Rhapsody in Green by Beverley Nichols

Author:Beverley Nichols
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2009-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

FACING THE ELEMENTS

THE GARDENER’S GREATEST enemy is wind. Not frost, nor snow, nor drought, nor even the sullen implacability of the soil, but wind—the wind that claws and rips at root and branch. (GOTM, 52)

WHATEVER THE WEATHER, however sportive the elements, you can always console yourself by the thought that it is indeed an ill-wind that blows no plant any good…. When the winter is hard, and loath to depart, you can draw your overcoat tighter about you and gain comfort from the thought that no early fruit blossoms are being tempted to make a premature début. (DTGP, 182–183)

·

THERE ARE TIMES when one’s desire for blue is so intense that it must resemble the craving of the drunkard for a glass of whisky. Times when one longs to stretch up and up into the heavens, to wrench away the grey casing of cloud that so often imprisons us, to let loose the floods of colour which are glowing behind. (LOTS, 138)

·

THE HEAVENS BLACKENED, and for several hours a violent thunderstorm raged over Meadowstream—a real old-fashioned pantomime thunderstorm, with titans standing in the wings, dropping bricks on to sheets of steel, and the sky’s dark backcloth lit with the flickering, electric tails of demons. (SOTL, 205)

·

THE THUNDER GROWLED ever farther away—till its growl was almost a blessing, like the purr of a gigantic velvety cat, prowling the fields and forests. (AVIAV, 176)

THE SYMPHONY IS always the same, and always different. For our conductor is the Weather, and he has as many moods as there are hours. Sometimes he stresses the wood wind, till you would say that there was no sound about you but the high clamour of the elms—sometimes he can bear nothing but strings, and when you go to bed at night you can remember only the way the wind hissed through the rushes on the bank of the stream. (AVIAV, 90–91)

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