according to habit, and they almost never failed to justify her
expectations. She even grew trees and shrubs from slips and
cuttings no one else would have thought of trying to cultivate,
her last resort being to cut a slip diagonally, insert the lower
end in a small potato, and plant as if rooted. And it nearly
always grew!

There is a shaft of white stone standing at her head in a
cemetery that belonged to her on a corner of her husband's land;
but to Mrs. Porter's mind her mother's real monument is a cedar
of Lebanon which she set in the manner described above. The cedar
tops the brow of a little hill crossing the grounds. She carried
two slips from Ohio, where they were given to her by a man who
had brought the trees as tiny things from the holy Land. She
planted both in this way, one in her dooryard and one in her
cemetery. The tree on the hill stands thirty feet tall now,
topping all others, and has a trunk two feet in circumference.

Mrs. Porter's mother was of Dutch extraction, and like all Dutch
women she worked her special magic with bulbs, which she favoured
above other flowers. Tulips, daffodils, star flowers, lilies,
dahlias, little bright hyacinths, that she called "blue bells,"
she dearly loved. From these she distilled exquisite perfume by
putting clusters, & time of perfect bloom, in bowls lined with
freshly made, unsalted butter, covering them closely, and cutting
the few drops of extract thus obtained with alcohol. "She could
do more different things," says the author, "and finish them all
in a greater degree of perfection than any other woman I have
ever known. If I were limited to one adjective in describing her,
`capable' would be the word."