COUNTRY LIFE
THE date is at hand when certain fruit-growing districts in England, such as Pershore and Evesham, Wisbech and various areas in Kent, become bridal, as do those wild places where the blackthorn flourishes, as along famous Leicestershire hedgerows. This wealth of white blossom, uninter- rupted by leaf, is a real rival to Housman's cherry blossom, and is more concentrated. Unhappily it is often accompanied by the bit of weather known as our blackthorn winter," which may half-ruin the blossom. One private grower avers, I am told, that he has had a better plum crop since he took the habit of hanging vases full of blackthorn flower among his trees. Such aids may presumably help a little, but fertilisation of blossom that needs the wind as well as the insect depends essentially on the right weather; and the right weather is not only absence of frost, but a due combination of sun and shower and wind, and the typical April is ideal for the purpose. This latest March produced nothing typical except its gales, and gardeners and farmers waited wholly in vain, for this golden dust. Not a speck was vouchsafed, and scarcely a seed was entrusted to the land. Were ever so many arrears to be made up in April ?
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