THE flame of August is over all the garden, a blaze of yellow and
scarlet, orange and red, for most of the blues and pinks go out with
July, though the lavender flowers are opening intensely blue, and big
clumps of eryngium, with blue stems as well as blue flower-heads, make
masses of contrasting colour amidst the sunflowers, single and double,
and the eschscholtzias and marigolds glowing golden and undaunted by
the hottest sunshine. The flowers of the Red-hot-poker rival their
namesakes; broad spreading clumps of montbretia, each waving hundreds
of fiery orange and red blossoms, have sprung into existence, since
last we were here, from lowly modest-looking patches of green blades.
The second crop of Gloire-de-Dijon roses are out, likewise holding in
their hearts remembrance of the hot sunshine that pervades the earth.
Geraniums, turned out of doors “to get a little air” (though there
certainly isn’t much to get just now!), are shouting aloud in pride of
their heavy, scarlet bosses. The mountain-ash trees contribute plenty
of colour, each branch bent down with a smother of bunches of berries,
which are being eagerly devoured by blackbirds, thrushes and hawfinches.
Tall red and yellow hollyhocks try to persuade you that they are nearly
as high, and quite as brilliant, as the mountain-ash.
Nasturtiums trail all over the place, climbing where there is next
to nothing to support them, with flowers so thick you lose count of
the foliage. And what a dazzling mass they make, touched apparently
with every shade of yellow and brown and red, from blossoms of palest
primrose marked with vivid scarlet, past salmon-colour streaked with
orange, and lemon yellow splashed with chocolate, to dark mahogany-red
smoked with deep purple-brown. They smother weeds (that gain in
impudence as the season advances), and cover bare places where bulbs
and earlier blooming plants have died down. They hang over the tops
of walls; they crowd the border pinks into the paths; they get mixed
up with the hedges, and surprise you by sending out vermilion flowers
at the top of a sedate old box-tree clipped to look like a solid
square table. They run out of the little white gate into the lane, and
they creep under the rails into the orchard. Indeed, there are times
when their exuberance almost makes one tired, more especially if the
thermometer favours the nineties!
The garden walls are teeming with colour. Sweet Alyssum has seeded
itself wherever it can find a spare niche—rather a difficulty, unless
a plant goes house-hunting quite early in the season! Though the white
and purple arabis finished flowering months ago, it contributes crimson
and purple to the colour scheme, as its foliage ripens in the hot sun.
Any intelligent gardener can tell me that the top of a sunny wall is
far too hot for a fuschia. Certainly; and of course it is—especially
in August. Yet some misguided person had one planted there—just where
the wall has a break in it, and a flight of steps leads down to the
next level. It is the lovely old-fashioned bush sort, smothered with
slender drooping blossoms; and it reaches out long arms that arch right
over the steps, and as you go down, unless you lower your head, you set
a-tinkling scores of crimson bells with rich blue-purple centres.
And people who understand all about fuchsias glare at it severely, and
then at me, and remark, “A most unsuitable position!”
And where nothing else in particular is making any sort of a show, the
ubiquitous Herb Robert spreads itself about, on the top of the walls,
or roots in crevices down the sides—it isn’t particular where; so long
as there are stones that need clothing with loveliness, there you will
find it, laying its crimson leaves with a lacy airiness over the stern
surface of the rock.
The very scents of the garden are hot and pungent, as one rubs against
thyme and marjoram, or the great sage bush that smothers one wall. The
trees of sweet bay were cut in the morning; the rosemary bushes had to
be trimmed where their branches were lying on the ground; someone has
stepped on pieces in passing.
All day long the heat strikes down on the parched, cracking earth,
baking the stones, shrivelling up any fern fronds that chance to catch
its direct rays, drying up the little brook, and testing the powers
of endurance of the scarlets and yellows, orange and reds, that are
flaunting themselves in the face of the sun.
To sit out of doors is only possible beneath the firs and larches, in
the green shade by the wood house, where the sun never penetrates; and
even here it makes one warm to watch the glare beyond the thicket of
trees, the hot air quivering, nothing but butterflies and dragon flies
about, and nought to break a breathless silence but the twitter of the
tits, grub-hunting in the larches, and the perpetual hum of uncountable
insects, who seem to find no heat too great.
* * * * *
But presently the shadows of the pines begin to lengthen, and in the
shade thrown by the larches along the meadow side blackbirds are
seen making short runs along the ground on foraging expeditions.
Chaffinches, tits, linnets, and bullfinches come out from green hiding
places and go down to the birds’ bath to drink.
Longer grow the shadows, the swallows rise and take high curving sweeps
in the upper air—wonderful little aeronauts whom no man has trained.
As the sun touches the top of the opposite hills a breeze wakes up
the birch wood, whispering that the sunset will soon be here, and the
leaves start talking about the stifling heat that so exhausted them
through the day.
The sun drops lower behind the hill; rabbits peep out from beneath the
brambles, then make for the hummocky field that adjoins my cabbages,
the field where the big oaks stretch wide arms over soft, green,
luscious grass—Offa’s Oaks we have named these ancient giants, because
they border Offa’s Dyke; and they have so often described to the more
youthful birch trees the time when they saw Offa, King of Mercia, come
marching past in 765 A.D., that at length they have actually come to
believe they were alive and flourishing in his day! We humour their age
by pretending that it was so.
At last the sun disappears, flaming to the last in crimson and gold,
orange and red. The breeze gets lustier after the sun has gone under,
and a squirrel comes scampering head first down a tall fir-tree, in
search of a delicious toadstool that he sometimes finds at its base.
Pheasants strut up out of the coppice, and roam about the pasture.
Imperceptibly, you know not whence it comes, there steals over the
earth the cool, refreshing scent of dew-drenched bracken, mingling with
the sweet wistful evening incense of some late honeysuckle.
And as you watch the fading after-glow of pink and saffron, sea-green
and tawny-rose, you sense that in some mysterious way the face of the
garden has entirely changed. Gone is the fire of the scarlet geraniums;
lost is the vermilion of the nasturtiums; even the sunflowers hang
their heads, and the hollyhocks have turned off their lights. The
marigolds have closed their eyes, and the eschscholtzias have folded up
their brave flowers, the tired little heads bowing over, thankful for
this respite.
Then, as the montbretias toll the Angelus from crowds of golden
throated bells, the evening primroses, silently, gratefully, open a
thousand blossoms and bathe the garden in a wondrous gleam.
Such a clear, clean yellow it is; so quiet and yet so penetrating; it
seems in some strange way to hold the radiance of heaven and focus it
on the sleeping Flower-patch, subduing all that would strike a glaring
note, hiding the ragged deficiencies of fading leaves and withering
seed-pods.
By day one scarcely noticed the straggling plants at all, save perhaps
to remark on their rather shabby appearance. But now they shine from
terraces and wall-tops; from crannies in the rough stone steps they
send up tall shafts, bearing aloft their evening lamps; about the
garden beds, among the currant bushes, at the edge of the gravel walk,
between the stones in the paved path, wherever they can find root-room,
they have taken hold—for they were ever wanderers, and given to
exploring the farthermost corner of any garden wherein they have made
themselves at home.
* * * * *
The last rose-pink flush has faded from the clouds; not even a sleepy
twitter is heard from bush or bough; the wind soughs softly in the
pine-trees, those harps of endless strings. From out her hidden stores
of abundance, Nature has given moisture to the grass, refreshment
to the fainting foxglove leaves, and damped the forest fern. Then,
breathing quiet on a weary world, has bidden it take rest.
Yet all are not asleep. Standing like sentinels through the darkest
hours of night, the evening primroses, adding scent to scent, flood
the garden from end to end with a veritable glory of swaying, gleaming
moon-gold.