helter of the
tumble-down fences that I was very anxious to see what pictures would
paint themselves if the canvas, colour, and brushes were left free for
the season through. Already we have had our money's worth, so that
everything beyond will be an extra dividend. The bit of marshy ground
has been for weeks a lake of iris, its curving brink foamed with meadow
rue and Osmundas that have all the dignity of palms.

Now all the pasture edge is set with wild roses and wax-white blueberry
flowers. Sundrops are grouped here and there, with yellow thistles; the
native sweetbrier arches over gray boulders that are tumbled together
like the relic of some old dwelling; and the purple red calopogon of the
orchid tribe adds a new colour to the tapestry, the cross-stitch filling
being all of field daisies. Truly this old farm is a well-nigh perfect
wild garden, the strawberries dyeing the undergrass red, and the hedges
bound together with grape-vines. It does not need rescuing, but letting
alone, to be the delight of every one who wishes to enjoy.

On being approached as to his future plans, Amos Opie merely sets his
lips, brings his finger-tips together, and says, "I'm open to offers,
but I'm not bound to set a price or hurry my decisions."

Meanwhile I am living in a double tremor, of delight at the present and
fear lest some one may snap up the place and give us what the comic
paper called a Queen Mary Anne cottage and a stiff lawn surrounded by a
gas-pipe fence to gaze upon. O for a pair of neighbours who would join
us in comfortable vagabondage, leave the white birches to frame the
meadows and the wild flowers in the grass!

_June 25._ We have been having some astonishing thunder-storms of nights
lately, and I must say that upon one occasion I fled to the house. Two
nights ago, however, the sun set in an even sky of lead, there was no
wind, no grumblings of thunder. We had passed a very active day and
finished placing the stakes on the knoll in the locations to be occupied
by shrubs and trees, all numbered according to the tagged specimens over
in the reservoir woods.

_The Man from Everywhere_ suggested this system, an adaptation, he says,
from the usual one of numbering stones for a bit of masonry. It will
prevent confusion, for the perspective will be different when the leaves
have fallen, and as we lift the bushes, each one will go to its place,
and we shall not lose a year's growth, or perhaps the shrub itself, by a