My Garden in Spring 



and disagreeable season they remember, round goes the 

 wind, hands can be taken out of pockets and yet no 

 longer turn blue and numb, the dove-coloured flush on 

 the trees of the woodland turns to a varied shimmer of 

 tender greyish yellows and faint greens, even the oaks 

 show raw sienna specklings, somebody hears the cuckoo, 

 it rains for twenty minutes and the sun then hurries out 

 and makes a rainbow on the retreating clouds, every 

 plant glistens with sunlit raindrops, and the air smells all 

 the sweeter and feels all the warmer for the shower. 



Then it is that grass turns to the true green of Spring, 

 both on lawn and meadow, and the flower stems grow by 

 inches, leaves fall outwards instead of standing up stiffly 

 at attention, and in a good garden the borders should look 

 full once more, and the bare earth should disappear for 

 the next six months. Then the days are not long enough 

 to enjoy the rush of flowers and to do all the thinning, 

 replanting and tying up, and a hundred other things that 

 always want doing in a garden in full growth. 



We always try to anticipate the coming of the April 

 showers by removing the row of lights, a heritage from an 

 ancient dismantled vinery, from the bank of the rock garden 

 devoted to succulent plants hardy enough to stand frost if 

 kept dry, but too tender to battle through damp and cold 

 together. If I could have foreseen the trouble and the 

 ugly effect of this row of lights from November till April, 

 and the pain caused by their wicked little barbed spines, I 

 should never have purchased the first three species of 

 Opuntia that captivated me on the rockwork in Robert 

 Veitch's Exeter Nursery. That trio grew so well that I 

 added a few more, and learning that Mr. Andrews of 

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