Grove

“ This grove was as dark as a church at twilight, and was hidden in the heart of a great sunny wood of silver birches, maples, and oak, full of bird song and carpeted with glossy wintergreen leaves, which in springtime were starred with windflowers and star-of-Bethlehem and tiny purple orchids. There was little bird song in the pine grove, and no flowers, but the air in there was always charged with the whisperings and the pungent scent of pine needles. ”

“ In the beautiful grove, apparently the growth of ancient tree-roots, neither stone memorials nor monuments, are to be met with—nothing but the evergreen trees, and the soft soughing of the wind through their branches;—one fancies that in it one can perceive the whispering of a spirit! ”

“ We look across a floor of green, dappled with shade and sunshine, through the varied intervals of the grove of fruit trees, beneath the perfect foliage, to a field of light, with changing colour and ever-changing appearance, whence a freshness is wafted towards us across the flowering grass. ”

“ The grove no longer desired the screen of leaves to hide it from the eyes of man, to cover up the monsters of soft rank vegetation that throve and bloated until they burst with the unclean rottenness of excess. ”

“ Not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate moss—paths which look as if they were made by the free-will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs. ”

“ A little rolling, with concrete walks, flower beds, fine shrubbery, great old trees with heavy foliage, close as a grove in some portions, the large grounds contained some handsome buildings of modern make, as well as several of stately old style no longer built. ”

“ To most people a grove is a grove, and all groves are alike. But no two groves are alike. There is as marked a difference between different forests as between different communities. A grove of pines without underbrush, carpeted with the fine-fingered russet leaves of the pine, and odorous of resinous gums, has scarcely a trace of likeness to a maple woods, either in the insects, the birds, the shrubs, the light and shade, or the sound of its leaves. ”

“ It is, as we feel, a countless grove, with many masses of thicket and careless tangles of drapery, such as we see on the left-hand foreground, and vistas of ambrosial gloom, such as open down the ferny dell on the right. ”

“ It is entirely cleared of underbush, and as the wind sighs through the dense foliage of the trees and whispers in the darkened and somewhat gloomy grove, it is an awful place, even to an unimpressible white man. ”

“ Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, And half the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees With here a fountain, never to be played; And there a summer-house, that knows no shade; ”

“ The massy richness of an aged grove, soothed, without chilling the fancy, and through its broad vista the glimmering light lent itself to diversify uniformity without diminishing grandeur. Consistency towered above vanity, for there were no glades rolled into gravelled plains, nor trees sheared into fantastic foliage—that sickly taste which finds honor in the sacrifice of simplicity, and pride in its outrage on nature. ”

“ The iron furnaces have devoured my grove, and their huge stumps that stood like gravestones have been cleared away, that a grove may be planted in the same spot, for the next hundred years to nourish into the stature and glory of that which is gone. ”

“ In autumn, when the colors are ripe, the whole circular grove, at a little distance, looks like a big handful of flowers set in a cup to be kept fresh—a tuft of goldenrods. Its feeding-streams are exceedingly beautiful, notwithstanding their inconstancy and extreme shallowness. They have no channel whatever, and consequently are left free to spread in thin sheets upon the shining granite and wander at will. ”

“ The prevailing character of a grove is beauty; fine trees are lovely objects; a grove is an assemblage of them; in which every individual retains much of its own peculiar elegance; and whatever it loses is transferred to the superior beauty of the whole. To a grove, therefore, which admits of endless variety in the disposition of the trees, differences in their shapes and their greens are seldom very important, and sometimes they are detrimental. ”

“ If you want to see a new and peculiar beauty, watch a golden sunset through 113 a grove draperied with gray moss. The swaying, filmy bands turn golden and rose-colored; and the long, swaying avenues are like a scene in fairyland. ”

“ To say truth, a grove denuded of its late gorgeous attire, and instead of bowing majestically before the winds, standing erect and motionless while they are blowing through it, is ‘a sorry sight,’ and one upon which we will not dwell. ”

“ As I advance, lowering the edge of the hill which makes the firm foreground or lower frame of the picture, the depth of the brilliant grove revealed steadily increases, suggesting that the whole of the inclosed valley is filled with such color. One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. ”

“ A magnificent grove of white pines stoops and murmurs to the wind as it draws down the valley, the tufted boughs give out a healthy odor, and in their shadows are a thousand grassy nooks and hollows filled with wild blossoms that give a richer fragrance to the air. I have said there was but one house in the river vale. A little back from the river’s brink, and just beyond the clump of chesnuts at the end of the bridge, are two large oak trees, sheltering, and almost hiding a low cottage house. ”

“ A large bluff of poplars rustled, the wind soughing through the stems with a wailing note. The brush grew higher to the right. I suddenly noticed that I was driving along a broken-down fence between the brush and myself. The brush became a grove of boles which next seemed to shoot up to the full height of the bluff. Then, unexpectedly, startlingly, a vista opened. Between the silent grove to the south and the large; whispering, wailing bluff to the north there stood in a little clearing a snow white log house, uncannily white in the paling moonlight. ”

“ No heaven need wear a lovelier aspect than earth did this afternoon, after the clearing up of the shower. We traversed the blooming plain, unmarked by any road, only the friendly track of wheels which tracked, not broke the grass. Our stations were not from town to town, but from grove to grove. These groves first floated like blue islands in the distance. As we drew nearer, they seemed fair parks, and the little log houses on the edge, with their curling smokes, harmonized beautifully with them.
One of these groves, Ross's grove, we reached just at sunset. ”

“ A lover of natural beauty can imagine with what pleasure we rode among these flowering groves, which filled the air with a light and delicate fragrance. We continued our road for about a half a mile, interspersed through an open grove of live-oaks, which, in form, were the most symmetrical and beautiful we had yet seen in this country. ”

“ The two in the edge of the grove turn back along the dim pathway, and walk close, close—for, after all, what is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it? ”

“ For the last two or three days we have been looking at houses, and have all but agreed for one—a most beautiful place within four or five miles out of town, called 'The Grove.' In point of situation it is a perfect paradise, in rich and magnificent mountain-scenery, and sheltered from all winds, even the fierce south-easter, by thick surrounding woods. ”

“ This mingled variety of garden and grove swept gradually up the sides of the mountains, until succeeded by dense forests, which in turn gave place to naked and craggy rocks, until the summits rose into the regions of perpetual snow. ”

“ I hear the children calling it the grove still. The young trees are growing up fast round them, not elms, many of them but wild cherry-trees, and poplars, and a few spruces but the poor old elms seem to be all the more alone because of the second growth. ”

“ But his grove, the one creditable thing he had ever done in his life, rustled on. Beyond this grove the houses of the depot settlement began, and the naked board walk, that had run in out of the sunflowers, again became a link between human dwellings. ”

“ If the landscape is pleasing, the garden shows it, — if tame, it excludes it. A little grove, which any farmer can find, or cause to grow near his house, will, in a few years, make cataracts and chains of mountains quite unnecessary to his scenery ”

“ Finally, in the gathering dusk I saw ahead of me the rounded crowns of trees; and pretty soon we entered one of those beautiful groves of hardwood timber that were found at wide distances along the larger prairie streams--I remember many of them and their names, Buck Grove, Cole's Grove, Fifteen Mile Grove, Hickory Grove, Crabapple Grove, Marble's Grove, but I never knew the name of this, the shelter toward which we had been making. ”

“ Picturesquely visible among the trees of a grove appears a small, rustic cottage, curiously interwoven of bark, vines, boughs, leaves, and flowers—a building which seems to have grown from the conditions and the colors of the grove. ”

“ In a grove the trees are generally well formed, many of them being nearly perfect in their proportions. Their shadows are cast separately upon the ground, which is green beneath them as in an orchard. If we look upon them from a near eminence, we observe a variety of outlines, and may identify the different species by their shape, while in the forest we see one unbroken mass of foliage. A wild-wood is frequently converted into a grove by clearing it of undergrowth and leaving the space a grassy lawn. ”

“ And the wandering winds, how busy they are, and what a breadth of sound and motion they make, glinting and bubbling about the crags of the summit, sifting through the woods, feeling their way from grove to grove, ruffling the loose hair on the shoulders of the bears, fanning and rocking young birds in their cradles, making a trumpet of every corolla, and carrying their fragrance around the world. ”

“ Another drive through a more open country, and we reach a fine grove of pine and live-oak, which melts away into a shrubbery guarded by a rustic gateway, passing through which, we are brought by a sudden turn into the planter’s house, buried in trees, which dispute with the green sward and with wild flower-beds every yard of the space which lies between the hall-door and the waters of the Pedee ”

“ Here and there is a grove, a permanent settlement ahead of and above the main ranks. In advance of these are a few lone trees, heroes scouting in the lead. In moist, sheltered places are seedlings and promising young trees growing up in front of the battle-scarred old guard. Advances on dry, wind-swept ridges are more difficult and much less frequent; on a few dry ridges these trees have met with a repulse and [Pg 59] in some places have lost a little territory, but along most of its front the timber-line is slowly advancing into the heights. ”

“ The greater part of the breadth is occupied by the zone of the forest, the willow brakes, and the shrubbery of the bank—I find myself hunting for a word which will more perfectly fix and define this wonderful terrain than the word wood, and yet I am unable to find one. There can be no talk of a wood in the usual sense of the term—a kind of great pillared grove with moss and strewn leafage and tree-trunks of fairly uniform girth. The trees in our hunting-grounds are of different ages and circumference. ”

“ Also each new path has made it easier to bring up, for the lawn garden, sand, clay, or leaf-mould, or for hearth consumption all the wood which the grove's natural mortality each year requires to be disposed of. There is a superior spiritual quality in the warmth of a fire of h-oak, h-ash, and even h-ellum gathered from your own acre, especially if the acre is very small and has contour paths. ”

“ The thirsty mountaineer knows well that in every sequoia grove he will find running water, but it is a mistake to suppose that the water is the cause of the grove being there; on the contrary, the grove is the cause of the water being there. ”

“ The ousel sweetens the shady glens and cañons where waterfalls abound, and every grove or forest, however silent it may seem when we chance to pay it a hasty visit, has its singers,—thrushes, linnets, warblers,—while hummingbirds glint and hover about the fringing masses of bloom around stream and meadow openings. ”

“ The trees of all the species stand more or less apart in groves, or in small, irregular groups, enabling one to find a way nearly everywhere, along sunny colonnades and through openings that have a smooth, park-like surface, strewn with brown needles and burs. Now you cross a wild garden, now a meadow, now a ferny, willowy stream; and ever and anon you emerge from all the groves and flowers upon some granite pavement or high, bare ridge commanding superb views above the waving sea of evergreens far and near. ”

“ Strong contrasts scatter trees which are thinly planted, and which have not the connection of underwood; they no longer form one plantation; they are a number of single trees. A thick grove is not indeed exposed to this mischief, and certain situations may recommend different shapes and different greens for their effects upon the surface ”

“ So a grove of ten thousand trees or so is a very paying concern, if only the planter does not make the mistake, which I, myself, have often noticed, of placing his trees too close to one another, so that they do not get enough room to spread out at the top and find light and air. ”