COUNTRY LIFE
FOR casual observers the change of colour in the countryside comes when the first green leaves appear on the trees. But that is an elementary appreciation, like that of the woman who looked over the shoulder of J. M. W. Turner when he was painting, and exclaimed, " I never see tree- trunks that colour!" He replied, " Don't you wish you could, Madam."
I wish I could describe the subtle changes that affect the day-to-day aspect of a patch of woodland, or indeed any bit of landscape, during the weeks when the sap is beginning to rise and the buds to swell. On ,a warm, sunny day in late March or early April, the sap will move in the twigs with such potency that between dawn and evening a copse will appear to be flushing, paling and flushing again, like a child agitated by hope. The sylvan impulse is the panic equivalent of this human emotion, and can be interpreted by the nature-lover with an intimate sympathy.
Some trees, such as the willow, the alder and the poplar, arc particularly candid in this vernal demonstration of colour-promise before the full declaration of foliage. I have been watching an oak-copse this week, and every day its hue has grown richer, in spite of adverse weather. Within the week it has passed through a gamut of shades, from flat brown to a deep and sultry burgundy. This suggests that the oaks will be out before the ashes, and that after a disastrously wet opening, the year will be a dry one. As an old farmer, a neighbour, said to me, " It was like that in 1893 "; and he spoke with a certainty of recollection that put a rhetorical pause between each of the figures In that emphasised date.
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