a bit of natural
rocky woodland, bringing it within the garden pale. The awful rockery of
the flat garden is like unto a nest of prehistoric eggs that have been
turned to stone, from the interstices of which a few wan vines and ferns
protrude somewhat, suggesting the garnishing for an omelet.

Also, if you follow Nature and study her devices, you will alone learn
the ways of the winds and how to prepare for them. Where does Spring set
her first flag of truce--out in the windswept open?

No! the arbutus and hepatica lie bedded not alone in the fallen leaves
of the forest but amid their own enduring foliage. The skunk cabbage
raises his hooded head first in sheltered hollows. The marsh marigold
lies in the protection of bog tussocks and stream banks. The first
bloodroot is always found at the foot of some natural windbreak, while
the shad-bush, that ventures farther afield and higher in air than any,
is usually set in a protecting hedge, like his golden forerunner the
spice-bush.

If Nature looks to the ways of the wind when she plants, why should not
we? A bed of the hardiest roses set on a hill crest is a folly. Much
more likely would they be to thrive wholly on the north side of it. A
garden set in a cut between hills that form a natural blowpipe can at
best do no more than hold its own, without advancing.

But there are some things that belong to the never-never land and may
not be done here. You may plant roses and carnations in the shade or in
dry sea sand, but they will not thrive; you cannot keep upland lilies
cheerful with their feet in wet clay; you cannot have a garden all the
year in our northern latitudes, for nature does not; and you cannot
afford to ignore the ways of the wind, for according as it is kind or
cruel does it mean garden life or death!

"Men, they say, know many things;
But lo, they have taken wings,--
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that anybody knows."

--THOREAU.

II

THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I

_April 30._ Gray dawn, into which father and Evan vanished with their
fishing rods; then sunrise, curtained by a slant of rain, during which
the birds sang on with undamped ardour, a catbird making his debut for
the season as soloist.

It must not be thought that I was up and out at dawn. At twenty I did so
frequently, at thirty sometimes, now at thirty-