YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 77, 13 December 1940, Page 48

YOUR GARDEN AND MINE

By

Ann Earncliff

Brown

(No. 53)

Country Garden

HROUGH the open window as I write comes a waft of new mown hay and a snatch of a thrush’s song. Abundant rains have made the grass beyond the lawn into a worth-while hay-crop, to be harvested as it falls in long swathes from the scythe. It is sometimes a matter for regret to me that I cannot now keep smooth and shaven all the grass on this garden acre-but "it compensates much to hear the rhythmic stroke of the keen whetted blade punctuated by the long purposeful note of the stone on steel. The thrush alone of all the birds can spare time to share my delight. Blackbird and starling revel in the short, wet lawn-grass, where the poor foolish worms are easy victims to those quick ears and stabbing beaks. True Patterns Although I cannot see the songster, I know that he is swaying deliciously in the tip-top of my tallest macrocarpaone of a trio of splendid timber treesthe trunks strong, straight, and beautiful in their rugged symmetry, the wide cedar-like branches in sharp contrast to nearby poplars and bunching willows on the river bank. "Bijou Beauty" Not all gardens can have trees in abundance, but happily delight in a garden need not be in proportion to its size -on the contrary! I think with pleasure of a garden close to the heart of a city, and exquisite as a cameo. Within creeper-hung boundaries, the lawns lie smooth and green as a billiards table, edges outlined with a barbered perfection. The long herbaceous bed is edged with quaint double daisies. When I saw them, these were in full bloom, recalling in their flushed old-world prettiness. Burns’s. immortal "Modest crimson tippit flow’r." To-day, I know that the ‘same orderliness prevails in gay rosebeds, No weed lurks in the violas beneath rose

bushes guiltless of unsightly mildew or

marauding greenfiy. By the sunporch budding hollyhocks spire upwards, the handsome leaves unspottéd by rust. Those vulnerable underleaf surfaces have adequate protection with timely sprays of liver of sulphur (loz. to 3 gallons of water)-truly a gem of a garden. Further, yesterday a friend confessed: "I’ve only three window boxes-TI don’t want more-but don’t I just adore: them!"