Village green

“ The spaces set apart for these buildings, as well as the village green, should be surrounded [Pg 127] by regularly planted trees, such as will grow to a large size, like the American elm. But the whole open space should remain otherwise free from planting. Smooth, well-kept grass, and large trees planted in formal lines, with an entire absence of fences, posts, chains, bushes, and all decorations, will give a dignity and character which an excess of ornamentation would spoil. ”

“ There is the village green, with its pond and geese and absurdly pretty cottages with gardens full of red bergamot and lads'-love, and a little school where the children are still taught to curtsey and pull their forelocks when the Squire goes by. And beyond the Green, at the end of Plough Lane and after you have crossed Leg-o'-Mutton Common, you come to Down Wood, and if you don't meet Little Red Riding-Hood on the way or come on Snow White and her seven dwarfs, that is only because you must have taken the wrong turning after you came through the kissing-gate at the bottom of Lovers' Lane. ”

“ You emerge from the pine-forest on to a bare piece of mountain land, grayish purple, with patches of black. Then you dive into a chestnut-grove, where the leaves are green and brown and gold, and the earth is a rich brown. And so down the path into the village wrapped in a blue haze. The women in their cottages are bending busily over copper pots and pans on great open fireplaces of blazing logs. ”

“ Again, breadths of citron and lemon, followed by extensive rice farms, where the cultivators stood dressing the unripe plantations, up to their ankles in the water of a feathery green swamp. Not a rood of earth is unimproved, excepting where some thriving red-roofed village is hemmed in by the fragrant paradise. In one place you will see, perhaps, a mouldering red tower like those of the Alhambra, or a church spire lifted amid the trees, and, high above the other greenery, clusters of date-palms leaning together, as if they whispered among themselves of other days. ”

“ The lime trees run in a line along the whole of one side of the green, and at their feet still creeps a stream whose minnows hover and dart, and the black and white wagtail runs. Behind the trees are half the cottages of the village, some isolated among their bean rows and sunflowers, some attached in fantastic unions. Most are of one storey, in brick, which the autumn creepers melt into, or in timber and tiles perilously bound together by old ivy ”

“ A windmill-pump irrigates the well-kept garden, where oranges are in blossom and ripening their golden globes at the same time. Green peas and cauliflowers, maturing early, appeal to a lower aestheticism. The stables, the smithy, the store, the men's huts, the carpenter's shop, form a village of themselves; not a small one either. ”

“ In the middle of the village is the triangular open space, or village green. Round it the houses are thickly clustered together, with hardly any garden ground at the back or in front, and most of them with none at all. Outside the ring of houses are small grass fields or closes, where calves and cows feed, and poultry run. These little fields form a kind of ring round the village, and the hedges enclosing them represent the old fence of Saxon days, which formed the "tun". ”

“ Every day I walk up this hill—every day I pause at the top to admire the broad winding road with the green waste on each side, uniting it with the thickly timbered hedgerows; the two pretty cottages at unequal distances, placed so as to mark the bends; the village beyond, with its mass of roofs and clustered chimneys peeping through the trees; and the rich distance, where cottages, mansions, churches, towns, seem embowered in some wide forest, and shut in by blue shadowy hills. Every day I admire this most beautiful landscape ”

“ How beautiful the lane is to-day, decorated with a thousand colours! The brown road, and the rich verdure that borders it, strewed with the pale yellow leaves of the elm, just beginning to fall; hedgerows glowing with long wreaths of the bramble in every variety of purplish red; and overhead the unchanged green of the fir, contrasting with the spotted sycamore, the tawny beech, and the dry sere leaves of the oak, which rustle as the light wind passes through them ”

“ No public water supply available for an ordinary village would suffice to overcome the effects of a dry season over the whole of even a small homestead; but we may hope to secure enough to keep one or two small sprinklers flowing steadily through the hot months, and so keep a little grass measurably green, and preserve a semblance of life and beauty in flower-beds and delicate shrubbery. It is very rarely that it will be possible to supply water enough in a whole week to equal in its effect a half-hour's rain ”

“ Now we have scarcely any village games or sports, except when some energetic rector or curate starts a cricket club. Old social customs, which added such diversity to the lives of the rustics two centuries ago, have died out. The village green, the source of so much innocent happiness, is no more ”

“ The old women from the village have daily employment now in keeping the lawn and the green walk clear of leaves; and the compost heap beside the orchard becomes something vast. The gardener is ridging his vacated beds, and thinning his turnips and spinach, and earthing up the celery. ”

“ When the little hopeful leaves peep out so fresh and green, so pure and bright, like young lives pushing shyly out into the bustling world; when the fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like village maidens in their Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in a cloud of fragile splendor ”

“ The very fruitfulness of the ground makes it less green than it would otherwise have to be to support the population, for when three crops can be got off the same piece of land in one year, only a third of the amount of land that you would expect to be needed to support the village is under cultivation. ”

“ The ocean of the vast tobacco fields rolls and rolls its mighty billows of deepening green into the darkening purple haze of the misty horizon. The wooded hillsides are now very still, and dark blue shadows linger all day among the trees—which stir scarcely a leaf—waiting to creep down toward the village at nightfall to meet the snow-white mist loitering over the resting meadows. ”

“ In the rare instances where trees are planted among the dwellings, the flat brown roofs seem to nestle among the branches in delightful contentment and restfulness. Where trees are absent there is generally a high cactus hedge, serving as an enclosing wall, which sets the village in a pleasant green. Even those hamlets which have about them no green of any kind are not uninviting, especially if they are built on a hill-slope. ”

“ It is a gray, dull day; not a breath stirs the air, which is heavy and ominous. Evening is drawing on as one walks down the mountain-path towards home, and a haze is settling on the village; the sun has been feebly trying to shine all day through the thick clouds that cover it. The green pines, with their purple stems, are very beautiful against the deeper purple of the mountains; pretty, too, the homesteads on the hills, with their fields of cabbages and little plantations of flowers. There is a sweet smell of gorse and pine-needles and decaying bracken, and always one hears the caw of rooks. ”

“ On the village green an inclined strong, down which, clinging the while to a pulley-swung handle, one could be hurled violently against a sack at the other end, came in for considerable favour among the adolescent, as also did the swings and the cocoanut shies. ”

“ It is quite natural that an enriched manufacturer or merchant, proud of his native village, should be ambitious to perpetuate the memory of his benefaction by providing for some corresponding decoration of its public green, and that he should attempt to reproduce there, on the smaller scale proportionate to the circumstances, the sort of magnificence that he has seen in the city park. ”

“ The bank that surmounts this attempt at cultivation is crowned with the late foxglove and the stately mullein; the pasture of which so great a part of the waste consists, looks as green as an emerald; a clear pond, with the bright sky reflected in it, lets light into the picture; the white cottage of the keeper peeps from the opposite coppice; and the vine-covered dwelling of Hannah Bint rises from amidst the pretty garden, which lies bathed in the sunshine around it. ”

“ The other cottages lying to the eastward are gay in red-and-white striped awnings, and porch and window boxes painted red or green are filled with geraniums, nasturtiums, petunias,—any flowers, in short, that will thrive in the broiling sun, while some of the owners have planted buoy-like barrels at the four corners of their enclosures and filled them with the same assortment of foliage plants with which they would decorate a village lawn. ”

“ For roadsides, and largely in parks and village greens, the world offers no tree that can compare in dignity and grace with the broad-spreading American elm; though, for the sake of variety, and for the sake of an earlier effect, many other trees may be added. ”

“ Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health, and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. ”

“ TWILIGHT'S soft dews steal o'er the village-green,
With magic tints to harmonize the scene.
Still'd is the hum that thro' the hamlet broke,
When round the ruins of their ancient oak
The peasants flock'd to hear the minstrel play,
And games and carols clos'd the busy day. ”

“ When they wish to ask a question, they kneel down and kiss the border of our coats, as in the days of the serf system. We are stationed here in Poland, about eight kilometers from the so-called road, in a so-called village far from all civilization. The village consists of a number of tumble-down cottages, with rooms which we should not consider fit for stables for our horses. The rain is streaming down unceasingly, as if Heaven wished to wash away all the sins of the world. Our horses sink into the mud up to their knees. ”

“ "I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theatres. ”

“ As soon as the seed is well sprouted, showing green over the whole ground, roll the area repeatedly and thoroughly until it is as smooth and hard as it is possible to make it. [Pg 67] As soon as the grass has attained the height of three inches, let it be cut with a lawn-mower, and let the cutting be repeated at least weekly throughout the season of rapid growth, and as often as necessary until the end of autumn. ”

“ The city, along the upper part of the Drive, is filled with streets that twist and turn crookedly, like New York's Greenwich Village. It has always puzzled me to know how the residents ever find their way home at [Pg 30] night—especially when they are returning from parties. I suppose they manage it somehow—perhaps by signs cut in the trees, like primitive Indians.
"Even after I had worked out the machine," Melbourne continued, "it was a year's job to put together a record for a thorough trial. ”

“ Beyond the palace began the Community garden, a large square in the centre of the village filled with flowers and fruit adorned with arbors and cedar-trees clipped in the form of birds, and enriched with an old-style greenhouse whose sliding glasses were viewed with admiration by the visitors of thirty years ago, who sent their choice plants thither from far and near to be tended through the long, cold lake-country winters. ”

“ It refuses to leave these streets inviolate for a decade or more until settlers choose to pitch their tents or villas here. So the wood calmly goes to work and makes preparations to close the streets, for the green things that grow here have no fear of gravel or macadam—they are used to it and thrive in it and on it. So everywhere upon the streets and upon the pavements the purple-headed thistles, the blue sage, silvery willow shrubs, and the green of young ash-tree sprouts begin to take root and shoot forth. ”

“ Wherever a well has been sunk, a little garden has been made, fenced in with a wall, and planted with palms. There are perhaps a dozen of these outlying farms occupying two or three acres each. In one place there are four or five houses with their gardens together, which have the look of a village. The whole of the basin, except these oases, is dazzlingly white, showing the palm groves as black patches on its surface. ”

“ But our ideas change when we enter his village home, with its dancing-grounds with the big drums, the sacred stone tables, idols and carved tree-trunks, all in a frame of violently coloured bushes—red, purple, brown and orange. Above us, across a blue sky, a tree with scarlet flowers blows in the breeze, and long stamens fall slowly down and cover the ground with a brilliant carpet. Dogs bark, roosters crow and from a hut a man creeps out—others emerge from the bush and from half-hidden houses which at first we had not noticed. ”