230 



SUMMER 



ripe wych-elm stream all day long from the boughs until the 

 garden gutters are filled with their yellowish spangles, we 

 can see how the wild wall-garden gets planted with some of 

 its forest trees. It is the same in early autumn, when the 

 sycamore keys spin their oblique downward fljght ; if a 

 sycamore stands thirty yards to windward of the wall when 

 the keys are falling, some of them are almost certain to alight 

 on its crown. The likeliest landfall for dropping seeds is 

 where the upper courses of the wall narrow in a shoulder to 

 the coping ; and here, if there is a thick rind of moss and the 

 winter is wet and mild, in spring there will often be a heavy 



SEED-PODS OF THE WYCH-ELM 



sprinkling of little green sycamores parting their two seed- 

 leaves from the embryonic stem. Those survive which can 

 twist their rootlets into a crack between the bricks or stones, 

 so as to suck a steadier supply of moisture ; and here they 

 develop a gnomelike growth of swollen and crooked limbs 

 supporting a scanty crest of spreading leaves, so lowly that 

 to the eye beneath they are lost among the weeds of the 

 wall. If a young sycamore finds its way into a deep crack, 

 it will sometimes start growing with its normal lusty angu- 

 larity ; but this is not the proper mood of the wall-garden, 

 and soon brings disaster, for the serious fissure is revealed, 

 and all the fairyland of many years' growth is swept away by 

 the trowels of the clambering masons. Secretness is the 

 essential note of the wild wall-garden ; again like fairies or 



