Page:Once a Week Dec 1860 to June 61.pdf/328

 16, 1861.] evenings, and the brown-owl hoots from the ivy, and some belated cottager whistles as he passes the gate, the sounds bring up the scene and the time when we used to open the window, or stand by our fence in the dark, to listen to the dash of the tide, and watch for the mock cry of the sea-bird, or the whistle with which in cases of extremity the smugglers summoned their accomplices from far and near.

We prefer the March winds in the daytime. They are cold, certainly; but they clear away such an amount of mud that we heartily welcome them. After a week of February rain, when we have said that there is scarcely a place we can turn to for a walk, on account of the mire, it is encouraging to see the rooks battling with difficulties in getting abroad for their morning meal. As the sky brightens towards sunrise, a flock of them becomes visible below the clouds—not all winging one way, as usual, but tossed about like autumn leaves, and the strongest obliged to wheel round, from time to time, and all to tack, in order to get on at all. By noon the high road is dry; by the afternoon the lanes are practicable: and in the evening the postman trudges in with dust on his shoes. This is a sign of many things.

The teams, plough, and harrow, and crusher, and drill, will be out in the fallows immediately; and the bush-harrow and roller in the pasture. Everything must be set growing, from the very hour the soil is dry enough. So we shall see the men turn up the soil, well broken by the frosts and ripened by the rain, so as to feast one’s nostrils and exhilarate one’s spirits. We shall see the women sowing beans and peas, and the children picking stones in the pastures, and trying to get a ride on the bush-harrow, and to drive the roller. The ewes and lambs can get out, as soon as the herbage is dry, and crop the earliest grass before the heavy tread of cattle, or even of horses, can be permitted on the still soft ground. The horses must be well fed; and so must the cattle; for they must yield us—the one labour I and the other milk—to their utmost capacity, in the coming months; but we cannot indulge them with the first tender grass. We may let out the calves, perhaps; but nothing heavier or heartier.

The wind makes business in both mansion and cottage, as it does on the squire’s farms, and in the labourers’ gardens. The men say the land and the animals must be cared for first; so the women defer their enterprises in the cleaning way till the extreme pressure is past. They find a minute, however, to open all doors and windows, and hang out blankets, and thrust beds and pillows forth on the window-sills. Then they turn out with spade and I rake, and trench the beds, and sow their carrots, and parsnips, and onions, and radishes, and lettuces; and they make fresh herb beds, and prepare for the potato-setting now, while the earth is fit. The children, with the barrow which their united strength can just move, gather up everything that will burn—cuttings from the porch, dead stalks from the beds, and all the weeds they can lay their hands on—and carry all to the heap which is to be burned when big enough. This cottage-gardening is one of the best spectacles of the season. Freshness and order take the place of dank and dreary untidiness: mother and little ones enjoy it; and the neighbour who looks over the hedge at the sound of the spade and the cheerful voices, sees provision making for the future luxuries of prime vegetables all summer and autumn, and a winter stock of potatoes. While the lazy wife of a selfish husband doles out the piece of dry bread, at every meal, all the year round, till the children loathe the sight of it, the heartier and better housewife makes a family festival of these fine March mornings, when a wealth of food may be created by moderate energy and industry. No doubt, watchfulness and diligence will be necessary, to keep the little garden always in crop from this time till the end of the year; but good managers always can be ready to fill a bed the same day that they empty it—weather permitting: and there is plenty of inducement in the prospect of the family sitting down properly to dinner every day—to greens with their bacon, to savoury pottage, to turnips and carrots, to beans and bacon, to salad with their cheese, to spinach with eggs, and to the bowl of reeking potatoes in winter, with salt-fish, or the Sunday joint. Our interest in our own kitchen-garden is strong, at this season; but it must be a mere trifle to us, in comparison with the importance to the cottager’s wife of her rood of ground. So when the good man comes home to dinner, he cuts potatoes for sets, for planting in the afternoon. He has to work now from six to six (with intervals for meals); and, therefore, he has not much daylight for gardening; but a man who truly loves his home will trench and trim till he can see no longer.

The children have business abroad, too. My neighbours have a high opinion of young nettles as spring food; and there are always people about at this time, gathering the sprouts for stews and puddings, or to eat as spinach. On farms and in poultry-yards where the turkeys are wild, and the ducks and hens are not duly trained, there is a demand for little searchers for eggs; and the children like nothing better. So much a dozen is paid them for hidden eggs; and the discovery of an unsuspected nest is profitable as well as pleasant. So we see very small children switching away at a forest of nettles, and rummaging among old straw, and in odd corners, and peeping into recesses in hedge-banks. They “make large eyes,” as the Germans say, when they come upon a nest, with six, or eight, or a dozen eggs in it; or upon a bright-eyed, bristling hen, much excited at their intrusion.

The boys aspire to something less easy than all this. We have such a surplus population of small birds that bird-nesting is allowed, and even encouraged. After all that the lads can do, there will be a pest of sparrows, and flocks of other pickers of seeds and sprouts and buds. At best, we have to cover our rows of peas, and other springing shoots in the kitchen garden, and all the seeds we sow; and the taking the eggs is no particular affliction to any creature; or nothing in comparison with taking the young or shooting the fullgrown. Farmers and gentry therefore freely pay for little eggs,—blue, greenish, pinkish, and