Out of Doors in February 



long. It is the sturdiest of creepers, facing the 

 ferocious winds of the hills, the tremendous rains 

 that blow up from the sea, and bitter frost, if only 

 it can get its roots into soil that suits it. In some 

 places it takes the place of the hedge proper and 

 becomes itself the hedge. Many of the trunks of the 

 elms are swathed in minute green vegetation which 

 has flourished in the winter, as the clematis will in 

 in the summer. Of all, the brambles bear the wild 

 works of winter best. Given only a little shelter, in 

 the corner of the hedges or under trees and copses 

 they retain green leaves till the buds burst again. 

 The frosts tint them in autumn with crimson, but 

 not all turn colour or fall. The brambles are the 

 bowers of the birds; in these still leafy bowers they 

 do the courting of the spring, and under the brambles 

 the earliest arum, and cleaver, or avens, push up. 

 Round about them the first white nettle flowers, not 

 long now; latest too, in the autumn. The white 

 nettle sometimes blooms so soon (always according 

 to locality), and again so late, that there seems but 

 a brief interval between, as if it flowered nearly all 

 the year round. So the berries on the holly if let 

 alone often stay till summer is in, and new berries 

 begin to appear shortly afterwards. The ivy, too, 

 bears its berries far into the summer. Perhaps if 

 the country be taken at large there is never a time 

 when there is not a flower of some kind out, in this 

 or that warm southern nook. The sun never sets, 

 nor do the flowers ever die. There is life always, 

 even in the dry fir-cone that looks so brown and 

 sapless. 



The path crosses the uplands where the lapwings 

 stand on the parallel ridges of the ploughed field like 

 a drilled company; if they rise they wheel as one, 

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