Pretty Michal

rrounded the roots with unslacked lime; when they wanted scarlet pippins, they softened the grafts in pike's blood, and when they wished to propagate aromatic fruit, they bored a hole in the trunk of the tree and filled it with fragrant oil. Our grandmothers were so clever that they could compel a pear tree to bring forth grapes; they could grow citrons as large as your head, figs with almond kernels inside and the letters of the alphabet outside, and even nuts without shells. They knew how to graft medlars on coffee trees, which then produced an entirely new fruit, exceedingly luscious and fragrant. When they wanted the bitter almond to bear sweet almonds, they took counsel of Theophrastus and drove iron nails into the roots. They knew the good and bad effects of winter upon all kinds of garden produce. Even the simple, unsophisticated potato, only just introduced from America, and called by them adenes cardensis, was powerless against their innumerable artifices. Our great-grandmothers knew and cul