Oldal 260 [260]
OCR
GPS OH Tee Dipe water.) (L RALE tanning house, one of the conical-shaped icehouses peculiar to Tidewater Virginia, an unusual number of fine barns, and quarters for the house servants and field hands. The out-of-doors kitchen had an immense fireplace—crane, and a Dutch oven and, of course, in the good old days, a “‘tin kitchen,” where huge saddles of mutton and haunches of venison were roasted before the great fire of logs. On either side of the house were ‘‘strikers’’ for the house-servants, each one having an especial number, and it needed twenty-one strikes to complete the tally in the days before "61-65. Mr. and Mrs. James H. Roy lived in a small but comfortable brick build- _ ing, still in evidence on the lawn, while they personally superintended the building of their home and the laying out of the grounds and garden. The garden is surrounded by an unique scalloped brick wall. A broad, graveled walk extended from east to west as one entered, and another from north to south crossed it in the middle, where there was a latticed summer-house covered with jasmine and honeysuckle and fitted with seats inside. The walk from north to south was bordered by grapes carefully trained on lattices, while on either side of the entrance walk were raised borders, where many shrubs and flowers grew. On the north and south of this walk were flower-beds in circles and hectagonals where every sort of sweet old-time bloom was cultivated. Along the borders were arborvitae trees at intervals, and under them grew lilies of the valley in profusion, and such shrubs as calycanthus, smoke trees, tamarisk and English laburnum with, here and there, fine boxbushes. | In each scallop of the brick wall was a raised mound, covered with violets, out of which grew a rosebush. Against the southern walls pomegranates and figs ripened to perfection and French artichokes were successfully cultivated. The figs bear abundantly to this day, but the pomegranates have disappeared with the passing of the skilled gardeners. A giant pecan tree on the lawn thrives as well as if in its native [159]
