Were we to plan it all out before beginning it,
very likely the undertaking would seem so formidable that it would
discourage us. But the evolutionary process takes place so gradually, as
we work hand in hand with that most delightful of all companions,
Nature, that work becomes play, and we get more enjoyment out of it, as
it goes along, than it is possible to secure in any other way if we are
lovers of the beauty that belongs about the ideal home. The man or woman
who sees little or nothing to admire in tree, or shrub, or flower, can
have no conception of the pleasure that grows out of planting these
about the home--_our_ home--and watching them develop from tiny plant,
or seed to the fruition of full maturity. The place casts off the
bareness which characterizes the beginning of most homes, by almost
imperceptible degrees, until it becomes a thing of beauty that seems to
have been almost a creation of our own, because every nook and corner of
it is vital with the essence of ourselves. Whatever of labor is
connected with the undertaking is that of love which carries with it a
most delightful gratification as it progresses. In proportion as we
infuse into it a desire to make the most of any and everything that will
attract, and please, and beautify, we reap the reward of our efforts.
Happy is the man who can point his friends to a lovely home and say--"I
have done what I could to make it what it is. _I_ have done it--not the
professional who goes about the country making what he _calls_ homes at
so much a day, or by the job." The home that somebody has made for us
never appeals to us as does the one into which we _have put ourselves_.
Bear that in mind, and be wise, O friend of mine, and be your own
home-maker.

Few of us could plan out the Home Beautiful, at the beginning, if we
were to undertake to do so. There may be a mind-picture of it as we
think we would like it to be, but we lack the knowledge by which such
results as we have in mind are to be secured. Therefore we must be
content to begin in a humble way, and let the work we undertake show us
what to do next, as it progresses. We may never attain to the degree of
knowledge that would make us successful if we were to set ourselves up
as professional gardeners, but it doesn't matter much about that, since
that is not what we have in mind when we begin the work of home-making.
We are simply working by slow and easy steps toward an ideal which we
may never realize