I had thought a couple of pages would be more than enough,
so I began with rather full accounts of the flowers, but I used up the
book long before I had written out one half of what blossoms in Mary's
Meadow.
Wild roses, and white bramble, and hawthorn, and dogwood, with its
curious red flowers; and nuts, and maple, and privet, and all sorts of
bushes in the hedge, far more than one would think; and ferns, and the
stinking iris, which has such splendid berries, in the ditch--the
ditch on the lower side where it is damp, and where I meant to sow
forget-me-nots, like Alphonse Karr, for there are none there as it
happens. On the other side, at the top of the field, it is dry, and
blue succory grows, and grows out on the road beyond. The most
beautiful blue possible, but so hard to pick. And there are Lent
lilies, and lords and ladies, and ground ivy, which smells herby when
you find it, trailing about and turning the colour of Mother's
"aurora" wool in green winters; and sweet white violets, and blue dog
violets, and primroses, of course, and two or three kinds of orchis,
and all over the field cowslips, cowslips, cowslips--to please the
nightingale.
And I wondered if the nightingale would find out the hose-in-hose,
when I had planted six of them in the sunniest, cosiest corner of
Mary's Meadow.
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