Spring in a Shropshire AbbeyGaskell, Catherine Henrietta Milnes, Lady
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Spring in a Shropshire Abbey
Gaskell, Catherine Henrietta Milnes, Lady
Shropshire (England) -- Description and travel; Wenlock Abby (England)
I wandered round the garden in the Cloisters, with its lavabo and
wrought-iron gates. On the lancet windows of the Leper's Chamber,
white pigeons were cooing and disporting themselves, and running up
and down along the level turf. Jackdaws amidst the ruins were
hurrying to and fro on the wing, with grub or insect in their beaks.
Above the chamber, where men said the service was heard by the sick,
there was a mass of gold which shone like beaten metal against the
cloudless sky. It was the wild wallflower in a sea of blossom. How
busy all nature was--building, growing, blossoming, and budding.
Certainly a fair spring morning is one of the undying joys of the
world.
Later on I found myself in the little kitchen garden. The later pears
were then sheets of snow, and I noticed that an apple flower was
beginning to turn pink on an espalier.
Burbidge I found busily occupied in dividing the roots of the violets.
All through the winter, when frosts bound the ground, he sent me in
fragrant bunches of the double Neapolitan violet, varied by bouquets
of the Czar, the Princess of Wales, and the red purple of Admiral
Avalon.
Now all the roots were being lifted from the frames, and little
runners with minute fibrous roots planted, some eight inches apart,
in shady corners.
During the summer, Burbidge and his boys will cut off every runner or
blossom that may appear on these plants, and keep them, to use his
expression, "round as a nest." "I likes," he said, "to give 'em
hearts like cabbages." The first week in September, the violet roots
will be replaced in the frames "for winter blowing."
In the mean time the frames are to be cleared, the soil renewed, and
then sown with asters, zinnias, and my beautiful golden lettuces,
that come over every year from the Austrian seedsman.
Next to the frames, in little narrow beds, were lines of choice
daffodils, and I stopped to look at them. They were of the largest
and most effective kinds. There was Emperor, and Empress, Horsfieldi,
Sir Watkin Wynn, Golden Spur, Mrs. Langtry, and beautiful Madame de
Graaf, and the brilliant sunset glory of Orange Phoenix.
They made a brave show and found great favour in my old gardener's
eyes. "Nothing mean about they," he said, only the day before,
complacently to me. "Look to the size. They be near the girth of
roses, and fit for any nobleman's garden." The old man seemed to
swell with pride as we looked at them together. I had not the heart
to be disagreeable and to suggest that any should be plucked for
vases, or to deck the altar bowls, and I saw that my old friend was
relieved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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