Читать книгу Flower-Patch Neighbours - Flora Klickmann - Страница 5

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But when I reached the Flower-Patch, and looked around, things brightened. At any rate, it wasn’t bare, bleak and barren as the City I had left behind. For one thing, in place of black fog, the sun was shining.

And then the violets were in bloom, and a good many primroses. The laurestinus bushes were covered with clusters of coral-red buds and creamy pink blossoms, against ever-green leaves. Some clumps of polyanthus were making a brave show of flowers. The yellow jasmine was smothering the walls with its stars, the long stems hanging down like cascades of sunshine. A scarlet anemone was in bud. Spanish irises and daffodils and crocuses were pushing up through the soil. Here and there some courageous daisy opened a bright little face to the sun. The small purple violas had not all gone from the rock garden; several pansies were in flower, and a few stocks were doing their best to add to the garden colour. While the marigolds had never left off blooming. In sheltered nooks the wild strawberry was actually in flower. And most touching of all, four roses were still doing their best to bloom, not great blooms, but still they were roses; and a spray of the ever-green honeysuckle, which smothers a south window, had one or two blossoms to its credit.

No one can realise how lovely a few flowers can be, unless they come on them unexpectedly like this, in December, after enduring the perishingly cold fog of town!

Even the bare trees didn’t look desolate, for though they had shed their leaves, they hadn’t shed their lichens; also apples and pears and hawthorn trees were nearly all dangling great bunches of mistletoe covered with white berries—the splashes of bright green giving the trees quite a festive look. It was a good berry year; the hollies were literally gleaming crimson; while the rich dark green of the ivy (which ought not to be allowed to clamber up the trees, but does it just the same) always looks especially beautiful when the leaves are off the trees. And, in company with the ivy, some trees were waving silvery tufts of Traveller’s Joy, that darling of the woods that climbs and climbs and festoons everything it can lay hands on, till at last it surprises one by blooming gaily, and in a most frivolous manner, at the top of some venerable oak or dignified fir tree.

The larches were bare, but the pines and other conifers were in prime condition; and lots of golden-yellow leaves were still rustling on the beeches.

As there had been very little frost, the ferns were as green as in summer—greener, in fact, now that the heat was over; and the many clumps of saxifraga, stonecrops, and pinks which carpet the borders, all helped to give the place a furnished look, so different from the desolate garden we had left behind in town.

And then the birds—such quantities of them, and all busy; they made everything seem so alive. Robins, wrens, and thrushes were singing as cheerily as though it were spring. Tits were carrying on their interminable conversations in every fir tree. Great yellow-tits, blue-tits, the jaunty little cole-tits, and the fascinating long-tailed tits—such sociable little fellows.

A party of over a dozen gold-crested wrens were twittering all over the spruces and deodars. I am told that some of these birds migrate for the winter, but with us they remain all the year round, and hardly a day passes without their gentle little voices being heard about the garden.

In London, even if one be fortunate enough to have a big garden, December is a blank month of lost hopes and pathetic endings. The evergreens simply gather soot, and most of the other plants wisely betake themselves to winter quarters underground, while a cheerless absence of sunshine, with often a dark pall over all, disinclines one even to look at the garden, much less walk in it.

Therefore it comes as a real enheartenment when one reaches the Flower-Patch to find a garden, in December, bursting with new beginnings, in addition to much that is reminiscent of the previous summer.

Of course it rains, gallons of it, at intervals—where doesn’t it rain in the British Isles? But there will be plenty of dry weeks, when the sun shines all day, and the sky is blue, with piles of silvery white clouds. The day after we arrived, the thermometer registered 79 degrees in the sun—not bad for the time of year!

The scents of the garden in a mild winter are lovely. First and foremost I put the tussilago, or winter heliotrope, as it is erroneously called. It belongs to the daisy family, its only connection with heliotrope being a strong resemblance in perfume. What a lovely scent it is! And to think that before I had seen its blossoms I used to root it out as coltsfoot! I quite agree it can be a nuisance in the garden once it gets a footing in the borders; its roots go down and down and on and on, till it takes a lifetime to eradicate it. But if it can be allowed to roam over a bank, or enjoy a corner of the orchard, it will scent the place when most other flowers are over.

Another perfume which haunts the winter garden is that of the violets. Even the leaves have a delicate cool odour. A few violets in a bed, and some late sprays of mignonette, will easily make one forget it is December and fancy it is September, so poignant is the perfume that pervades the soft moist air.

While most of the flower scents are over for the season, and balm, bergamot, and the various mints have settled down to their winter sleep, there are still any amount of delightful leaves to rub and sniff as you pass along the paths. In some places you cannot walk without treading on lemon thyme, rosemary, cotton lavender, winter savoury, marjoram, sage, the ordinary lavender—all of which have long since wandered beyond their allotted corners over the border-stones, and spread themselves out where they have no business to be.

Outdoors it seemed so soothing and refreshing, after the grime and gloom and smells of London. I took heart again, and thought that Mr. Author might easily find himself in a worse place on Christmas Day.

But the Head of Affairs was not so optimistic.

“He won’t want to spend his time looking for glow-worms; nor paddling in patent leather shoes through that brook running down the centre of the lane!”

And later—still bent on being cheering, “Just think of the car that brought us up from the station—why it’s positively getting bald and growing side-whiskers! How will he take to that after his gorgeous Daimler! But there! I expect they’ve forgotten all about the invitation by now!”

Only they hadn’t! A letter arrived next morning:

“We shall come two days before Christmas, if that suits you. We are so looking forward to the peace and quiet. And do please arrange for us to have good old-fashioned Christmas weather. We long to see some really white snow.”

Not wishing them to be disappointed when they arrived, I wrote back that there was no likelihood of a Christmas-card landscape, as the weather was mild, and we seldom had snow. But I told them their Christmas dinner was strutting about the orchard in fine form; the Christmas-tree had already been cut and brought down from the larch-wood, and the Yule logs, which had been felled a year ago, were waiting in the old Wood-house.