Leaf litter

“ Somewhere those little ones have been and thrust their tiny arms through the railings where a lilac-tree was in leaf, and they have dug up the stones in the court, and stuck the green lilac-twigs in the ground, and made themselves a garden, which they are watering out of oyster-shells and broken bits of pots; for the same instinct that leads a bird to build its nest causes them to imitate the making of gardens. ”

“ As a cut flower it can hardly be misused, provided it is not crowded.
Its culture is simple. Any sort of garden soil suits it, but it prefers a sandy loam. A winter top dressing of stable litter will help to produce greater luxuriance and a longer succession of flowers. It quickly and broadly propagates itself by means of its creeping roots; these may be at any time chopped off, with a sharp spade, in strong pieces, which, if planted in deeply-dug loam, will make blooming specimens for the following season. ”

“ This character they owe to the immense number of lichens with which they abound. The ground, instead of grass, is carpeted with dense tufts of the reindeer moss, white as a shower of new fallen snow; while the trunks and branches of the trees are swollen far beyond their natural dimensions with huge, dusky, funereal branches of the rock-hair, hanging down in masses, exhaling a damp earthy smell, like an old cellar, or stretching from tree to tree in long festoons, waving with every breath of wind, and creating a perpetual melancholy sound. ”

“ For the purpose of covering, you may provide either clean straw, or long dry horse-stable litter, sufficient to lay about half a foot thick at first, but gradually increased afterwards of due thickness to defend the bed effectually from the air, rain, and inclement weather, and to preserve a low kindly warmth. ”

“ These old trees make such a litter in the spring that my wife is anxious to get them down. Women like tidiness, you know, and she says, while they are blooming, it is impossible to keep the yard clean. ”

“ Barn-yard litter is beneficial on thin land, not necessary on rich land, but ashes are good on any soil. I pasture my orchard in summer with young horses and hogs. I think it advisable, as the hogs eat the apples that drop and destroy the worms. ”

“ The winter covering of litter should be raked into the walks or alleys as soon as winter is over and allowed to remain there as a mulch for keeping the soil cool and damp and for the purpose of keeping the berries clean. ”

“ The trees too are bending in the attitude of flight—their boughs are brandishing their foliage as a dog worries a fleece, and littering the black soil with leaves among which runs a constant querulous hissing and rustling. ”

“ Once, very early in their lives, came a steady rain. All night long the devoted mother received the downpour on her back, and all the next day, with short intervals of food-seeking, she remained at her post, while the water ran off her tail in streams. She kept her younglings [Pg 131] warm and dry, but the nest was sadly damaged, the lichen covering was softened and brightened in color, and the whole structure spread and settled, so that I feared it would not hold together till the little ones were grown. ”

“ Why the difference?" "Kick up the litter under the oaks and you will see that the leaves rot almost as fast as they fall. Under the pines, though, the needles pile up as a thick duff; decay is much slower. ”

“ Sometimes in such arid dry countries, a small spring of water will form around itself a refreshing oasis of greenery surrounded everywhere by dreary thorn-scrub or monotonous sand. All the plants in such a spot have their own special work to do: the graceful trees which shade the spring, the green mosses on the stones, the fresh grass and bright flowers or waving reeds, are all associated in a common work. They protect and shelter each other; their dead leaves are used to form soil; their roots explore and break up the ground. ”

“ The green spots and patches on the bark of old trees and fences, and sometimes even on damp earth, are due to enormous numbers of minute plants, green with the same green pigment as the leaves of the largest tree; while the green tint of the gray lichens on rocks and tree trunks is caused by similar single-celled plants which grow among the white fibers of the lichen proper. Besides these, there are many like plants which float about in fresh water, each a single cell. ”

“ So fed, this leaf expands, and remains on the stem all summer. The nursing leaves die when the aerial leaves have taken their food away, and then the first stage of oak hood has begun. It has subterranean and superterranean organs, the former finding plant-food in the earth, and the latter gathering it in the air, the sunlight, and the storm. ”

“ These plants, floated and nourished by the mother leaf, may drift down a creek or across a pond and establish new settlements. In a similar manner behave leaves of the following, and perhaps others: Cardamine pratensis, horse-radish, celandine, some water lilies, and other plants not grown in wet land.
Gardeners often propagate certain species by placing leaves on wet sand or mud, when buds spring from the margins of the leaves or from some other portion. ”

“ There should be no digging, and the fallen leaves should be left. I fully agree, except as to the leaves. Theoretically, it seems quite right to allow the leaves to lie and decay amidst the surrounding plants, but in practice it does not answer. There are, for instance, in most gardens such things as slugs and snails. These delight in a leafy covering, and, protected from frost by the shelter, will prey upon the perennial green leafage and the starting crowns of the herbaceous plants, and do an immense amount of mischief. ”

“ These are from the Novel of Marchmont.
Line 1.
As in the woods where leathery lichen weaves
Its wintry web among the sallow leaves.
Mosses and lichens are the first efforts of Nature to clothe the earth: as they decay, they form an earth that affords nourishment to the larger and more succulent vegetables: several species of lichen are found in the woods, springing up among the dead leaves, under the drip of forest trees; these, and the withered foliage of preceding years, afford shelter to the earliest wild flowers about the skirts of woods, and in hedge-rows and copses. ”

“ Watson, assistant curator of the Royal Kew Gardens, says he gathers up bushels of leaves in the palm-houses every morning while a bad fog lasts, and after a long spell of it many hard-wooded as well as the more delicate plants are reduced to an unsightly condition of almost bare stems, blotched and discoloured leaves, and fallen foliage. ”

“ Yet though some of them, such as the hairy lichens, almost disappear in the summer, they are by no means dead, for, like all these very low plants, they can bear being dried up for a long time, and then, when moisture visits them again, each green cell sets to work, and they revive. ”

“ 3 In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash’d palings, Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green, With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love, With every leaf a miracle—and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break. ”

“ I suppose in reality not a leaf goes yellow in autumn without ceasing to care about its sap and making the parent tree very uncomfortable by long growling and grumbling—but surely nature might find some less irritating way of carrying on business if she would give her mind to it. Why should the generations overlap one another at all? ”

“ The shadows of leaves fall upon their arms, as they spread the branches apart, but their shoulders are in the sun. The skin of their arms is like a blue mist, but their shoulders are white and glowing, as if the light fell not from above, but rose from under their skin. We watch the leaf which has fallen upon their shoulder, and it lies at the curve of their neck, and a drop of dew glistens upon it like a jewel. ”

“ "YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side," said the dewdrop to the lake. ”

“ The trees bathed their great heads in the waves of the morning, while their roots were planted deep in gloom; save where on the borders the sunshine broke against their stems, or swept in long streams through their avenues, washing with brighter hue all the leaves over which it flowed; revealing the rich brown of the decayed leaves and fallen pine-cones, and the delicate greens of the long grasses and tiny forests of moss that covered the channel over which it passed in motionless rivers of light. ”

“ The ash her purple drops forgivingly
And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea,
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
75All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days,
Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush. ”

“ One only leaf upon the top of a tree—the sole remaining leaf—danced round and round like a rag blown by the wind. ”

“ So extravagant is Nature with her choicest treasures, spending plant beauty as she spends sunshine, pouring it forth into land and sea, garden and desert. And so the beauty of lilies falls on angels and men, bears and squirrels, wolves and sheep, birds and bees, but as far as I have seen, man alone, and the animals he tames, destroy these gardens. ”

“ Every part of nature teaches that the passing away of one life is the making room for another. The oak dies down to the ground, leaving within its rind a rich virgin mould which will impart a vigorous life to an infant forest. The pine leaves a sandy and sterile soil, the harder woods, a strong and fruitful mould. So this constant abrasion and decay of our lives makes the soil of our future growth. The wood we now mature, when it becomes mould, determines the character of our second growth. ”

“ We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up like a baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. ”

“ Dark spruce forest frowned on either side the frozen waterway. The trees had been stripped by a recent wind of their white covering of frost, and they seemed to lean towards each other, black and ominous, in the fading light. ”

“ Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen against others of their kind still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than whole groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology at last. ”

“ Trees that, like the poplar, lift upward all their boughs, give no shade and no shelter, whatever their height. Trees the most lovingly shelter and shade us, when, like the willow, the higher soar their summits, the lowlier droop their boughs. ”

“ The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks. ”

“ This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. ”

“ All the books and instructions insist that the selection of the soil is the most important part of gardening. No doubt it is. But, if a man has already selected his own backyard before he opens the book, what remedy is there? All the books lay stress on the need of “a deep, friable loam full of nitrogen.” This I have never seen. My own plot of land I found on examination to contain nothing but earth. I could see no trace of nitrogen. I do not deny the existence of loam. There may be such a thing. But I am admitting now in all humility of mind that I don’t know what loam is. ”

“ We walked round the ruined garden twice or thrice more, and it was all in bloom for me. If the green and yellow growth of weed in the chinks of the old wall had been the most precious flowers that ever blew, it could not have been more cherished in my remembrance. ”

“ I wish I had space to write more of the surpassing beauty of this favorite spruce. Every tree-lover is sure to regard it with special admiration; apathetic mountaineers, even, seeking only game or gold, stop to gaze on first meeting it, and mutter to themselves: "That's a mighty pretty tree," some of them adding, "d——d pretty!" In autumn, when its cones are ripe, the little striped tamias, and the Douglas squirrel, and the Clark crow make a happy stir in its groves. The deer love to lie down beneath its spreading branches; ”

“ There is a low mist in the woods. It is a good day to study lichens. ”

“ If we each take calmly whatever befalls us our masters try to heal our wounds, but if we resist may the gods have mercy on us! for Cleopatra is like a strung bow, which sets the arrow flying as soon as a child, a mouse, a breath of air even touches it—like an over-full cup which brims over if a leaf, another drop, a single tear falls into it. We should, any one of us, soon be worn out by such a life, but she needs excitement, turmoil and amusement at every hour. ”

“ You will, I trust, resemble a forest plant, which has indeed, by some accident, been brought up in the greenhouse, and thus rendered delicate and effeminate, but which regains its native firmness and tenacity when exposed for a season to the winter air. ”

“ All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider's web, and how little lemon-coloured buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts—they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves—and all the other trees in turn. ”