THE FRITILLARY'S FLIRTATION 



Several ardent love-chases which I watched and 

 followed up ended in much the same way. Do not 

 overlook the flirtations of the fritillary in the 

 speedwell coppice. 



The Completion of June 



June to-day with its dog-roses is complete. The 

 longest day, the greenest, is always come and gone 

 so much too soon, once we have begun fully to 

 enjoy the year's red-ripe. Wild cherry, gorse, lilac, 

 laburnum, hawthorn, and the orchard bloom, all 

 gone ; the broom's glow far brighter, yellower, and 

 more effective at a distance, than the shining gorse 

 which it succeeded is deadening ; and the garden 

 air cannot be heavy many more days with the 

 perfume of syringa. But a pageant as lovely as any 

 of these belongs to this day and the next fortnight. 

 The soaking showers of last week, followed by a 

 day of hot sun, robed the sainfoin in pink purple. 

 At a quarter of a mile's distance, a twenty-acre field 

 of sainfoin, with a background of oaks and beeches 

 in their full green, snowy billows of cloud on the 

 sea of azure above, is a glorious combination. The 

 pink of the sainfoin is simply sheeted by distance, 

 absolutely solid, unicoloured. This is the most bold 

 and brilliant landscape-gardening that English acres 

 show. No intentional landscape-gardening can vie 

 with this chance of colour and arrangement. 



