Summer
"Knee-deep in June."
And knee-deep in work, too, for June will not give you anything for nothing if you are running a garden. I had my hands full, not only with the legitimate work of June, which is great, but May is sure to have left you in the lurch; this "getting forward" process so much preached by the Master is not seconded by May with at all a whole heart.
"March ain't never nothin' new!
Apriles altogether too
Brash fer me, and May—I jes'
'Bominate its promises.
Little hints o' sunshine and
Green around the timber-land,
A few blossoms and a few
Chip birds, and a sprout or two—
Drap asleep, and it turns in
'Fore daylight and snows agen!"[1]
[1] James Whitcomb Riley.
My poet is an American, but the complaint may be raised also in the old country; only I do not "'bominate" promises. I love them, and as I am perforce a gardener it is a good thing, for I often get nothing else.
But be the garden forward or not, how lovely a garden can be, even a neglected garden, these last weeks of May and first of June.
The chestnuts are scarcely over, the laburnum is raining gold, the may trees are like snow, a delicious reminder when the sun is doing its duty brilliantly; the roses are just breaking from the bud, and now we can congratulate ourselves on the wholesale slaughter of green grub and green fly, without, however, giving up the pursuit.