A Bumper Crop
Every year almost there is some bumper crop or other. This year the bumperest (why not? Bumper is adjectival) is undoubtedly the nut, wild and cultivated. The clumps of nuts on my Kentish cobs look almost like hornbeam keys, so many are they and so closely compacted. More than this, for the first time over a span of ten or twelve years, they have not been robbed. The reason is the temporary-1 fear, only temporary—absence of grey squirrels. The corn crops looked almost bumper at one time; and though, round me, farmers have been singulary successful in overcoming the flattening of the oats (the wheats remained more or less upright) the weather has destroyed the flourish. The good crops have become average; and drying is more than normally difficult. Perhaps blackberries may be added to the nuts, and the ivy- leafed blackberry, grown alongside the logans, is likely to out-fruit the brambles in the hedge row.
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