“All in ye Merrie Month of May” 
such a curiously venerable baby with his grey head ! Rooks 
have increased so much of later years hereabouts ; they are 
being shot and harried mercilessly. An American tourist, 
seeing a flight of crows in a field near here, inquired it 
these were birds we preserved ! A thrush has built in the 
wood-shed, and does not seem to mind the coming and 
going after the wood. I wonder if she will rear her family, 
or get nervous and desert them ? The Blue Forget-me-not 
is out in the Rose-garden. It looked so pretty, Boy and 
I were in admiration. Boy was full of the pretty legend 
that, when all creation was being named, the lowly Forget- 
me-not, fearing it might be overlooked, called out “ Forget 
me not.” I like this name much better than the old one ot 
Mouse-ear, or Scorpion-wort. 
There is a lovely double yellow Wallflower out in the 
kitchen-garden, which I believe came originally from Pales- 
tine. I am not sure whether it is not identical with an 
old-fashioned kind called Fairy Wallflower, from the small- 
ness of its dainty flowers ; or it may be “ Harpur Crewe.” 
Conserve of wallflower is said to cure apoplexy and palsy. 
The Thrift or Sea Pink is beginning to show pink buds. 
“ Our Lady’s Cushion ” is a nice old name for it. I have 
two clumps ; one came from the ruins of old sea-worn 
Dunbar Castle and the other from the very Hartland 
Point mentioned in “ Westward Ho !” I had a little Linaria 
from the ruins of Berry Pomeroy Castle, but unluckily it 
died. How curious twin-flowers are ! I have been busy 
painting a twin Daffodil and a twin white Fritillary. I saw a 
twin Primrose the other day. The old-fashioned Hose in 
Hose Primroses are rather curious too ; there is a lovely 
clump of these in the border under the window of the 
Gateway Farm. I must make a raid on it. Each perfect 
primrose rises up out of the middle of another. There is 
a Hose in Hose Polyanthus. I must get it. The Gean-trees 
are coming into bloom everywhere, but they seem to be 
rather later on our banks than elsewhere. I do not know 
that any use is made of their fruit hereabouts, but I think 
in France a sort of rough cherry brandy is sometimes made 
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