t and Larry are doing this; I am
looking on, making suggestions as to which side of a tree should be in
front, nipping off broken twigs, and doing other equally light and
pleasant trifles.

Our system of transplanting is this: we have any number of old burlap
feed bags, which, having become frayed and past their usefulness, we
bought at the village store for a song. These Larry filled with the
soft, elastic moss that florists use, of which there is any quantity in
the low backwater meadows of the river. A good-sized tree (and we are
not moving any of more than four or five feet in height; larger ones, it
seems, are better moved in early winter with a ball of frozen earth) has
a bag to itself, the roots, with some earth, being enveloped in the
moss, the bag as securely bound about them as possible with heavy cord,
and the whole thing left to soak at the river edge while the next one is
being wrapped. Of the small hemlocks for the windbreak,--and we are
using none over two or three feet for this purpose, as we want to pinch
them in and make them stocky,--the roots of three or four will often go
into a bag.

When enough for a day's planting is thus collected, we go home, stack
them in the shade, and the next morning the resetting begins! The bags
are not opened until they are by the hole in which the trees are to be
placed, which, by the way, is always made and used after the directions
you gave us for rose planting; and I'm coming to agree with you that the
success in gardening lies more than half in the putting under ground,
and that the proper spreading and securing of roots in earth thoroughly
loosened to allow new roots to feel and find their way is one of the
secrets of what is usually termed "luck"!

This may sound like a very easy way of acquiring trees, but it sometimes
takes an hour to loosen a sturdy pine of four feet. Of course a
relentless hand that stops at nothing, with a grub-axe and spade, could
do it in fifteen minutes, but the roots would be cut or bruised and the
pulling and tugging be so violent that not a bit of earth would cleave,
and thus the fatal drying process set in almost before the digging was
completed.

Larry first loosens the soil all about the tree with a crowbar,
dislodging any binding surface stones in the meantime; then the roots
are followed to the end and secured entire when possible, a bit of
detective work more difficult than it sounds in a bank where forest
trees of old growth