Country Life
By IAN NIALL
Ir needs a hard frost to put things right in the garden and on the land, some people say. Without hard weather all sorts of 'pests come through the winter in abnormal numbers, making a greater breeding progression as the months of spring and summer paSs. This may be so. A hard winter prevents growth for a while, but I am not sure that there is very much in the balance in the long run. If growth is early, pests are there too, but one thing farmers like is the weather in season, frost when it will do most good, sunshine and gentle rain when the corn is up. We are having the right sort of weather at last, a cold spell following what might be called a false spring. • One hardly dares speak of weather, for dhanges seem bound to confound all speculation, but with the ground iron-hard today, however pitiful the bleat of the young lambs, we cannot complain. This is February. There is time for the poet's spring after mid-March and the vernal equinox. We want no early budding trees and freak winter day s thereafter 'but only what tradition holds right, for the wiseacres have it that if we get it soft now we shall pay for it later.
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