Greenery

“ The whole country is green at this moment, more so than at any other period of the year. The earth is completely decked in delicate verdure of varied shades: the fruit-trees have dropped their blossoms, and the orchards and gardens are green; the forest has just put on its fresh foliage, the meadows are yet uncolored by the flowers, and the young grain-fields look grassy still. ”

“ What a contrast it all is, our economy and nature's lavishness; our impatience, nature's calm assurance! In the garden the sower feels a responsibility, the sweat beads stand on the brow in the sowing. With nature undisturbed it may be the blind flower of the wild violet perfecting its moist seed under the soil, a nod of a stalk to the wind, a ball of fluff sailing by, or the hunger of a bird, and the sowing is done. ”

“ To be sure, there are spots of green where fruit-trees have been planted and water from the river or from some irrigation ditch is led in and out through the orchard. But to one who has seen the beauty of an eastern landscape, before whose eyes comes a vision of stately trees and luxuriant meadows and babbling brooks of clear, cold water, those little dabs of green in the midst of wide stretches of dreariness awaken pity and not admiration. ”

“ The cleared land with its yellow harvest or green, growing crops, and neat dead-wood fences and bushes of luxuriant sweet-briar, and perhaps a garden and green English trees, make a foreground to a forest of gum-trees and wattles, which has been thinned but not cleared by fire, or by cutting a deep ring through the bark of the trees, for the sake of the scanty brown grass underneath, which their shade and growth make still more scanty. ”

“ Would you moralise on the lawn’s green expanse with the great modern interpreter of nature?—learn, then, the secret of humility from the grass before you. Its very end is to be trodden under foot, and yet it rises stronger after it. Mow or roll it as much as you will, and it only sends up thicker shoots. Even in winter it is always green, always cheerful; type of perpetual youth and perpetual freshness, its very uniformity like a reflection of the unclouded sky above. Truly they were wise men, those old monks, who loved so much a spacious courtyard of grass! ”

“ We walk to the water's edge and here he shows me Green scum, or stalks, or sedges, grasses, shrubs, That yield to trees beyond the levels, where The beech and oak have triumph; for along This gradual growth from algae, reeds and grasses, That builds the soil against the water's hands, All things are fierce for place and garner life From weaker things. And then he shows me root stocks, And Alpine willow, growths that sneak and crawl Beneath the soil. ”

“ Here we behold the beautiful lawn enriched with flowers, and studded with trees, which are so dispersed about as not to intercept the prospect, standing singly, so as not to shade the ground, and occasionally collected in clusters, while now and then the shade deepens into the gloom of the forest, or opens into long vistas and spacious plains, destitute of tree or shrub.
When the eye roves off from the green plain, to the groves, or points of timber, these also are found ... robed in the most attractive hues. The rich undergrowth is in full bloom. ”

“ It is difficult when you see trees intermixed with the most graceful flowering shrubs, grouped with all the effect which a landscape gardener could desire, and growing from a green sward, entirely free from overgrowing weeds or brushwood, not to fancy that the hand of man had been engaged in combining and arranging these elements of natural beauty. If to this be added a group of cattle resting in the shade, a rustic paling, or a winding road, you have a landscape such as our English artists delight to pourtray. ”

“ But the grass is still green, and the trees thick with foliage, the fields neatly ploughed and tilled and cultivated, with here and there a staring notice planted on the edge of a field, where the long, straight drills are sprinkled with budding green—'Crops sown. ”

“ Valleys and cultivated fields, have each their characteristics of richness or of loveliness, but they have no beauty in comparison with that of woodland scenery. The wild thyme and moss, the short-cropped herbage, the tufts of fern and golden-blossomed gorse, that vary the ground on which we tread; the solemn depth of the lone forest, the noble groups of trees that diversify the open spaces, and the clear streams that flow silently through the deep soil, bordered with cowslips and wild marigolds, have all, and each, their own peculiar attractions. ”

“ No wonder they are so cool and refreshing, for in what crystal pure springs do they find their source? Like well born children with a beautiful environment, they bathe all the wood land flowers and trees with their beneficent water until they leave a trail of richest verdure from the mountain to the sea, where they mingle in the great expanse of waters not to perish, but to be resurrected, into glorious summer clouds, to carry life and health to the thirsty plants of earth. ”

“ WHEN THE GREEN GITS BACK IN THE TREES. In spring, when the green gits back in the trees, And the sun comes out and stays, And yer boots pulls on with a good tight squeeze, And you think of yer barefoot days; When you ort to work and you want to not, And you and yer wife agrees It's time to spade up the garden lot, When the green gits back in the trees— Well! work is the least o' my idees When the green, you know, gits back in the trees! ”

“ I found the garden in excellent order, and flourishing crops of vegetables springing up between rows of orange and citron. Such is the power of the climate, that the gardenias and Cape plants I brought with me from England, mere stumps, are covered with beautiful blossoms. The curled mallows, and some varieties of Indian-corn, sown by my English gardener, have shot up to a strange elevation, and begin already to form shady avenues and fairy forests, where children might play in perfection at landscape-gardening. ”

“ Winter and summer, these forests keep their green ranks closed against the winds, their moss-hung boughs blotting out the sun. Today, wilderness roads wind between the green walls made by these ancient forest giants, whose branches, interlacing overhead, sough and murmur in vagrant winds. ”

“ I could not gaze my fill on the fresh succulent vegetation, the magnificent oak and beech woods which crowned the hills on the right and left, sometimes growing down to the very road, sometimes going off into the distance; everywhere skirting the most fruitful fields, shaded with red and brown where they had been newly ploughed, clothed in deep or tender green where they were covered by the young winter crops or the fresh clover. ”

“ We recognize that as improvement which adapts nature more thoroughly to man's own necessities and wants, and renders it more pleasing both to his sense of the æsthetic and to his more material senses also. He adds to the beauty of the flowers which he takes under his charge,—to the delicacy and fertility of the fruits; the seeds of the wild grasses become corn beneath his care; the green herbs grow great of root or bulb, or bulky and succulent of top and leaf ”

“ They possess a permanent dignity and interest, always occupying the ground and embellishing it, displaying distinct tints of ever-grateful green in spring and summer, waving majestically before the gusts of autumn, and beautiful when bearing on their deepest green the snows of winter. ”

“ Here, indeed, Nature manifests herself in her grandest productions; vegetation begins to be profuse; the huts of the natives, the great and towering trees, the rocks, the entire surface of the soil, are covered with gay flowers and luxuriant vines: orchids, oleanders, roses, honeysuckles, and convolvuli "make glad these solitary places," and tall yuccas, palms, and tree-ferns make them picturesque. ”

“ If you parted the soft grass, an undergrowth of the finest moss met your view like velvet beneath a wealth of embroidery. Clumps of trees shaded the lawn here and there, and on either hand, so far as the eye could reach, a park of magnificent old chestnuts, with a fine variety of oaks, filled the eye with the vast wealth of their foliage. ”

“ In his devotion to grass, his eagerness to display the measure of his art in the curves of shrubberies and the arrangement of specimen plants that strut across your lawn or dot it over as the Sunday scholars do the croft when they come for their annual treat, he quite forgets the flowers—forgets the old intent of a garden as the House Beautiful of the civilised world—the place for nature-rapture, colour-pageantry, and sweet odours. ”

“ Of all the miracles of the green world none surpasses that of the grass. It has many names, many raiments even, but it is always that wonderful thing which the poets of all time have delighted in calling the green hair of earth. ‘Soft green hair of the rocks,’ says a Breton poet. Another Celtic poet has used the word alike for the mosses which clothe the talons of old trees and for the forests themselves. No fantastic hyperbole this: from a great height forests of pine and oak seem like reaches of sombre grass. ”

“ But soon fierce Nature claims the place for her own, and covers it with thick grass or giant weeds, or nurses some sapling in it till its branches shade the ground. Be warned, and tend your garden to the utmost, till you can pass away utterly and let it return to Nature and become the wind-blown plain where the wild-flowers grow. ”

“ What are they doing, and are they of any use?
169 The general scheme of Nature is to cover the whole world with green, so that every ray of sunlight may find a working leaf or green frond ready to welcome it and use it. Nature abhors bare rock, barren sand, and empty water, and never ceases to try to bring it under that beautiful covering of green plants and active vegetable life which supports both man and animals. ”

“ Fiery greens, such as burn in tropical scenery, do not exist; and blossom-bursts take a more exquisite radiance by contrast with the heavy tones of the vegetation out of which they flame. Outside of parks and gardens and cultivated fields, there is a singular absence of warmth and tenderness in the tints of verdure; and nowhere need you hope to find any such richness of green as that which makes the loveliness of an English lawn. ”

“ Is good to browse on, the tall forest yields
Pine-torches, and the nightly fires are fed
And shoot forth radiance. And shall men be loath
To plant, nor lavish of their pains? Why trace
Things mightier? Willows even and lowly brooms
To cattle their green leaves, to shepherds shade,
Fences for crops, and food for honey yield. ”

“ Exuberant grass replenishes all my fields, the best representative of our wealth; in the middle of that tract I have cut a ditch eight feet wide, the banks of which nature adorns every spring with the wild salendine, and other flowering weeds, which on these luxuriant grounds shoot up to a great height. ”

“ Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
Among the woods and copses, nor disturb
The wild green landscape. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms
Green to the very door ”

“ Then the flowers come forth, meadows and groves are clad in green, the birds make ready to build, and sing sweetly for solace of the soft summer that follows thereafter. The blossoms bud and blow in the hedgerows rich and rank, and noble notes enough are heard in the fair woods. ”

“ The gardens are rude and unkempt, with earth ditches and humps of ground, and an arid look, except where the vivid green of some cereal here and there beneath the palms, or the softer form and foliage of low fruit trees amid their towering stems, give a brighter and more delicate touch to the general scene. ”

“ Vegetation comes out, not with the laggard step of northern climes,—slow, cautious, and distrustful,—but bursting at once from bud to blossom, as though impatient for the fresh air of life and the warm rays of the sun. ”

“ All kinds of grains and fruits and flowers are produced in abundance: the rainfalls have wonderfully increased, springs have burst forth in dry spots, grass grows on the hillsides, and in the meadows, cattle and sheep graze on a thousand hills, and the face of nature smiles and shines with beauty. ”

“ The first green herbage of the spring works off the impurities of the blood, cleanses the system, renovates the constitution, and enables the animal to accumulate a store of strength to carry it forward to its destined course. ”

“ Just as soon as the water was forced to run down hill, the dry land appeared, and the grass began to grow, and the mantles of green were thrown over the shoulders of the hills, and the trees laughed into bud and blossom, and the branches were laden with fruit. ”

“ Our campaign in search of beauty was a brilliant success, and from many points of vantage did we spy upon the vast expanse of golden grain and fresh green meadows in which cattle were grazing, or ruminating in the shade of friendly elms. Here gush clear springs, whose courses may be traced by tall waving ferns and creeping vines that weave their spell of green. Swift tumbling brooks have worn down the soil and enriched the valley. ”

“ Green fields besprinkled with flowers of every hue and scent, trees throwing their grateful shade between the hot traveller and the sun, fruit hanging from heavily laden bushes, rivers and fountains refreshing the heated air. ”

“ Instead of mountains,—deep forests and green meadows, a plain presents itself with its undulating fields of golden grain, and in contrast great fields showing the dark green leaf of the beetroot, everywhere there is evidence of the fertility of the soil and signs to cheer the heart of the farmers with the prospect of a bounteous harvest. ”