My Garden in Spring 



far behind the big tree. After his wife's death my great- 

 grandfather pulled down the old red-brick gabled house 

 and built the present one of the then fashionable yellow 

 brick brought from as far away as Suffolk, wherefore it 

 has been my constant aim to smother it in creepers of 

 all kinds. Some contemporary water-colours of the old 

 house show a hearty middle-aged Larch on what was 

 then the bowling-green, but before I can remember it 

 had lost its formal rectangular shape and become an 

 ordinary lawn, bounded by various paths. The Larch 

 still stands, and is a venerable specimen, but has only 

 been able to grow on its northern side, having always 

 been crowded on the south by other trees. Plantations 

 of Scots Pines shown in these drawings as saplings are 

 now replaced by either fine old trees, or some dead and 

 dying trunks rather puzzling to deal with, and spaces 

 from which others have gone. For the period of active 

 planting must have been followed by one of passive 

 inattention, taken advantage of by certain Horse Chestnuts 

 and Sycamores to place their greedy, grabbing offspring 

 out in the world. How these robbers grow ! They 

 throw a light on the Psalmist's phrase of lurking in 

 thievish corners : unobserved they get a foothold and 

 turn their corner into a den for receiving stolen goods, 

 and then up they go, and their betters are choked and 

 starved by these arboreal garotters. I can scarcely 

 believe, when looking at the garden, that I have one by 

 one displaced such a forest of these coarse, garden un- 

 desirables. It has been a very gradual process, spread 

 over twenty years, for I only garden in my father's 

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