COUNTRY LIFE
ALTHOUGH I may find it hard to explain why it is so, I have a soft spot for the rowan tree. It is not only because it takes my eye when we are over the hill of summer and on the way to autumn, when the berries are such a wonderful shade of red and the leaves have begun to rust and fray away. It is a beautiful tree at all times, beautiful like the birch, when it has no leaves, beautiful when it breaks into soft green leaf, and a lovely thing in flower. I like the scent of the blossom and its colour—not unlike the colour of meadowsweet, a sort of Jersey cream. I had to have a rowan tree in my garden, justifying my action with 'the half-serious thought that we might have rowan jelly one day, A small rowan tree was uprooted from the bank on the edge of the moor and brought home by car. Now, after the lapse of a year, it has bloomed and has just one group of flowers—not enough for rowan jelly but sufficient to make a meal for the birds and to delight my eye. The tree will grow and perhaps in a year or two it will have that magnificence the moorland trees have. Today I have brought down a second little tree. They move to better soil without complaint.
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