Page:Monthly scrap book, for October.pdf/7

This page has been validated.
SCRAP BOOK.
7

THE MONTH OF OCTOBER.

The month of October on account of its steady temperature, is chosen for the brewing of such malt liquor as is designed for keeping. The farmer continues to sow his corn, and the gardener plants, forest and fruit trees. Many of our readers, though fond of gardens, will learn perhaps for the first time that trees are cheaper things than flowers; and that at the expense of not many shillings}}, they may plant a little shrubbery, or floral skreen for their parlour or study windows, of woodbine, guelder-roses, bays, arbutus, ivy, virgin's flower, or even the poplar, horse-chestnut, birch, sycamore, and plane-tree, of which the Greeks were so fond. A few roses also, planted in the earth, to flower about his walls or windows in monthly succession, are nothing in point of dearness to roses or other flowers purchased in pots some of the latter are nevertheless cheap and long-lived, and may be returned to the nursery-man at a small expense, to keep till they flower again. But if the lover of nature has to choose between flowers or flowering shrubs and trees, the latter, in our opinion, are much preferable, inasmuch as while they include the former, they can give a more retired and verdant feeling to a place, and call to mind, even in their very nestling and closeness, something of the whispering and quiet amplitude of nature.

"Fruits continue in abundance during this month, as every body knows from the shop-keeper; nor for grosser senses are well informed, if our