28 JUNE 1946, Page 15

COUNTRY LIFE

Tim abundance of showers this summer has given us a greener green to the grass and the foliage of the trees, a deeper colour to the miniature chandeliers of honeysuckle in the hedges, and a wild lushness, almost a tide-foam, to the surges of the lavish umbels that make up the population of the English roadside. I have never seen the oaks so luxuriant. As yet, the perennial plague of caterpillars has not attacked them, and all their springtime freshness has been fulfilled in a deep—one might almost call it a fanfare—glory of widespread leaves that makes them look almost too perfect to be real ; trees in a Constable or de Windt picture rather than the living creature suffering under the usual plagues of nature.