousands of small feeding rootlets 
none of which had touched soil or earth, for all 
had been confined inside that old stump. This 
root system was a lovely thing to look at and I 
immediately thought of trying to find stumps to 
grow Hollies in on the farm but, on second 
thought, realized that it was not the stump that 
made all those rootlets but the leafmold inside the 
stump that the Holly grew in. 
FOUND SECRET 
This little tree was discovered many years ago 
but I will never forget its beauty for I have seen 
few to equal it and none with larger dark green 
leaves or more berries. However, when telling 
folks about it I am apt to forget to mention the 
most important fact of all—the millions of little 
rootlets developed in the leafmold in that old 
stump. It was no easy task to cut away the rim 
of the stump but when that little Holly was lifted 
out I realized that I had found “what makes Hol- 
lies tick,” as my twin brother remarked. Taken to 
my farm and planted with lots of leafmold it was 
the first of thousands to live and prosper. 
Hard everyday work in the soil has taught 
me much about Holly. I wish I could take the 
readers of this article to my Holly Orchards, for 
there many things that appear unusual, hard to 
believe, or quite impossible when put in print, are 
worked out as facts. Nothing is quite as real as 
