20 EVERSLEY GARDENS 



soil and soils, when the Lime trees turn yellow 

 and warn us to make ready for next year. 

 For they are the first to go, after giving us 

 months of delight ; smooth red twigs, plump 

 crimson buds, delicate, almost translucent 

 young green leaves, and that enchanting, 

 subtle sweetness of pale, yellow-green flowers 

 beloved of bees that conjures up all manner 

 of lovely and penetrating memories. Florence 

 at Midsummer, when every bush in the Boboli 

 gardens has its nightingale, and great moths 

 hawk round the globes of electric light that 

 turn the cornice of the Campanile into a 

 ledge of Alpine snow against the blue-black 

 of the starlit sky. Or the avenue of some 

 stately Jacobean house, such as Bramshill, 

 when the goatsuckers chirr-r in the July 

 gloaming across the tufts of purple heather, 

 and great stag-beetles boom away bolt up- 

 right to the Oak trees, and a fox barks down 

 in the Warren. So, with such moving Mid- 

 summer-Nights' dreams in mind, I watch my 

 young Lime trees shed their yellow and brown 

 leaves, where I planted them eight years ago 



