BRAMSHILL 251 



forest land as this corner of the north of 

 Hampshire, Winter elsewhere seems intermin- 

 able and well-nigh intolerable. For here, what 

 my father so truly called his " Winter Garden " 

 is always about one ; and amid the green of 

 Fir trees and Hollies, Furze and Heather, the 

 Winter slips by almost unperceived. I never 

 realised what this meant in one's life until I 

 spent twelve years in the Midlands. And the 

 great rank grass pastures, heavy fallows, and 

 superb Elms, bare for close upon eight months 

 in the year for I have seen the leaves that 

 came out in May stripped by the first of 

 October turned Winter into a season of un- 

 imagined desolation. But here in his " Winter 

 Garden," as my father wrote, "Enough for 

 me is one purple birch ; the bright hollies 

 round its stem sparkling with scarlet beads ; 

 the furze-patch, rich with its lacework of 

 interwoven light and shade, tipped here and 

 there with a golden bud ; the deep soft heather 

 carpet, which invites you to lie down and dream 

 for hours; and behind all the wall of red fir stems, 

 and the dark fir roof with its jagged edges. 

 . . . Endless vistas of smooth red green-veined 



