burring of furry wings.

Ah, well! the phlox has passed now, and its trim green leaves are brown
and crackly. I can do what I like with it after this. So when my other
transplanting grows tiresome, I fall upon my phlox. Every year some of it
needs thinning, so quickly does it spread. I take the spading-fork, and,
with what seems like utter ruthlessness, I pry out from the thickest
centers enough good roots to give the rest breathing and growing space.
Along the path edges I always have to cut out encroaching roots each year,
or else soon there would be no path. But all that I take out is precious,
either to give to friends for their gardens, or to enlarge the edges of my
own. For this phlox needs almost no care, and will fight grass and weeds
for itself.

There are phlox seedlings, too, all over the garden, but I have no way of
telling what color they are, though usually I can detect the white by its
foliage. I take them up and set them out near the main phlox masses, and
wait for the next season's blossoming before I give them their final
place.

This is the time of year, too, when I give some attention to the rocks in
my garden. Of course, in order to have a garden at all, it was necessary
to take out enough rock to build quite a respectable stone wall. But that
was not the end. There never will be an end. A Connecticut garden grows
rocks like weeds, and one must expect to keep on taking them out each
fall. The rest of the year I try to ignore them, but after frost I like to
make a fresh raid, and get rid of another wheelbarrow load or so. And I
always notice that for one barrow load of stones that go out, it takes at
least two barrow loads of earth to fill in. Thus an excellent circulation
is maintained, and the garden does not stagnate. Moreover, I take great
pleasure in showing my friends--especially friends from the more earthy
sections of New York and farther west--the piles of rock and the parts of
certain stone walls about the place that have been literally made out of
the cullings of my garden. They never believe me.

As I am thus occupied,--digging, planting, thinning, sowing,--I find it one
of the happiest seasons of the year. It is partly the stimulus of the
autumn air, partly the pleasure of getting at the ground. I think there
are some of us, city folk though we be, who must have the giant AntA|us
for ancestor. We still need to get in close touch with the earth now and
then. Children have a true instin