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The Country Diary
All country diarists continue to add unheard-of records to their winter pages. In..niy garden a large bush of rue (well worth growing for the unusual bluish tint .of the leaves) is as yellow as it is blue, with .the quaint humble flowers. What will happen to the roses now the frosts have come is better not anticipated. Some of the new shoots are a good two inches in length, both on the invaluable_ Poulsens and on a. number of the climbers, one of which is in flower. Snowdrops are out, but one does not fear for them. They are among the most successful of all early blossoms in resisting frost. That ingenious German, Kerrier, asserts that the temperature of the air in the hanging cup is. always a degree or two higher than the surrounding air. Some of his chemistry has been severely criticized by later authorities, but he remains a classic and most suggestive of botanical writers. Larks have been in full song, quite to the north of England; and I have two records—one in my own garden—of starlings laying eggs. Young rabbits are legion. The whole of the south-west of England, including the Isle of Wight, has been a Riviera. One field of wheat through which I walk (by a path now white with daisies) is so high that no soil whatever is visible between the rows.
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