Country Pleasures; The Chronicle of a Year Chiefly in a Garden (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: already plenty of dry twigs tipped with that reddish brown which means bursting life; but the pleasantest thing to me is the foxglove foliage, the inner leaves of which are now of a bright green. It needs but little imagination to see, rising months hence from this vivid centre, the ' foxglove spire '?grandest of our English wild flowers. II.?RETURNING WINTER. January 23. Since I last wrote we have had continuance of the mild spring weather until yesternight, when it became cold and boisterous. About eleven o'clock the sky was a fine sight. The gibbous moon, rising late, seemed to be scudding through the deeps, now beaming out of a clear space, and anon plunging into a gulf of clouds. The wind was then in the west; during the night it must have got into the north, for this morning there were little wreaths of snow in remote corners of the garden. Still the advent of life and verdure proceeds. The scrubby elder-bushes are, as usual, most forward, their new leaves being already uncurling; and I notice that the crocus and snowdrop are pushing their spear-like points of foliage through the soil. The yellow-jasmine in the warm corner has not lost a petal yet. Those who love the sun and live in places where there is not too much of his light should cultivate yellow flowers, especially such as grow in masses like the jasmine and the laburnum. They give a feeling of sunshine on cloudy days. By the way I should mention that our garden is rich in corners and alleys. This would follow upon saying that it is large and old-fashioned. The ancient pleasure-ground and the ancient house are always full of shady retreats and embayed recesses in which men meditate, and use devotion, and commune with friends, and, indeed, take all their highest pleasures. ' For the Side Grounds, ' say...