26 IDLEHURST : 



the year visits the cherry trees ; and so the vicious 

 circle speeds a part of the great gardener's paradox 

 (which prevails this side of the hedge of Eden), the 

 paradox that all gardening is a deadly war with 

 Nature, needing a mind always alert to guard or 

 attack, and yet when all's done we avail nothing ; 

 Nature strikes her balances and of her bounty gives 

 us so much or so little, for all our pains. 



My attempts upon the paradox, in the way of 

 laying in peach-shoots on the south wall, tacking the 

 sprays so that the silky buds lay close to the old red- 

 brick and yellow lichens, yet so that the reddening fruit 

 should swell at ease in time to come my lazy labours 

 gave way about noon to a promenade up and down 

 the long grass walk that runs through the middle 

 of the kitchen garden, a straight eighty yards or so, 

 three yards wide, scythe-mown, not too close ; on 

 either side a wide flower border, then espalier apples, 

 and behind them the worts and roots which here 

 claim their kin with the parterre, and are nowise 

 discordant. One end of this walk widens out round 

 a stone sundial without a gnomon ; the other drops 

 to the meadow gate, the pastoral hillside, and the 

 outer world. In the borders to-day are great tufts of 

 yellow crocus ; clumps of daffodil are already bristling 

 with flower sheaths, the old fat-headed sort, with the 



