We have now many promising verdant roods, destined in time to be improved into lawns, where hitherto Heath and Whin held their sway. But the spaces lately freed from underwoods, which we so fondly hoped would turn of themselves into grassy glades and dells, provided us with new Heraclean labours.
WAR ON BRACKEN
Have I named Bracken?—Bracken! an everlasting problem on such a piece of land as ours, which less than a century back was undoubtedly part of the wild moorland itself. Nothing, it seems, but thorough overturning will really and finally rid the soil of the unconscionable Bracken—the ubiquitous, the imperishable, the exasperating Pteris Aquilina!
This knowledge has been impressed on us by the experience of successive years. Our first inkling of it was when, returning to the Villino after a few months’ absence and fondly anticipating to find our precious glades ‹which, after the Great Clearance, had been generously sown with grass› covered with a tender-green, thickly-piled carpet, we were confronted with waving fields of lusty Brake already breast high.
In itself the sight was not displeasing; the young verdure was cool to the eye and did not greatly impede the view. But what we wanted was Grass. Grass which, in course of time and at their proper seasons, Crocus Vernus, Primrose, Blue-bell and Daffodil, Foxglove, and Colchicum Autumnale would star and illumine with colour.
Now, where the Brake thrives, it takes unto itself the whole bounty of the sun, and stifles all plant-life of lesser height than itself.
We disconsolately took advice from presumably competent persons.
“Oh,” said Everybody, with confidence, “you can get rid of Bracken if you cut it twice in the same year.”