RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31153, 1 September 1966, Page 26

RANDOM REMINDER

NATURE NOTE

A garden is a lovesome thing, someone said. Perhaps it was Godfrey Winn. Moreover, the sun’s in its heaven, and all’s right with the world, according to the latest reports from Cape Kennedy. From his winter habitat, the businessman is lured outdoors by the glorious scent of unmown grass. Shedding his cocoon is not always as simple a matter as nature intended. He has often to be helped out by the female of the species, the common harpy, who uses her long, sharp tongue to free him of his winter habit.

Let us stroll with him, hand in hand, as he makes his annual pilgrimage into the riot of living thing? a

bounteous nature has provided. No, not hand in hand. He’s carrying a fork in one of them, a measure of mead in the other. Come, see how the sweet convolvulus runs hither and thither, in and out of the quaint, clover-like oxalis (mirabilis). There is the fascinating pattern of the twitch, too, running riot, as nature intended. He has one too.

Enjoy with him the glorious feeling of achievement as the fork sinks two full inches and more into the sun-baked earth. How the sweat does run, how easily the peculiar phrases of the countryman come back to his ready lips. He is as one with nature; a man, tilling his soil, and

now, soiling his tilth, for he has upset his mead and the neighbour who has come to watch him at labour. The liquid runs strong and free over the parched land and is soaked in gratefully. The man watches, entranced. The strong sun soars high in the sky and dips to salute the night. Still the man labours mightily, the muscles on his broad back twanging like guitar strings. And when dusk's soft fingers embrace him. he is done. And how. Walk with him now, view with him the miracle of the land. There before you. he has laid a carpet, in nature's colours. But tread softly, for you tread on his beans.