COUNTRY LIFE
May-time Disasters
The most disastrous of all the frosts that have fallen on England for many years occurred five days before the festival of the Three Ice-saints, of whom something was said last week. Twelve degrees was registered in middle England. The young gooseberries turned brown and flaccid ; the broad bean broke in the middle, and the bed looked as if a light roller had gone across it. Later, the invincible tips strove to assume a more vertical pose. The early potato tops were black and crumpled. Almost every leaf was crumpled on the Japanese maples. Even tenderer plants in cold frames were severely cut. The centre of almost every strawberry blossom was blackened. Yet this heavy and untimely frost, like its pre- decessors, was a groundling. The apple blossom on even young trees in my garden was quite untouched, and on climbing plants, notably a Wistaria on a pole, you could see the level of the frost marked ; the lower flowers were damaged, the upper entirely immune. Though May is halfway through, there is still no sign of any tolerable growth in the grass, whether on lawn or meadow. The succession of ground frosts has altogether arrested the young blades, and stock would starve but for other supplies. The change (from north wind to south) came on the festival of Pancratias ; but the grass must do prodigies of growth if there is to be any hay-crop.
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