My Garden in Spring 



Hyacinthus amethystinus, both blue and white, lives and 

 seeds about on the sunny side of the main path, and 

 reminds me of a glorious day on Aero-Corinth when I saw 

 it peeping out among fallen blocks of marble. 



Now the path passes between two sheets of water, or 

 so they might appear if carefully brought into the fore- 

 ground of a photograph. One is in an old circular lead tank 

 sunk in the ground and about six feet in diameter, another 

 heritage from the dismantled house. It grows the major 

 form of Ranunculus Lingua very well, three of Marliac's 

 Water-lilies, and Riccia fluitans, a curious water Liverwort 

 that floats about in tufts looking like green isinglass. It 

 also supports a family of rudd that a fish-loving friend 

 caught for me in Norfolk, and the largest of our water 

 snails, Limnaea stagnalis, which devours confervae and 

 respects phanerogamic plants, and so can be admitted 

 where our more plentiful L, auriculata must be excluded. 

 A huge French Edible Frog, one of several brought home 

 from foreign rambles, has settled down here, and generally 

 sits on the edge of the tank sunning himself, and can be 

 watched if cautiously approached, and his metallic eyes 

 and green striped back are good to see, but at any sudden 

 movement he takes a header into the pool in a moment. 

 We hoped great things of the other pool, and cemented 

 rocks together to form its sides, but it suffers from unac- 

 countable low tides occasionally, and is now full of Cyperus 

 longus and other grassy things. It is fed by a drip that 

 is the overflow from three other small pools further up 

 in the rock garden, and where this splashes down off an 

 overhanging stone I have planted a few moisture-loving 

 treasures. A maidenhair fern, Adiantum Capillus-Veneris, 

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