18 MAY 1951, Page 20

In the Garden

To return after a month's absence at this time of the year is to find one's garden so transformed as almost to create a touch of shyness in one's appreciative eye. For a moment the labours, the gradualnesses, arc forgotten. Even with this lack-lustre spring. 1 have found lawns ortee more velvet-soft, beds of gillyflowers blazing like gypsies' scarves, platoon, of tulips standing at attention above mists of forget-me-nots. And in the vegetable garden green peas are in flower, and several rows of spinadt ready for picking. Creamed spinach takes a deeper flavour if touched with rosemary, or a -grating of nutmeg.

Having had this moment of rapture, I will now investigate the problem of greenfly, which always follows a north-east wind.

RICHARD CHURCH.