Country Life
As we had planned, we fired the great heap of brush in the kitchen garden on the evening of the Fifth. Our blaze lit the shadows beneath the pine trees on the hill, and the noise we made kept the owls Silent. Probably the night birds sat brooding until we tired • of the smoke and flame and went red-eyed back. home. A drizzle began about the time we sent off the last rocket, carefully setting the angle to make sure the missile would not come down in a nearby wood. The embers glowed, the rain sizzled on charred sticks and we were glad to leave. At the weekend I spread the remains, noted with satisfaction how much real potash we had made and began clearing up the debris. Once a year is quite often enough for this sort of thing. A cloche had been smashed, a few cuttings of black- currant had been roughly treated and a hole had somehow been made in the netting that is supposed to keep the rabbits out. I was grieved most at the opportunity we had given the rabbits. They have almost defeated us this year, probably because our precautions are haphazard. A ferret and a few nets might do more good than wire that seems to get breached or undermined. It is useless to try to keep them down with a gun. They increase by geometric progression and show themselves as infrequently as badgers..
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