Royal yard

“ Some of our doings, judged from the vantage point of the knoll, are very inconsistent. The spot occupied by the drying yard is the most suitable place for the new strawberry bed, and is in a direct line between the fence gap, where my fragrant things are to be, and the Rose Garden. Several of the walks that have been laid out according to the plan, when seen from this height, curve around nothing and reach nowhere. We shall presently satisfy their empty embraces with shrubs and locate various other conspicuous objects at the terminals. ”

“ You enter by the big archway into a big open yard, the centre part of which is a wide-spreading dung-hill and reservoir. All round the yard are sheds and stables enclosing it, and facing you at the back the low, long white house, with steps leading up to the front door, which opens into the kitchen. ”

“ The yard may vary in size, but it must be of soil, clothed upon with grass, with a bush or a tree in it, a garden, and some animal, even if the tree has to grow in the garden and the animal has to be kept in the tree, as with one of my neighbors, who is forced to keep his bees in his single weeping willow, his yard not being large enough for his house and his hive. ”

“ On the third side of the yard run the granary and the cider-house; while the fourth, save for an ivy-covered wall, which gives way to the entrance gates in one corner, is open to the gentle vista of countryside which stretches away before the house. What a pleasant old courtyard it is—so cool in the summer that the panting dogs love to throw themselves upon its stones ”

“ It was a common experience for us to be led by an unkept path and through a patch of weeds or across an ungrassed dooryard full of rubbish, in order to reach a so-called garden which had never spoken a civil word to the house nor got one from it. Now, the understanding is that every part of the premises, every outdoor thing on the premises—path, fence, truck-patch, stable, stable-yard, hen-yard, tennis or croquet-court—everything is either a part of the garden or is so reasonably related to it that from whatever point one views the place he beholds a single satisfactory picture. ”

“ Nowhere does the grass spring up so industriously as in this homely yard, along the base of the stone wall and in the sheltered nooks of the buildings, and especially around the southern door-step—a locality which seems particularly favorable to its growth, for it is already tall enough to bend over and wave in the wind. ”

“ Externally it is two hundred and thirty-five feet east and west by one hundred and ninety feet north and south. The court yard is one hundred and fifty-five feet square. The mass is also considerable, as the whole is raised on a terrace of artificial construction, by the aid of which it stands well out from the surrounding buildings. Its chief beauty consists in its court yard, which is wholly of white marble from the pavement to the summit of its domes. The interior is a bewildering maze of columns of exquisite proportions. ”

“ The dwellings in these villages are always of a single story in height, and their roofs are covered with thatch or red tiles. Each house stands in a yard, or 'campong,' by itself, and is enclosed by a hedge sufficiently thick and high to keep out all intruding cows or other animals. ”

“ Behind you is a timber yard, sending forth its strawberry-pine perfume. There is always some attractions in a timber yard. Whether you will or not it fascinates you; you enter for a moment, and stroll about through the little alleys between the stacks, as numerous and complicated as the twistings and turnings of a maze. You imagine yourself once more a boy playing at hide-and-seek, and revel in the hot sunshine that is pouring down upon you and bringing out the perfume of the wood. ”

“ What are we talking about? When a yard is adjacent to the public domain, but if it is adjacent to the karmelit, even if it is tiny, it doesn't need a pit even in the summer (and see below chapter 377) . ”

“ The ancient elms before the house, of a hundred years' standing and more, are the pride of the yard. It were sacrilege to remove a limb or twig unless decayed, so luxuriant and far-spreading, overshadowing the roof and gables, yet admitting the light into hall and chambers. ”

“ It is ever a pleasure to me when driving in a village street or a country road to find one of these front yards still enclosed, or even to note in front of many houses the traces of a past front yard still plainly visible in the flourishing old-fashioned plants of many years' growth. ”

“ The domain comprised also a hill, where trees were sparsely scattered, and which, gently sloping toward the house, had at its foot a large barn, where the domestic animals found ample accommodations and plentiful supplies. Its yard communicated by a large gate with an area in the rear of the mansion, which was surrounded by a little village of offices. ”

“ The custom of mowing lawns in cities, of having every grass-blade in every door-yard like every other grass-blade, is considered by many persons as an artificial custom—a violation of the law of nature. It is contended that the free-swinging, wind-blown grasses of the fields are more beautiful and that they give more various and infinite delight in colour and line and movement. If a piece of this same field, however, could be carefully cut out and moved and fitted to a city door-yard—bobolinks and daisies and shadows and all, precisely as they are—it would not be beautiful. ”

“ Next to the great, came the near great: a row of pleasant cottages, each one with its little garden separated from its neighbor’s by neat whitewashed palings. After these, they approached a cottage set in a large yard and isolated as much as if it were in the country. It was well back from the street and instead of the white palings [169] of its neighbors, it boasted a box hedge about five feet high and at least three feet broad. Generations of close clipping had made this hedge as solid as a brick wall. The yard enclosed was laid out as a formal garden with box labyrinth and winding paths. ”

“ A single petunia plant against a background of foliage is worth a dozen similar plants in the center of the lawn.... The open-centered yard may be a picture; the promiscuously planted yard may be a nursery or a forest. A little color scattered here and there puts the finish to the picture.” If the person wants a flower garden, the primary question is one not of decoration of the yard, but of growing flowers for flowers’ sake. The flower garden, therefore, should be at one side of the residence or at the rear, for it is not allowable to spoil a good lawn even with flowers. ”

“ But could we now recognize this spot? oh no! the destroyer has been there, and there remains no trace of herb or flower; an ell has been built on to that end of the house, and the barn has been moved, so that our beautiful garden has been transformed into a door yard, and all traces of beauty are obliterated. Crossing the garden you next entered upon a large level lot covered with the richest grass that annually used to fall before the sythe of the mower, and descended by sloping hills to the above mentioned luxuriant meadow ”

“ Therefore, because Mother Maillet was kind, the yard was a godsend so far as the little folks were concerned. The high fence kept children off the greensward where the canal flowed. Householders who had managed to save their yards down that way were, in most cases, fussy old people who were hanging on to the ancient cottage homes in spite of the city's growth, and they shooed the children out of their yards where the flower-beds struggled under the coal-dust from the high chimneys. ”

“ There the front yards are kept clean, but the back yards are proverbially dirty; here all sorts of dirt and trash may be lying around in the front yard, while the back yard is a perfect little garden of beauty. ”

“ Yard by yard, with patient under-sea sweeping, all that waste of sand brought down by the Buffalo is being cleared away; yard by yard, two massive arms of solidest masonry are stretching themselves out beyond those cruel breakers: the river is being forced into so narrow a channel that the rush of the water must needs carry the sand far out to sea in future, and scatter it in soundings where it cannot accumulate into such a barrier as that which now exists. ”

“ The outbuildings are well-arranged and of the most substantial construction, and the yard immediately around the house is inclosed with a fence, while outside of this there extends for half a mile on one side a most luxuriant grass-pasture. ”

“ One comes sometimes abruptly on a picture which seems bewilderingly un-American, of a precipice wall covered with bird-cage cottages, the little, paling-walled yard of one jutting out in a line with the chimney-tops of the next one below, and so on down to the street at the base of the hill. ”

“ In the front yard is what is known all over town as the 'big tree,' a silver maple, at least twice as tall as the house. It is so broad that its shade falls over the whole front of the place. In the back is an orchard of old apple trees, and trellises of big blue grapes. On one side is a broad lawn, at the back of which is one of the good old-fashioned flower gardens that does one good to look at. ”

“ As we pass on with rapidly increasing excitement to the supreme climax at the Valley's head, where gather together Glacier Point, Yosemite Falls of unbelievable height and graciousness, the Royal Arches, manifestly a carving, the gulf-like entrances of Tenaya and the Merced Canyons, and above all, and pervading all, the distinguished mysterious personality of Half Dome, presiding priest of this Cathedral of Beauty, again there steals over us the uneasy suspicion of supreme design. ”

“ I know nothing more suggestive of persistence and of sad sentiment than the view often seen in forlorn city enclosures, as you drive past, or rush by in an electric car, of an aged bush of Box, or a few feet of old Box hedge growing in the beaten earth of a squalid back yard, surrounded by dirty tenement houses. Once a fair garden there grew ”

“ One-fourth of the ground, in the angle made by the open fence and one of the barns, had been a hen-yard and was still inclosed within a high wire-netting; but outside that space every plant she set out had to be protected from the grubbing fowls by four stakes driven down with a hammer. Three years afterward she bore off our capital prize in a competition of one hundred gardens. Let me tell what the judges found.
"Beauty can be called into life about the most unpretentious domicile." ”

“ In a remote corner of the yard, a small party of sedate, business-like individuals are rolling up the fleeces upon a couple of small sloping platforms, and handing them over the wall to others who are building them upon carts, to be carried to the storing-house. ”

“ Well, I am sure it is quite transformed since last week. If I remember rightly, it had another entrance, and the court-yard was paved and empty; while to-day we have a splendid lawn, bordered by trees which appear to be a hundred years old. ”

“ It is delightful—of rough hewn wood, 4, 5, or 6 bars, posted and diagonalled. For a rambling place for roses and vines it has no equal and to be able to buy fences by the yard for the yard is veritably both joy and comfort brought to your very doors. ”

“ Much can be done to make even the one-room schoolhouse attractive and hygienic. With almost no expense, the grounds can be set with shade trees, shrubs, and perennial flowering plants. The yard can be made into a lawn in front, and into an athletic ground at the sides or the rear. ”

“ The plantation of pines formed three sides of the station yard, which, indeed, suggested a clearing on the edge of a natural forest rather than a single acre left exactly as it was found. The square was completed by the first and foremost of the homestead buildings: a long, regular structure, framed in the customary veranda, but containing (what was less conventional) the family quarters and the station store beneath one vast, white, corrugated roof. ”

“ A lawn leading up to a house, even though not beautiful or well kept, adds dignity and character to a place out of all proportion to its waste or expense. I know of nothing that would add so much to the beautification of the country-side as a building line prohibiting houses and barns within a hundred yards of a public road. A staring, glaring farm-house, flanked by a red barn and a pigsty, all crowding the public road as hard as the path-master will permit, is incongruous and unsightly. With all outdoors to choose from, why ape the crowded city streets? ”

“ Old New England villages and small towns and well-kept New England farms had universally a simple and pleasing form of garden called the front yard or front dooryard. A few still may be seen in conservative communities in the New England states and in New York or Pennsylvania. ”

“ For when you ascend gradually, past the Bon Marché, and come to the hill-top, you leave for awhile the shops and the continuous, conjoined houses, and arrive, past the transitional stage of semi-detachedness, at the wholly blest condition of splendid isolation in the rear of fences and carriage entrances, with gentility-balls on the gate-posts, a circular lawn in front of the house, skirted by its gravel drive, and perhaps even a stone dog on either side of the doorway! ”

“ In Virginia City, some men who were one day at work in a lumber-yard, concluded it would be a good plan to pile a lot of boards over the mouth of an old shaft that was in a part of the yard, not far from the principal street leading to the town of Gold Hill. ”