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So do the pools and rushes, haystacks, sheep, clover in full bloom delicious to the sight and smell, corn-sheaves, cherry- orchards, apple-orchards, reapers, gleaners, hedges, gates, fields that taper off into little angular corners, cottages, gardens, now and then a church. Bang, bang! A double-barrelled Station!
The arid sands of the southwest, where nothing but cactus and sage-brush formerly would grow, have been found to be excellent soil for the jujube, and it is the hope of Uncle Sam's food experts to see the entire Arizona and New Mexico deserts dotted with jujube orchards, with income to their owners.
In many orchards a series of shallow furrows is ploughed between the rows of trees, and the water is allowed to flow down these until the soil is thoroughly soaked. In alfalfa fields the water is often turned upon the upper end and permitted to work its way across until it reaches the lower edge, soaking the ground as it goes.
Comparatively few owners of orchards do this, and those who belong to the majority will find fault with my figures; but the thinking few, who do not expect to enjoy the fat of the land without making a reasonable return, will say that I am too conservative, that a well-placed, well-cared-for, well-selected, and well-marketed orchard will do much better than my prophecy.
But even though there are strangers who trouble these good folk, their home could not have looked more charmingly a haunt of peace than it did. All round the village one saw orchards of figs, apricots, and pomegranate trees; the first with the leaves untouched by the summer heat, the apricots just at the end of their blossoming, and the pomegranates still in flower.
Several small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads leading to and from it are merely well-worn cattle tracks, in the rains a perfect quagmire, and in the hot weather dusty, and confined between straggling hedges of aloe or prickly pear.
Every form of business demands prompt, timely, and intelligent attention to make it yield its best. The orchards have been my chief care for seven years; the spraying, mulching, and cultivation have been done by the men, but I think I have spent one whole year, during the past seven, among my trees. Do I charge my orchards for this time?
This lad in short trousers, torn shirt, and a frayed straw hat above his mobile and cheerful face, might be only another sort of animal, a lover like themselves of the beech-nut and the hickory-nut. It was a gay world up here among the tossing branches. Across the river, on the first terrace of the hill, were weather-beaten farmhouses, amid apple orchards and cornfields.
We wiped the perspiration and flies from our face frequently, and disturbed millions of grasshoppers as we walked. They had devoured all the fruit in the orchards about, and had even destroyed many of the trees by eating the bark, and now they were stripping the briers of foliage.
At last they got out of the orchards and on to a sort of road, very rough, and not at all like the roads you are used to. It had cypress trees and acacia trees along it, and a sort of hedge of tamarisks, like those you see on the road between Nice and Cannes, or near Littlehampton, if you've only been as far as that. And now in front of them they could see a great mass of buildings.
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