WIND-SOWN SEEDS
'There, in the windless night-time,' said A. E. Housman, in one of his lovely verses, 'the wanderer . . . halts . . . to harken how soft the poplars sigh,' and most of the time, as they do this morning, the poplars sigh, or make a sound like the waves on the shore; but last night, once again, we had a gale that threshed the leaves from the elm and oak and broke a black-hearted poplar in two, vertically, as poplars split when the wind is too much for their slender plumes. The gale did much more besides, and showered our garden with what I judge to be something like a hundred- weight of sycamore seeds, which, if left to germinate, will strangle things that should, by right, thrive in their beds. I used to be fas- cinated by the seeds of the sycamore when I was a child, and often tossed them into the air to watch them whirling down, but watching a high wind carrying them into the garden gives me no pleasure at all. Invariably one or two take root,, and somehow occupy .a blind spot when I look at the garden until digging out a sapling means shifting the best part of a rockery....
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