COUNTRY LIFE
English Autumns More often in September than in any month of the year we feel that England is endowed with the perfect climate. The characteristic September day is of spring without its defects ; the aliquid amari—the bite—is quite absent. The early mist tempers everything ; and itself has the advantages of rain without its defects. The soft warmth is so persuasive that the most intelligent plants and animals are altogether deceived. The little warblers and the swallows put off their emigration ; and the chiffchaff at any rate sings a few spring notes. In my garden a root of delphinium that was dying down, according to Cocker, has suddently sent up a lush green shoot with buds at the top : they will be in full flower next week. That most beautiful of all wall-shrubs, ceanothus, gloire de Versailles, has decided that the moment has come for real growth. Those highly intelligent plants, the Wistaria and Passion flower, continue to grow as fast as ever, to put out leaves and antennae as well as a leading shoot. The evergreens that had dawdled, especially yew and cryptomeria (which has a surprising gift for galloping), have decided that this is the date for their maximum effort. Many shrubs are enjoying this "second spring" of flowering—the golden cassinia very freely, and the early brooms sparsely. If you should dig a plant up you discover that subterranean activity is yet more energetic. Never at any date is the soil more yeasty, as the agricultural biological chemists have discovered. They have indeed helped to add speed and promptitude to the cardinal work of the farm, by proving that if stubble is turned under early in autumn, it is broken down, converted into humus at a quicker rate than at other times, because in September the beneficent bacteria are more numerous and efficient. September in short may outrival April itself.
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