]
On this green of the dryads, where it intercepts the "avenue" that slips
over from the Elm Street trolley-cars, lies, such as it is, my own acre;
house, lawn, shrubberies and, at the rear, in the edge of the pines, the
study. Back there by the study--which sometimes in irony we call the
power-house--the lawn merges into my seven other acres, in Paradise.
Really the whole possession is a much humbler one than I find myself
able to make it appear in the flattering terms of land measure. Those
seven acres of Paradise I acquired as "waste land." Nevertheless, if I
were selling that "waste," that "hole in the ground," it would not hurt
my conscience, such as it is, to declare that the birds on it alone are
worth more than it cost: wood-thrushes and robins, golden orioles,
scarlet tanagers, blackbirds, bluebirds, oven-birds, cedar-birds,
veeries, vireos, song-sparrows, flycatchers, kinglets, the flicker, the
cuckoo, the nuthatch, the chickadee and the rose-breasted grosbeak, not
to mention jays or kingfishers, swallows, the little green heron or that
cock of the walk, the red squirrel.
Speaking of walks, it was with them--and one drive--in this grove, that
I made my first venture toward the artistic enhancement of my
acre,--acre this time in the old sense that ignores feet and rods. I was
quite willing to make it a matter of as many years as necessary when
pursued as play, not work, on the least possible money outlay and having
for its end a garden of joy, not of care.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25