My Garden in Spring 



a trying time, not only because it roughens one's own 

 skin, making shaving a painful bore, and the corners of 

 one's smile less expansive, but it is then one notes day 

 by day some pet plant's failure to put in an appear- 

 ance, or the flagging and browning of a cherished 

 specimen. 



I hate the grey, sapless look of the pastures during this 

 spell of dry cold, and the arrest of progress in the flower 

 beds. They look emptier than a week before, and plants 

 seem to shrink, and the ground turns lighter in colour and 

 shows out more conspicuously. There is no scent of 

 growth or pine trees on the wind, and often a numbing 

 suggestion of snow that seems to paralyse one's nose just 

 below the bridge. Spring has come, but one cannot 

 enjoy it or feel that any plant is safe, for any night 

 the temperature may drop low enough to kill treasures 

 January and February have spared. 



Here nothing lies between us and the North Pole to 

 take the teeth out of the north-east wind. By the time 

 it has bitten and shaken our tender things it has lost much 

 venom, and before it reaches the west of England is by 

 comparison a refreshing breeze. Or so it seems to me 

 when I leave my wind-scorched garden and go west of 

 Swindon, and find everything green and smiling, and hear 

 tales of what the east wind has been doing. It suits a few 

 things to get this dry spell, but chiefly those that are 

 lowly and sheltered by higher ground and protecting 

 hedges. Some of the later Crocuses open out wide in the 

 sunny hours, and are successfully fertilised by insect 

 visitors. The Spring Mandrake, Mandragora ojficinarum,Qiten 

 fails to get its earlier February-born flowers set, and now 



