That afternoon I went back to my orchard, got out my shiny and sharp new double-edged pruning saw, and sawed till both arms ached. I sawed under limbs and over limbs, right-handed and left-handed, standing on my feet and on my head. I obeyed the first rule, to saw close to the trunk, so the bark can cover the scar. I obeyed the rule to let light into the tops. I didn’t head my trees down as much as the pictures indicated, for I wanted my orchard before the house as a decoration quite as much as a source of fruit supply. One old tree, split by a winter storm, I decided to chop down entirely. About half-past three, as I supposed it to be, I went for an axe, and heard Mike putting the horse into the barn and calling the cows. I looked at my watch. It was five o’clock! I didn’t get the axe, but walked back and surveyed the havoc I had wrought–dead limbs strewing the ground, bright-barked water spouts lying among them, tangles of top branches heaped high, and above this litter three old trees rising, apparently half denuded, with great white scars all over them where the limbs had been removed. I had gone that first day across half the top row of the orchard, and I suddenly realized that during the entire time I had been at work not a thought had crossed my mind except of apple trees and their culture. I had been utterly absorbed, joyfully absorbed, in the process of sawing off limbs! Where, said I to myself, are those poetic reflections, those delicious day dreams which come, in books, to the workers in gardens? Can it be that, in reality, the good gardener thinks of his job? Or am I simply a bad gardener?
I decided to go to the barn and ask Mike. I found him washing his hands, preparatory to milking, and looking extremely bored. He used an antiseptic solution which Bert had provided, for Bert was still buying my milk.
“Sure, it’s silly rules they be makin’ now about a little thing like milkin’,” he said.
I wasn’t ready to argue with him then, but I secretly resolved that I’d make him wear a milking coat, also. I asked abruptly: “Mike, what do you think about when you are working in the garden?”
Mike reflected quite seriously for a full moment, while the alternate ring of the milk streams sang a tune on the bottom of the pail.
“Begobs, Oi niver thought o’ that before,” he said. “Sure, it’s interestin’ to think what ye think about. Oi guess Oi thinks mostly o’ me gardenin’. It ain’t till Oi straightens the kink out o’ me back and gits me lunch pail in the shade that Oi begins to wonder if the Dimicrats ’ll carry the country or why we can’t go sivin days without a drink, like the camels.”
“You sort of have to keep your mind on your job, to do it right, eh?”
“Sure, if ye’ve got one to keep,” Mike laughed.
The milk streams had ceased to ring. They were sizzling now, for the bottom of the pail was covered. There was a warm smell of milk in the stable, and of hay and cattle. Through the little door at the end I saw framed a pretty landscape of my pasture, then woods rising up a hill, and then the blue mountains, purpling now with sunset. My arms ached. My ribs, where the plough handles had hit, were sore. I was sleepily, deliciously, tired. I had done a real day’s work. I was rather proud of it, too, proud that I could stand so much physical toil. After all, it is human to glory in your muscles.
“Good night,” I called to Mike, as I started for home.