May 7th .
-- I love my garden .
I am writing in it now in the late afternoon loveliness , much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower .
Two owls are perched near me , and are carrying on a long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales .
The gentleman owl says [ [ musical notes occur here in the printed text ] ] , and she answers from her tree a little way off , [ [ musical notes ] ] , beautifully assenting to and completing her lord ’s remark , as becomes a properly constructed German she-owl .
They say the same thing over and over again so emphatically that I think it must be something nasty about me ; but I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of owls .
This is less a garden than a wilderness .
No one has lived in the house , much less in the garden , for twenty-five years , and it is such a pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did not , deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town , must have belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed .
Noseless too , though it does not sound pretty ; but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves .
I am always happy ( out of doors be it understood , for indoors there are servants and furniture ) but in quite different ways , and my spring happiness bears no resemblance to my summer or autumn happiness , though it is not more intense , and there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound garden , in spite of my years and children .
But I did it behind a bush , having a due regard for the decencies .
There are so many bird-cherries round me , great trees with branches sweeping the grass , and they are so wreathed just now with white blossoms and tenderest green that the garden looks like a wedding .
I never saw such masses of them ; they seemed to fill the place .
Even across a little stream that bounds the garden on the east , and right in the middle of the cornfield beyond , there is an immense one , a picture of grace and glory against the cold blue of the spring sky .
My garden is surrounded by cornfields and meadows , and beyond are great stretches of sandy heath and pine forests , and where the forests leave off the bare heath begins again ; but the forests are beautiful in their lofty , pink-stemmed vastness , far overhead the crowns of softest gray-green , and underfoot a bright green wortleberry carpet , and everywhere the breathless silence ; and the bare heaths are beautiful too , for one can see across them into eternity almost , and to go out on to them with one ’s face towards the setting sun is like going into the very presence of God .
In the middle of this plain is the oasis of birdcherries and greenery where I spend my happy days , and in the middle of the oasis is the gray stone house with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights .
The house is very old , and has been added to at various times .
It was a convent before the Thirty Years ’ War , and the vaulted chapel , with its brick floor worn by pious peasant knees , is now used as a hall .
Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once , as is duly recorded in archives still preserved , for we are on what was then the high-road between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate .
The Lion of the North was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly up to his convictions , but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns , who were not without convictions of their own , sending them out on to the wide , empty plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life of silence here .
From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out across the plain , with no obstacle in the shape of a hill , right away to a blue line of distant forest , and on the west side uninterruptedly to the setting sun -- nothing but a green , rolling plain , with a sharp edge against the sunset .
I love those west windows better than any others , and have chosen my bedroom on that side of the house so that even times of hair-brushing may not be entirely lost , and the young woman who attends to such matters has been taught to fulfil her duties about a mistress recumbent in an easychair before an open window , and not to profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time .
This girl is grieved at my habit of living almost in the garden , and all her ideas as to the sort of life a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came to me .
The people round about are persuaded that I am , to put it as kindly as possible , exceedingly eccentric , for the news has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book , and that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook .
But why cook when you can get some one to cook for you ?
And as for sewing , the maids will hem the sheets better and quicker than I could , and all forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one for keeping the foolish from applying their heart to wisdom .
We had been married five years before it struck us that we might as well make use of this place by coming down and living in it .
Those five years were spent in a flat in a town , and during their whole interminable length I was perfectly miserable and perfectly healthy , which disposes of the ugly notion that has at times disturbed me that my happiness here is less due to the garden than to a good digestion .
And while we were wasting our lives there , here was this dear place with dandelions up to the very door , all the paths grass-grown and completely effaced , in winter so lonely , with nobody but the north wind taking the least notice of it , and in May -- in all those five lovely Mays -- no one to look at the wonderful bird-cherries and still more wonderful masses of lilacs , everything glowing and blowing , the virginia creeper madder every year , until at last , in October , the very roof was wreathed with blood-red tresses , the owls and the squirrels and all the blessed little birds reigning supreme , and not a living creature ever entering the empty house except the snakes , which got into the habit during those silent years of wriggling up the south wall into the rooms on that side whenever the old housekeeper opened the windows .
All that was here , -- peace , and happiness , and a reasonable life , -- and yet it never struck me to come and live in it .
Looking back I am astonished , and can in no way account for the tardiness of my discovery that here , in this far-away corner , was my kingdom of heaven .
Indeed , so little did it enter my head to even use the place in summer , that I submitted to weeks of seaside life with all its horrors every year ; until at last , in the early spring of last year , having come down for the opening of the village school , and wandering out afterwards into the bare and desolate garden , I do n’t know what smell of wet earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush and all the happy days I had spent in a garden .
Shall I ever forget that day ?
It was the beginning of my real life , my coming of age as it were , and entering into my kingdom .
Early March , gray , quiet skies , and brown , quiet earth ; leafless and sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence , yet there I stood feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I used to as a child , and the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak , and the world was full of hope , and I vowed myself then and there to nature , and have been happy ever since .
My other half being indulgent , and with some faint thought perhaps that it might be as well to look after the place , consented to live in it at any rate for a time ; whereupon followed six specially blissful weeks from the end of April into June , during which I was here alone , supposed to be superintending the painting and papering , but as a matter of fact only going into the house when the workmen had gone out of it .
How happy I was !
I do n’t remember any time quite so perfect since the days when I was too little to do lessons and was turned out with sugar on my eleven o’clock bread and butter on to a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and daisies .
The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm , but I love the dandelions and daisies even more passionately now than then , and never would endure to see them all mown away if I were not certain that in a day or two they would be pushing up their little faces again as jauntily as ever .
During those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions and delights .
The dandelions carpeted the three lawns , -- they used to be lawns , but have long since blossomed out into meadows filled with every sort of pretty weed , -- and under and among the groups of leafless oaks and beeches were blue hepaticas , white anemones , violets , and celandines in sheets .
The celandines in particular delighted me with their clean , happy brightness , so beautifully trim and newly varnished , as though they too had had the painters at work on them .
Then , when the anemones went , came a few stray periwinkles and Solomon ’s Seal , and all the birdcherries blossomed in a burst .
And then , before I had a little got used to the joy of their flowers against the sky , came the lilacs -- masses and masses of them , in clumps on the grass , with other shrubs and trees by the side of walks , and one great continuous bank of them half a mile long right past the west front of the house , away down as far as one could see , shining glorious against a background of firs .
When that time came , and when , before it was over , the acacias all blossomed too , and four great clumps of pale , silvery-pink peonies flowered under the south windows , I felt so absolutely happy , and blest , and thankful , and grateful , that I really can not describe it .
My days seemed to melt away in a dream of pink and purple peace .