72 RIVERSIDE LETTERS IX 



up for the dry season last year with a ven- 

 geance. I should not mind it so much were 



o 



it not accompanied by such persistently strong 

 winds, mostly from the north. The hedges 

 and trees everywhere show the effects of the 

 two nights of cruel frost on the 2Oth and 2ist 

 of last month. Our walnut tree was a special 

 sufferer, and indeed everything came badly off 

 in my garden, except, perhaps, the monthly 

 roses on the trellis, on either side of the path 

 to the boathouse. These seem to have 

 escaped bravely, the cold in some way adding 

 to their colour and prolonging the duration 

 of the bloom. The rain is, however, very 

 troublesome, loading the boughs of bloom so 

 heavily, that they hang about in a most untidy 

 way ; I relieve them every day, as well as I 

 can, by gently shaking off much of the wet, 

 but still they scarcely recover their proper 

 places. I am afraid to allude to this trouble 

 to my gardener, or he would at once go down 

 the rows and ruthlessly bind the straggling 

 shoots back to the trellis with tarred string, in 



