Sometimes father read about the hairs of the head being numbered,because we were so precious in the sight of the Almighty.Mother was just as particular with her purple tree;every peach on it was counted,and if we found one on the ground,we had to carry it to her,because it MIGHT be sound enough to can or spice for a fair,or she had promised the seed to some one halfway across the state.At each end of the peach row was an enormous big pear tree;not far from one the chicken house stood on the path to the barn,and beside the other the smoke house with the dog kennel a yard away.Father said there was a distinct relationship between a smoke house and a dog kennel,and bulldogs were best.Just at present we were out of bulldogs,but Jones,Jenkins and Co.could make as much noise as any dog you ever heard.On the left grew the plum trees all the way to the south fence,and I think there was one of every kind in the fruit catalogues.Father spent hours pruning,grafting,and fertilizing them.He said they required twice as much work as peaches.
Around the other sides of the orchard were two rows of peach trees of every variety;but one cling on the north was just a little the best of any,and we might eat all we wanted from any tree we liked,after father tested them and said:"Peaches are ripe!"In the middle were the apple;selected trees,planted,trimmed,and cultivated like human beings.The apples were so big and fine they were picked by hand,wrapped in paper,packed in barrels,and all we could not use at home went to J.B.White in Fort Wayne for the biggest fruit house in the state.My!but father was proud!He always packed especially fine ones for Mr.
White's family.He said he liked him,because he was a real sandy Scotchman,who knew when an apple was right,and wasn't afraid to say so.
On the south side of the orchard there was the earliest June apple tree.The apples were small,bright red with yellow stripes,crisp,juicy and sweet enough to be just right.The tree was very large,and so heavy it leaned far to the northeast.
This sounds like make-believe,but it's gospel truth.Almost two feet from the ground there was a big round growth,the size of a hash bowl.The tree must have been hurt when very small and the place enlarged with the trunk.Now it made a grand step.If you understood that no one could keep from running the last few rods from the tree,then figured on the help to be had from this step,you could see how we went up it like squirrels.All the bark on the south side was worn away and the trunk was smooth and shiny.
The birds loved to nest among the branches,and under the peach tree in the fence corner opposite was a big bed of my mother's favourite wild flowers,blue-eyed Marys.They had dainty stems from six to eight inches high and delicate heads of bloom made up of little flowers,two petals up,blue,two turning down,white.
Perhaps you don't know about anything prettier than that.There were maiden-hair ferns among them too!and the biggest lichens you ever saw on the fence,while in the hollow of a rotten rail a little chippy bird always built a hair nest.She got the hairs at our barn,for most of them were gray from our carriage horses,Ned and Jo.All down that side of the orchard the fence corners were filled with long grass and wild flowers,a few alder bushes left to furnish berries for the birds,and wild roses for us,to keep their beauty impressed on us,father said.
The east end ran along the brow of a hill so steep we coasted down it on the big meat board all winter.The board was six inches thick,two and a half feet wide,and six long.Father said slipping over ice and snow gave it the good scouring it needed,and it was thick enough to last all our lives,so we might play with it as we pleased.At least seven of us could go skimming down that hill and halfway across the meadow on it.In the very place we slid across,in summer lay the cowslip bed.
The world is full of beautiful spots,but I doubt if any of them ever were prettier than that.Father called it swale.We didn't sink deep,but all summer there was water standing there.The grass was long and very sweet,there were ferns and a few calamus flowers,and there must have been an acre of cowslips--cowslips with big-veined,heartshaped,green leaves,and large pale gold flowers.I used to sit on the top rail of that orchard fence and look down at them,and try to figure out what God was thinking when He created them,and I wished that I might have been where I could watch His face as He worked.
Halfway across the east side was a gully where Leon and I found the Underground Station,and from any place along the north you looked,you saw the Little Creek and the marsh.At the same time the cowslips were most golden,the marsh was blue with flags,pink with smart weed,white and yellow with dodder,yellow with marsh buttercups having ragged frosty leaves,while the yellow and the red birds flashed above it,the red crying,"Chip,""Chip,"in short,sharp notes,the yellow spilling music all over the marsh while on wing.
It would take a whole book to describe the butterflies;once in a while you scared up a big,wonderful moth,large as a sparrow;and the orchard was alive with doves,thrushes,catbirds,bluebirds,vireos,and orioles.When you climbed the fence,or a tree,and kept quiet,and heard the music and studied the pictures,it made you feel as if you had to put it into words.I often had meeting all by myself,unless Bobby and Hezekiah were along,and I tried to tell God what I thought about things.
Probably He was so busy making more birds and flowers for other worlds,He never heard me;but I didn't say anything disrespectful at all,so it made no difference if He did listen.
It just seemed as if I must tell what I thought,and I felt better,not so full and restless after I had finished.
All of us were alike about that.At that minute I knew mother was humming,as she did a dozen times a day:
