The Orchard 



dreadful beasts that escape the winter washing of 

 Bordeaux mixture. 



The orchard is a troublesome family : a con- 

 stant anxiety. Those who argue from tree to man 

 and declare that a tree conducts and controls its 

 life more wisely than a man, are more amusing 

 than exact. Trees accept every sort of plague 

 without protest, from sheer dull inability to put up 

 a fight against the injustice of Nature. They are 

 born — like men, in the most impossible places, but 

 unlike men they make no effort to get away : they 

 stay and grow up dwarfed and stunted and mis- 

 shapen. And if they are given every advantage 

 of soil and situation, they exhaust themselves in 

 putting out a very tangle of shoots, and think that 

 growth for the sake of growing is what is asked 

 of them : rather like men who talk of Art for Art's 

 sake : — and artists often stand in need of pruning, 

 while other men, like luckless trees, grow stunted 

 and mis-shapen and dwarfed. . . . No : perhaps 

 there is not much to choose between trees and men, 

 but what advantage there is most certainly does 

 not lie on the side of the trees : at least, to judge 

 from the behaviour of my orchard. 



There are anxious moments in May and June 

 lest frost should come and nip the setting fruit. 

 When the moon is crescent there is always fear, 



73 



