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Most
men go to the country to make an easy thing of it. If they must
commence study of all the later discoveries in vegetable
physiology, and keep a sharp eye upon all new varieties of fruit
- lest they fall behind the age; and trench their land every
third year, and screen it - may be - in order to ensure the most
perfect condition of the soil, they find themselves entering
upon the labors of a new profession, instead of lightening the
fatigues of an old one.
Limit
yourself, until you have felt your way, to some ten or a dozen
of the best established varieties; don’t be afraid of old
things if they are good; if a gaunt Rhode Island Greening tree
is struggling in your hedge-row, trim it, scrape it, soap it,
dig about it, pull away the turf from it, lime it, and then if
you can keep up a fair fight against the bugs and the worms, you
will have fine fruit from it; if you can’t, cut it down. If a
veteran mossy pear tree is in your door-yard, groom it as you
would a horse - just in from a summering in briary pastures.
Save some
sheltered spot for a trellis, where you may plant a Delaware, an
Iona or two, a Rebecca, and a Diana. Put a Concord at your
southside door - its rampant growth will cover your trellised
porch in a pair of seasons; it will give you some fine clusters,
even though you allow it to tangle; the pomologists will laugh
at you; but let them: you will have your shade and the
wilderness of frolicsome tendrils, and at least a fair show of
purple bunches. Scatter here and there hardy herbaceous flowers
that shall care for themselves, and which the children may pluck
with a will. Don’t distress yourself if your half acre of lawn
shows some hummocks, or dandelions, or butter-cups. And if a
wild clump of bushes intrude in a corner, don’t condemn it too
hastily; it may be well to enliven it with an evergreen or two -
to dig about it, and paint its edges with a few summer phloxes
or roses.
Donald G.
Mitchell, Rural Studies, 1867
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