26TH MARCH. 



AT LAST relief has come : we have had a good night's rain, 

 and soft showers are still falling at intervals. The people with 

 acres and acres of vineyards and grapes still uncut will not be 

 pleased. The grapes will split and be messy to pack, but they 

 have had the perfect season so far. 



Many of my silver trees, proteas and leucospermums are 

 already dead ; but others will now be saved, and the seeds 

 I sowed in the open should germinate well, for the soil is still 

 warm. Now there is everything to be done before winter is 

 on us. 



We have not had enough rain to wake the mountains into 

 life. All the summer they stand grim and silent withstanding 

 scorching sun and mountain fires, but when the winter rains 

 begin one becomes conscious of a familiar sound that has been 

 long absent something good in the undercurrent of one's 

 mind. It is the mountain torrents crashing down : their dis- 

 tant roar is an accompaniment of which we are hardly conscious, 

 for during about four months of the year we hear it day and 

 night. It is a background to the croaking and clicking of the 

 frogs and the beating of the rains ; and perhaps we notice it 

 most on the glorious still sunny days between the storms, or 

 on the moonlight nights when the arums along the stream 

 sides are touched with silver. When it ceases, we do not notice 

 at first, until the scorching summer becomes more and more 

 silent because the birds have gone into hiding in the bush and 

 the frogs have disappeared into the soft mud around the shady 

 pools. 



