In my Garden After violent wind and intense cold in
Scotland, I have got back to an Indian summer (either St. Martin's or St. Luke's ; I am never sure which comes first). I find that my neighbour on the hill-top across the valley (whom I mentioned recently in connection with sweet peas) has left a basket of walnuts, enough to dry and keep for Christmas, to be . eaten with, I hope, a bottle of Madeira. But the message with the gift is that there is trouble about drying the nuts. They shrivel if left in a barn. Baking slightly spoils their fine unctuousness. No doubt the Italian growers could inform us on this important matter. On my next trip to Tuscany I will enquire about this, unless instructed by a know- ledgeable reader of this column.
The beauty of the newly-cut lawns against the contrast of turning leaves .was almost too spectacular when I went out to the garden after a week in a stone-grey city. The air was fragrant with mignonette (self-sown and now rioting over the untidy herbaceous borders). The warmth had called out a fleet of slugs, monsters of the size and colour of Dutch cigars. The field beyond the vegetable garden had been sown during my absence, and in the evening light it had the texture of fustian, a game-keeper's coat. Above it, in the twilight, two larks were singing as they circled round each other. The gaiety of their music was emphasised by the sombre and autumnal glow of the world beneath them. Such moments as that come to everybody from time to time, whether their gardens be baronial, with yews, or a concrete patch with a rabbit hutch in Battersea. They are the gardener's reward.
But he has to work for them. I can see before me a multiplicity of jobs, and urgent ones. The beds between the paved terrace and the house-walls have been cleared and set with newly raised wallflowers, though one great vine above them still has to be stripped of its abundant black grapes, which I intend to press next week. I am leaving them as long as possible, because of their reluctance ; and with a promise of some warm days of sunshine to come, they should have a last oppor- tunity to ripen a little more opulently.
Next week too we shall be busy planting bulbs ; tulips among the wallflowers, snowdrops, scyllas and aconites in the grass on the top terraces; so that the little promises can be seen in February from indoors. Daffodils are left in the ground, for they are legion, a Wordsworthian army that comes marching up through the orchard under the cherry trees, daring•the swallows with its yellow banners.
I have had several enquiries about my remark upon the cleansing of the infected soil of rosebeds. It is a cheap and simple job. I use ordinary carbolic, slightly tinctured with copper sulphate, about four table-spoonsful of this mixture to three gallons of water, sprayed over the beds after lifting the roses, before digging and manuring.
RICHARp CHURCH.
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