Ladyday to Whitsunday 
There are fat handsome Chaffinches too, wonderfully 
tame. But I don’t know the birds well ; I wish I did. 
The Blackbirds seem to have an extraordinary pleasure in 
nipping off the heads of primroses, especially coloured ones. 
I was told it was to get at the drop of water in the neck of 
the flower, and I was advised to try putting a vessel of 
water handy among the plants. Certainly, whether it is the 
earthen water-vessels or not, my poor primroses have as 
yet escaped. 
Lines of black thread, which I was also told was a good 
preventive, failed utterly to save my primroses, or the 
crocuses on which sparrows-— the avian rat, as somebody 
delightfully calls them — are equally hard. Over seed-beds 
it is said to be a good thing to tie cross rows of string, 
with potatoes stuck with feathers, or bits of looking- 
glass. The birds are afraid to come near. We are trying 
this. 
April 22.— My tulip-bed is very gay now with the plain 
red tulip, Van Tholl. Tulips are called “ fairy cradles,” 
somewhere, I think. “Tulipase” is the okTScotch name for 
a Tulip. Parkinson says of them, “ Tulipase do carry so 
stately and delightful a form, and do abide so long in 
their bravery, that there is no Lady or Gentlewoman of any 
worth that is not caught with this delight.” With this I 
do most cordially agree. 
Violets and forget-me-nots are out in the sheltered 
kitchen-garden, and the pretty Lyre-flower (. Dielytra or 
Dicentra spedabilis ), Bleeding Hearts, and Clocks and 
Watches, are quaint old names for this. In America I 
have heard it is called Lady’s Eardrop. I have found in a 
shady corner of the plantation, under an old crooked 
cherry-tree by the wayside, a regular little self-sown bed of 
a dear little old-fashioned bright blue flower (Omphalodes 
verna) , sometimes called Winter or French Forget-me-nOt. It 
was probably planted long ago by that same sweet soul to 
whom we owe so many nice flowers here. Still it may be 
wild. I have seen it growing on the edge of a lawn in, 
however, less profusion, in a garden some six or eight miles 
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