Warning: If you have a visual impairment, use the manuscript transcript version including the Lucy Maud Montgomery’s foot notes and contextual annotation references.

Chapter 9

129

ready she was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. She had discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its farthest end in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick with fern and branching by ways of maple and mountain ash.

She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow—that wonderful deep, (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)clear, icy-cold(end superscript) spring: it was set about with smooth red sandstones and rimmed in by great (begin subscript)^(end subscript)(begin superscript)palm-like(end superscript) clumps of water fern; and beyond it was a log bridge over the brook.


PHOTO ANNOTATION

a pastel-tinted image of a lane boarded by trees, curving into the distance

"a lane": Presumably, this is Montgomery’s own beloved "Lover's Lane" in Cavendish, and this is the first time it is mentioned in the novel more explicitly. Parts of the Lane have been preserved at Green Gables Heritage Place. Here, Montgomery's favourite hand-tinted photograph of Lover's Lane.
Archival & Special Collections, University of Guelph, L.M. Montgomery Collection

TEXT ANNOTATION

"acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place": The material on the back of the previous page ends with "Old Man Shaw" getting to know every tree in his orchard like a child. This page begins with Anne getting "acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place." Even if this parallel is nothing more than a coincidence, it speaks to Montgomery's own love of all the plant life about her own homes.