YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 45, 3 May 1940, Page 41

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(30)

ARDENING in April has none of the "set-fair" monotony of long summer days. To-day mild and warm; to-morrow-a_. southerly blizzard. Then a frost that crusts the earth and ruins the lawn. No wonder we work with a sense of excitement in this battle against the elements! While the soil permits, the last potatoes must be dug; savoys, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, rocked by strong winds, must once again be firmed. Carrots and red beet lifted in case they rot in a too-wet patch, or crack at the onslaught of a biting frost, must be topped ready for storage. Recently, on one of the delightful throw-back summer days, I raked busily at the lawn, piling the poplar, silver birch and willow on to a compost heap, topping the loads with refuse from the vegetable patch; and weighting all with a few shovels of earth. Only the fruit-tree leaves are outcasts. These, lest they carry any disease infections, I burn with all woody rubbish, the ashes being carefully kept dry for future use. Green Grow the Rashes O! On a leaf carpet of London tan, down by the river, lie great bundles of rushes |

bound by blue-green strips of flax. The cutter of these river reeds has skill in "weaving the slim four-foot lengths into a heat thatch that defies winter’s worst weather. Each year his potato crop is pitted, and the long pit thatched with rushes, Also, carefully stored in layers of dry sand-abundant in these partslie his well grown carrots’ and red beet -snug and crisp till needed — under their own thatched roof. Apples also and winter cole pears, thus stored, keep excellently, and do not acquire the musty flavour of fruit laid by in straw. Looking at those stout emerald bundles,. I find myself humming lines from a master weaver of words: Green grow the rashes O Green grow the rashes O The sweetest hours that e’er I spent I spent amang the lasses O Smiling, I picture the unrepentant Bobbie Burns, seated for his sins on the Kirk’s stool of repentance, thinking of the lasses, and later stooping in pity to a modest crimson tipped daisy!-destroy-ing and preserving its beauty forever.