The roof was
so steep that the eaves were not much above the forest of tall hollyhocks,
now brown and in seed. Through July, Antonia said, the house was buried in
them; the Bohemians, I remembered, always planted hollyhocks. The front
yard was enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, and at the gate grew two
silvery, mothlike trees of the mimosa family. From here one looked down
over the cattle-yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch
of stubble which they told me was a ryefield in summer.
At some distance behind the house were an ash grove and two orchards: a
cherry orchard, with gooseberry and currant bushes between the rows, and an
apple orchard, sheltered by a high hedge from the hot winds. The older
children turned back when we reached the hedge, but Jan and Nina and Lucie
crept through it by a hole known only to themselves and hid under the
low-branching mulberry bushes.
As we walked through the apple orchard, grown up in tall bluegrass, Antonia
kept stopping to tell me about one tree and another. `I love them as if
they were people,' she said, rubbing her hand over the bark. `There wasn't
a tree here when we first came. We planted every one, and used to carry
water for them, too--after we'd been working in the fields all day. Anton,
he was a city man, and he used to get discouraged.
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