The birds have eaten every single bud on our baby almond trees—the first year that they have had any flower buds at all. Ungrateful little wretches! the Master of the Villino sees personally to the replenishing of the numerous bird-baths and drinking-pans; and Juvenal provides them with cocoa-nuts filled with lard and baskets full of crumbs—aided by Gold-Else, the cook, who loves little creatures in fur and feather as much as the rest of the household. Tom, the old cat, is very happy under this lady’s kind rule, and, to show his appreciation, accompanies her in stately fashion every night up the kitchen stairs to her bedroom door. The act of courtesy accomplished, she as solemnly reconducts him downstairs again to spread his couch for him—a sheet of brown paper, by his request.
The Hyacinths are breaking out of their green hoods, shaking blue bells; but our Scillas seem to be going to disappoint us. This sandy soil on our Surrey heights is not at all appreciated by bulbs. Snowdrops will have nothing to say to us, unless in a prepared bed. Narcissus Poeticus disappeared altogether after one year’s blooming. We are trying to naturalize Bluebells in a glade which we have cleared—and in which this year has been planted an avenue of pink May trees, to end at the bottom of the dell in a group of white Azaleas—but we are not at all sure that we shall succeed. However, we have our compensations: Azaleas thrive, and so do Rhododendrons. We are year by year adding more of the former to the wild slopes.
Below the terrace, yclept the “Hemicycle,” a path bordered with Azalea Mollis was a perfect glory last May, although it had only been planted the preceding autumn. The “Hemicycle” was a little fairy glade of Crocus a week ago, the second in February; and we have still hope of the Scillas which surround our bereft almond trees. A rough wall rises from it to the Upper Terrace, over which Dorothy Rambler will fling its lovely blooms in immense trails by and by; and its stones themselves hold a never-ending succession of delight in the shape of Arabis, Aubretia, Cerastium, Thrift, and the like. Yellow roses climb up to meet the Dorothy, and the dear little pink China Rose grows in bushes all along the front between the Lavender plants which we are trying to acclimatise, but which, year after year, are blighted by the frost before they have had time to grow strong.
Satisfactory as our wall-garden is, there is a wall-garden at a cottage in a neighbouring village which never fails to fill us with envy every time we see it. It belongs to two maiden ladies, whom we have christened Tweedle-Ann and Tweedle-Liza. They are so extraordinarily like each other that even they themselves ‹we have heard› hardly know which is which. They have the same rotundity of figure, the same uncertain obliquity in one eye, the same cheerful rosy visage, the same sleek bands of grey hair.
When the Master of the House was a young man, an Irish servant was heard to observe to him, gazing rapturously at him as he walked away from her vision, all unconsciously, in his shooting-garb: “And indeed he’s a lovely gentleman. Them jars of legs!” ‹As a matter of fact, Loki’s Grandfather has very nice legs.› But Tweedle-Ann and Tweedle-Liza, in short, sensible grey tweed skirts, bending their portly forms over their wall garden, have more than often presented to the passer-by a vision....
The Japanese say that reticence is the very soul of art. Our aspirations are always towards the artistic, but there is something touching in four ... exactly similar ... side by side...!