The ground, the turf, the atmosphere of an
old orchard, seem several stages nearer to man than that of the
adjoining field, as if the trees had given back to the soil more than
they had taken from it; as if they had tempered the elements and
attracted all the genial and beneficent influences in the landscape
around.
An apple orchard is sure to bear you several crops beside the apple.
There is the crop of sweet and tender reminiscences dating from
childhood and spanning the seasons from May to October, and making the
orchard a sort of outlying part of the household. You have played
there as a child, mused there as a youth or lover, strolled there as a
thoughtful, sad-eyed man. Your father, perhaps, planted the trees,
or reared them from the seed, and you yourself have pruned and grafted
them, and worked among them, till every separate tree has a peculiar
history and meaning in your mind. Then there is the never-failing crop
of birds--robins, goldfinches, king-birds, cedar-birds, hair-birds,
orioles, starlings--all nesting and breeding in its branches, and fitly
described by Wilson Flagg as "Birds of the Garden and Orchard.
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