Ants and Aphis—Fruit Trees—The Grass Walk—"Lilac-tide"—Narcissus—Snowflakes—Columbines—Kalmias—Hawthorn Bushes.
May 4.—May set in this year with (as Horace Walpole somewhere says) "its usual severity." We felt it all the more after the soft warm summer weather we had experienced in April. The Lilac, which is only due with us on the 1st of May, was this year in flower on the 28th of April. Green Gooseberry tarts, which farther south are considered a May-day dish, we hardly hope to see in this colder latitude for ten days later, and now these cold east winds will throw back everything.
I have been going over the fruit walls. The Apricots have, after all, done fairly well, and, if they do not fall off at the "stoning," we shall have nothing to complain of. Peaches and Nectarines are even worse than I had feared. There was not much bloom to begin with; then what bloom there was has set but badly; and now my most promising trees are overrun with aphis and with ants. We are doing everything that can be done to check the plague, but with only a partial success. I am told that ants do no harm, and, indeed, are useful as against the aphis. I do not know how this is. They seem to be most excellent friends, and the more ants there are the more the leaves curl up, and the more the aphis seems to thrive.[3] Last year one Peach-tree was completely killed, and this year two of them are looking very miserable. There has been no want of care or attention, but the enemy increases faster than we can destroy it. Is it a disease (so to speak) in a particular tree, which spreads to other trees? Or is it a blight in the air, against which we cannot guard? And what remedy is there when we have used tobacco-powder and Gishurst Compound, and all in vain?
Two Fig-trees against the wall, in the sunniest corners, are promising a full crop for this district; another Fig-tree of a smaller variety close by bears nothing. The old Arabic proverb, which Emerson quotes, that "A Fig-tree looking upon a Fig-tree becometh fruitful," has not held good in this case. Lancashire, of course, is not the climate for Figs, but I should doubt whether Fig-trees are anywhere so common in England as they were 150 years ago, when Batty Langley of Twickenham wrote. He recommends them to be grown as dwarfs or standards as well as against a wall, and says they "are either white, black, yellow, grey, green, brown, purple, or violet-coloured, consisting of sixteen different kinds,"—but he adds that the white and the long purple do the best.
The Pears against the wall have but little fruit, but the standards are setting well, and the Apples will not, I hope, have suffered from this spell of cold. The new grass walk, of which I wrote on January 5 as passing right through the garden, is shaded by some Apple-trees, and it is pleasant to see their flakes of rosy snow falling softly on the fresh green beneath. Between these old Apple-trees and the young standards I have planted, there was room, which I am making ornamental with cones of Scarlet Runners. We have some five circles on each side of the walk, and shall train up the bean tendrils by strings fastened to a centre pole, so that in summer we shall have a succession of tents of scarlet and green. I tried this method of training Scarlet Runners on a smaller scale last year. The effect was excellent. Then, too, close along the grass on either side I am planting a broad belt of Violets, so that this new walk will one day be the sweetest part of the garden. Lastly, to give colour to the end of the walk, where it is bounded by the hedge of the croft, I am sowing the large Everlasting Pea, and the strongest growing Nasturtium, that they may climb and trail among the Hawthorn and the clipped Beech.
The outside borders and the lawn clumps are beautiful with flowering shrubs. No season is like "Lilac-tide," as it has been quaintly called, in this respect. Besides the Lilac itself, there are the long plumes of the white Broom, the brilliant scarlet of the hybrid Rhododendrons, the delicious blossoms, both pink and yellow, of the Azaleas, the golden showers of the Laburnum, and others too numerous to mention. A Judas-tree at an angle of the house is in bud. The Général Jacqueminot between the vineries has given us a Rose already.
The cuckoo has been calling for days past among the trees beyond the orchard, and the song birds seem to be awake half through the night.
The foliage of the large forest-trees is particularly fine this year. The Horse Chestnuts were the first in leaf, and each branch is now holding up its light of waxen blossom. The Elms came next, the Limes, the Beeches, and then the Oaks. Yet still
"the tender Ash delays
To clothe herself when all the woods are green,"