Days and hours in a garden

by E. V. B.

Fair Maids of February.

This accident or sport is common in other trees all over the world, I suppose, and one of the most ancient nomadic patterns of Persian rugs depicts, on either side the Tree of Life, the columnar Cypress and the drooping Cypress, beside a little tomb.

In various odd nooks and corners of the garden, I know where to find a few little old Cephalonian Pines, all that remain out of a number we once had. They are only about 4 or 5 feet high, yet they were grown from seed over a quarter of a century ago. Like poor old useless retainers, they have followed the fortunes of the family, and we have become attached to one another. One amongst the original number became a fine specimen—and perished. The rest have never had a chance of growing up, for every spring their new buds are nipped, so they remain still the same, with a sort of look of old-young trees. I am especially interested in the welfare of one of the Cephalonians, who lives in an English Yew. Those two are certainly bosom friends! The Yew itself was only half a tree, spared, out of charity, on what seemed a bare chance of surviving. The Cephalonian stood near and shivered, and lost its buds every spring, while the Yew crept nearer and nearer, till at last its thick dark foliage reached the little Pine, and so grew on; and now the Yew fairly holds it within its warm, comfortable embrace. Some say, “What a mistake to leave them thus!” I say, “They shall not be parted;” so the two remain together, and grow quite happily in each other’s arms. Oddly enough, the Pine seems to be assimilating itself in colour, and partly in form, with the Yew, so that it is not easy to distinguish them. But if the Cephalonian at last out-tops its benefactor, what will happen then? At times the space of ground over which we reign seems to be very much too small; and I incline to envy the possession of land, with room enough to plant; for there can be no more engrossing interest of its kind than to watch the growth of trees, their manners and customs. I would plant at once acres of Ilex Oak. What shelter they would make! And in a congenial soil they would not be too slow of growth. There should be broad bands of Beech and Oak, and long groves of Larch, delicious in spring for the fragrance of their green and pink-tipped tassels. And there should be plantations of Fir—Scotch Fir, for the delight of their healthy blue-green in youth, and for the glory of their great red stems in age; and Spruce Fir, with all their charm of deep mosses underneath, and the loveliness in spring of starry Winter-green (Trientalis Europæ) and “the rathe Primrose;” and for the music of the winds among their branches, and the velvet darkness of their colour under summer skies. (Mem.—The Winter-green would have to be sent us from the North.)

Our great work of last month has been an alteration at the east end of the garden. A Quickset hedge, forty or fifty years old, is moved back, so as to take in from “the park” a bit of waste ground; the gravel path that ran under the hedge is widened, and a block of Laurels cut through. By this means a turf way, leading north and south, is made to enter the improved walk, whose chief attraction is the border of old damask Roses. Plum trees and Pears stand along the border amongst the Roses, and a large perennial yellow Lupin, in which thrushes have been known to make their nests. In the middle of the hedge grew a fine young Elder. I had long promised that Elder it should never be cut down, so when the Hawthorns were removed the tree remained, arching across the path to meet a Plum tree on the other side. An Elder in full bloom is such a beautiful thing that it is painful to feel obliged to destroy it; but Elders have such an unfortunate knack of appearing where they are not wanted! The birds sow Elder seeds in the clefts of trees, in chinks of walls, flower borders—all sorts of inconvenient places—now that the berries are no longer requisitioned to make Elder wine. In old-fashioned days it was worth having a cold, to enjoy a night-cap of Elder wine from the saucepan on the hob! So this one tree is preserved in honour, as compensation for those others which are no more. I am not in the least superstitious, but it is rather uncanny to cut down an old Elder! Eldritch legends and spells have clung to the tree in days of yore, and have even come down to our own times. I used to listen at my mother’s knee, and beg again and again for the story of the fairy changeling. The interest of the story never failed, and the rhyme never tired, about the enchanted hare, who ran—

“Runie and runie the Eildon tree,

And seven times runie the Eildon tree.”

According to custom, I was rather on the look-out for treasures when the old hedge was dug up, but nothing appeared excepting a huge yellow bone and a gigantic root of White Briony. The uncouth thing bore a strange resemblance to some organized being with arms and legs—something like an octopus in full swim, only twenty times as big, and yet also with a sort of human aspect! I was told it was a Mandrake (though it did not shriek on being pulled up), and so I desired it should be carefully buried, in order that the household might not be disturbed by its groans at night. In India the sounds emitted by a Mandrake in the dark night are said to be sometimes heartrending. And so the witch, in the Masque of Queens—

“I last night lay all alone

O’ the ground to heare the mandrake grone.”