ckbird had its nest this spring in
the bushes on the left side, a nightingale another in the bushes on the
right, and there the nightingale sang under the shadow of a hornbeam for
hours every morning while "City" men were hurrying past to their train.

The sharp relentless shrike that used to live by the copse moved up
here, and from that very hornbeam perpetually darted across the road
upon insects in the fern and furze opposite. He never entered the
orchard; it is often noticed that birds (and beasts of prey) do not
touch creatures that build near their own nests. Several thrushes reside
in the orchard; swallows frequently twittered from the tops of the apple
trees. As the grass is so safe from intrusion, one of the earliest
buttercups flowers here. Bennets--the flower of the grass--come up; the
first bennet is to green things what the first swallow is to the
breathing creatures of summer.

On a bare bough, but lately scourged by the east wind, the apple bloom
appears, set about with the green of the hedges and the dark spruce
behind. White horse-chestnut blooms stand up in their stately way,
lighting the path which is strewn with the green moss-like flowers
fallen from the oaks. There is an early bush of May. When the young
apples take form and shape the grass is so high even the buttercups are
overtopped by it. Along the edge of the roadside footpath, where the
dandelions, plantains, and grasses are thick with seed, the greenfinches
come down and feed.

Now the apples are red that are left, and they hang on boughs from which
the leaves are blown by every gust. But it does not matter when you
pass, summer or autumn, this little orchard has always something to
offer. It is not neglected--it is true attention to leave it to itself.

Left to itself, so that the grass reaches its fullest height; so that
bryony vines trail over the bushes and stay till the berries fall of
their own ripeness; so that the brown leaves lie and are not swept away
unless the wind chooses; so that all things follow their own course and
bent. The hedge opposite in autumn, when reapers are busy with the
sheaves, is white with the large trumpet flowers of the great wild
convolvulus (or bindweed). The hedge there seems made of convolvulus
then; nothing but convolvulus, and nowhere else does the flower flourish
so strongly; the bines remain till the following spring.

Without a path through it, without a border or parterre, unvisited, and
left