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HISTORIC GARDENS OF VIRGINIA
they reached the dining-room, there was trouble in store for the
cook. Between the kitchen and the vegetable garden were three
important little buildings—the smokehouse, from the rafters of
which hung a goodly supply of old hams and bacon, the dairy and
the weaving-house with a potato cellar under it. In this house was
also a room in which were kept surplus supplies for the store¬
room, garden tools, a work bench and carpenter’s tools.
The icehouse was about one hundred feet back of the kitchen.
This was a log house built almost entirely underground and
covered with shingles. ‘The inside was lined with oak boards and
the building was drained at the bottom to carry off the water from
melting ice.
No well-appointed plantation was complete without its office
where all business was transacted. ‘The office at Bellevue was a
white two-story dormer-windowed little building with dark green
outside blinds. It had three rooms, one, and sometimes two of
which were used as overflow guest rooms for young men.
The entrance to the farm was a hundred yards or more down
the road from that to the dwelling. ‘This led to the overseer’s
house and on to the stable, granary, hay barn and other such
buildings. There were also barns for curing tobacco, and log cabins
for farm hands were situated on little knolls here and there over
the farm.
On the right of the dwelling was an old-fashioned flower garden
which deserves special mention. It was square in shape and
enclosed on two sides by a thick hedge of tall box-trees; on another —
side by a row of fig trees planted close together and on a third
side by a white picket fence. In the corner where the box and hg
trees came together there was an outdoor room made by box-trees
planted in a circle meeting overhead and trimmed out on the inside.
This made a delightful place to read on a summer morning and ©
enjoy the flowers and figs. In the center was a circle of box four
feet high, within which were old-fashioned roses, and in the beds
around this perennials and other flowers were attractively arranged.
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