THE OLD PRIORY GARDEN.
The whispering May wind stirs the hawthorn and lilac in the old priory garden, and brings great gushes of delicious scent past the window, and fills the room with sweetness. All the last month the weather has been fitful and changeable—rain and storm, sunshine and cloud, dust and east winds; but after two days of soaking downpour and wild west wind, the morning of the last day of May has dawned in the full glorious beauty of late spring. Thrushes and blackbirds vie with each other in song, sweet and shrill, clear and inspiring; a modest siskin whistles its little monotonous roulade; now and then, a few notes of the shy linnet are heard; a robin is feeding its brood close by; swallows and martins are darting about in all directions; in the apple blossoms are hundreds of bees, making a dense dreamy music; while their compatriot the humble-bee booms along with his big velvety body shining and gleaming in the sun.
What a splendid creature! See, it settles close at hand. Turn it over with a grass bent. With a surprised buzz, it rights itself. Again and yet again it turns over, seemingly staring to see the cause of its overthrow. Draw the bent lightly across its back—two legs are instantly raised to brush off the unwelcome touch. A second time the same; a third, and the bent is fairly clutched by all the gummy legs, and retained under its body. It crawls up a stick, and with angry bustle, goes booming off.
One does not realise summer is so close upon us, when May is such a capricious maiden, till a morning like this wakes one up to the conviction that in twenty-four more days the sun will have reached its altitude, and soon will begin the shortening days again. The garden here is quaint, and quite unlike the generality of town gardens. From the square of paved court rises one step, and then a stretch of grass, an oval flower-bed each side, a path up the centre; sloping grass banks supported with large stones, where huge bunches of primroses spring from the niches. Along the sides are rockeries with hardy trailing plants—stonecrop, periwinkle both major and minor, white and blue, with variegated foliage; sweet woodruff, violets, and a mass of ferns, whose delicate light silver green fronds are daily uncurling into beauty. The wallflowers are in full bloom. Later on, the germander speedwell will open its bright evanescent flowers, that, though only a wild plant, makes such splendid masses of colour when cultivated, with the silver-foil in bunches near it.
Up a short flight of stone steps, with ferns on each side, under an ivy-covered archway, and on another plat of grass, with a long flower-bed, with trellis-work at the back, covered with the red and yellow honeysuckle, and a huge mass of climbing roses, the rare delicate ‘maiden blush,’ which in a fortnight will be heavy with bloom. More rockeries and ferns, lilies of the valley and forget-me-nots under the syringa bushes, and sweet-brier. In another corner are tall irises and great white lilies, with here and there a bunch of orange tiger lily. Southernwood, lavender, and rosemary, variegated balm in profusion. Soon the fragrant pinks, and their aristocratic relations the carnations, will be in bloom; and the rich velvety pansies, that are now so large and perfect, will dwindle as the sun gains more power, and the strawberries begin to crimson on the sunny south beds; and the geraniums and verbenas and purple heliotropes take the place of auriculas and the narcissus.
Round the square of vegetable garden is a wide path, with beds sloping to the walls, one of which is of good brick, with plum, cherry, and other fruit-trees trained along it. The other is the real old stone wall belonging to the ‘antient’ priory, that formerly stood close by. At one time, this wall was covered with a dense mass of ivy, in which colonies of sparrows built their nests, reared their young, and flourished mightily. Snails, slugs, and wood-lice swarmed, and beetles in endless variety. One wild day in a wet February, part of the old wall came down, breaking up the trees, and cutting up the borders and turf. It was patched up again; and just as the spinach was fit to cut and lettuce planted out, there was a soaking rain one night, and in the morning the old wall was again prostrate over all our spring plantings. Such a wreck it was, and disturbed our equilibrium for days. It was soon set straight as regards the stonework; but it was weeks before the place looked itself again; and that crumbling old wall was watched with suspicion all summer. Then outdoor life coming to an end, we ceased to think on the subject.
October following was mild and balmy for the first few days; then the wind shifted suddenly to the east, and four or five nights of sharp frost came, that turned all the foliage into a golden glory, a steady downpour of a week culminating with a tremendous wind-storm. It blew and whistled and stormed till every leaf was swept away into space, going no one knew whither, howling and whistling round the chimney-stacks till night was made terrible. During the worst of the storm, in the early morning, down came the old wall again from end to end, cutting up turf, breaking down the fruit-trees, and overwhelming the shrubs and rockeries in a general wreck. For many weeks did the state of chaos continue; wretched drenched fowl made themselves at home in the flower-beds, and forlorn-looking ducks wandered across, and feasted on the host of slugs and fat snails and beetles that the pouring rain had tempted out of the nooks and crevices of the stones and mass of ivy. It was built up at last; but little or nothing could be done to repair the ravages done to the garden till the end of March, except making a general clearance of the rubbish, and one of the quaintest of shady corners seemed lost for ever.
But after a few fine balmy days and a spell of sunshine, curious things happened under the rebuilt wall: stray snowdrops appeared in places where none had been heretofore; a bunch of pure white crocuses unfolded their blossoms to the sun in one place; two or three stray ‘stars of Bethlehem’ in another. Later on, a single stem shot up of yellow Lent lilies; bunches of tormentilla with double yellow blooms, and clover with deep red-brown leaves and big snowy balls of flowers; the mouse-ear, hawkweed, and trailing moneywort. Down amongst the remains of the common turf came a thick growth of parsley-piert with its close fine-edged leaves, and cuckoo-pint with delicate pinky-white flowers. On the wall between the new mortar and old stones came little fibres of crimson-tipped moss, stonecrop (Sedum), sandwort, pellitory of the wall, and in one place a single plant of flax, with its pale-blue flowers and long spear-like leaves; without mentioning the more common chickweed, groundsel, wild feverfew and plantain, yellow wallflowers, and many different sorts of grass and mosses. There is no doubt most of these plants had come from seeds brought to the nests in the ivy by the birds, and had lain there in the dry rubble for years, some, perhaps, for generations, simply because there was not moisture enough to cause the seeds to sprout and germinate. ‘If a grain of wheat fall to the ground and live, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit,’ which seems enigmatical till pondered over and thought out. How often have the gray-cowled monks strolled round this old garden, marking how this tree promised a bounteous crop of cherries, luscious morrellas, that, when ‘cunninglie steeped in spirits with due proportion of mace, cloves, cinnamon, and sugar,’ makes a liqueur fit for the drink of princes; or noting how the gnarled old apple-trees—then young and in full bearing—were covered with garlands of pink-and-white blossoms, that promised later in the autumn a rich harvest of golden fruit: ladies’-fingers, Ribstone pippins, codlings, golden russets, Blenham orange, with sourings for winter keeping; also the frail blooms of the pear-trees, jargonelle, Marie Louise, baking pears of enormous size, with the rich, juicy ‘bishop’s thumbs’ and brown burées.
Now, a young lay-brother will come to pick dainty bits of herbs for flavouring the soups and stews, with their accompaniment of esculent vegetables, for, in those old palmy days, seldom did their genial faces have ‘anchorite’ written on them. Go to the extreme end of the garden, and turn round; what a delightful view meets the gaze! Down in the hollow lies the sleepy little town, with its quaint gabled houses, and nearly imbedded in a wealth of lime-trees. Far away, when the wind is high and the atmosphere clear, are seen ranges of fertile hills for miles, or the distance is wrapped in a soft purple haze that is still more lovely; and over all this, the deep blue sky with fleecy white clouds, and the blessed sunshine pouring down over all the wealth of buds and blossoms, singing birds, and busy humming bees.
I came across, the other day, an account of what a naturalist found in a square of backyard nearly uncultivated. Why, such a place as this old priory garden would give him pleasure and profit for months, nay, years, for not a tenth part of all the natural lovelinesses has been exhausted yet. Some other time, perhaps, I shall tell something more of what I find here as the years glide onward.