The Child's Book of the Seasons

Spring always seems to begin on the morning that the Imp, in a bright pink nightgown, comes rushing into my room without knocking, and throws himself on my bed, with a sprig of almond blossom in his hand. You see, the almond blossom grows just outside the Imp's window, and the Imp watches it very carefully. We are none of us allowed to see it until it is ready, and then, as soon as there is a sprig really out, he picks it and flies all round the house showing it to everybody. For the Imp loves the Spring, and we all know that those beautiful pink blossoms mean that Spring is very near.

"Spring!" shouts the Imp, waving his almond blossoms, and we begin to keep a little note-book, and write down in it after the almond blossom day all the other days of the really important things, the day when we first see the brimstone butterfly, big and pale and golden yellow, flitting along the hedgerow near the ground, and the day of picking the first primrose and the finding of the first bird's nest.

And then walks begin to be real fun. No dull jig-jog, jig-jog, just so many miles before going home to lunch, when all the time you would much rather have stayed at home altogether. The Imp and the Elf love Spring walks, and are always running ahead trying to see things. There are such a lot of things to see, and every one of them means that Summer is a little nearer. And that is a jolly piece of news, is it not?

The Imp and the Elf have a nurse to take them for walks, and a very nice old nurse she is, with lots of fairy tales. But somehow she is not much interested in flowers, or birds, or mice, or even in the Spring, so that very soon after the day of the apple blossom those two children start coming to my door soon after breakfast. They knock both at once very quietly. I pretend not to hear. They knock again, and still I do not answer. Then they thunder on the door. Do you know how to thunder on a door? You do it by doubling up your fist and hitting hard with the podgy part that comes at the end where your thumb is not. You can make a tremendous noise that way, And then suddenly I jump up and roar out, "Who's there?" as if I were a terrible giant. And the Imp and the Elf come tumbling in, and stand in front of me, and bow and say, "Oh, Mr. Ogre, we hope you are not very really truly busy, because we want you to come for a walk."

And then we stick our things on, and away we go through the garden and into the fields, with our three pairs of eyes as wide open as they will go, so as not to miss anything.

We watch the lark rise high off the ploughed lands and sing up into the sky. He is a little speckled brown bird with a very conceited head, if only you can get near enough to see him. The Imp says he ought not to be so proud just because he has a fine voice. And certainly, if you watch the way he swings into the air, with little leaps of flying, higher and higher and higher, you cannot help thinking that perhaps he does think a little too much of himself. He likes to climb higher than all the other birds, just as if he were a little choir boy perched up in the organ loft. He climbs up and up the sky till you can scarcely see him, but he takes care that you do not forget him even if he is so high as to be out of sight. He sings and sings and sings. The Imp and the Elf like to wait and watch him till he drops down again in long jumps, just as if he were that little choir boy coming down the stairs ten steps at a time. "Now he's coming," says the Imp, as he sees the lark poise for an instant. "Now he's coming," the Elf cries, as he drops a foot or two. But we always think he is coming before he really is.

As we go through the fields we keep a good look out for primroses and cowslips. The primroses come long before the cowslips. Cowslips really belong to the beginning of the Summer. But early in the Spring there are plenty of woods and banks we know, where we are sure of finding primroses with their narrow, furry, green leaves, and the pale yellow flowers on a long stalk sprouting out of the heart of the leaves.

In the primrose-wood where we always go in the Spring, we find lots and lots of primroses, and some of them are not yellow at all, but pale pink and purple coloured. The Elf collects them for her garden, and she carries a little trowel and digs deep down into the earth all round them so as not to hurt their roots and then pulls them up, and puts them in the basket to plant in her garden at home. You see, they really belong to gardens, for they are not quite proper primroses, but the children of primroses and polyanthuses. You know polyanthuses. The Imp says their names are much too long for them. But you know them quite well, just like cowslips, they are, only all sorts of colours.

About the same time that the primroses are out the wild dog violets begin to show themselves. We always know when to look for them, for wild ones bloom as soon as the sweet ones in our garden are over. The Elf watches the garden violets and picks the last bunch of them, and ties them up with black cotton and puts them on my plate ready for me when I come down late to breakfast. Yes, I do come down late for breakfast. I know it is naughty, but you see even grown-ups are naughty sometimes. The Imp thinks I am very naughty indeed, and so one day, when I was late, he took my porridge, and got on a high chair, and put it on the top of the grandfather clock for a punishment. You see, whenever the Imp and the Elf are late they have to go without porridge. That is why they are very seldom late. Well, as soon as I came down I saw my blue porridge bowl smiling over the top of the clock, and I just reached up and took it down and ate it, and very good porridge it was, too. But the Imp said, "It's horrid of you, Ogre, to be so big," and then he laughed, and I laughed, and it was all right.

Oh, yes, I was just telling you that the Elf put the last bunch of the sweet violets on my plate. Well, when that happens we all know that our next walk will be to the places where the wild violets grow for they are sure to be just coming out.

The wild violets are just like the sweet ones in liking cool, shady places for their homes. We find them nestling in the banks under the hedge that runs along the side of the wood. They cuddle close down to the ground, with their tiny heart-shaped leaves and wee pale purple flowers, just like little untidy twisted pansies.

The Elf reminds me that I am to tell you about the daffodils. I had forgotten all about them. Really, you know it is the Imp and the Elf who are writing this book. If it were not for them I should be forgetting nearly everything. There are such a lot of things to remember. In the wood where we find the coloured primroses there are great banks of daffodils under the green larches. They are just like bright yellow trumpets growing out of pale yellow stars. The Imp says they are the golden horns the fairies blow when they go riding through the woodland in the moonlight on their fairy coaches. I do not know if he is right, but anyhow they are very pretty. They have lots of long flat leaves growing close round each flower, like sword blades sticking up out of the ground, and the buds look at first as if they were two leaves tightly rolled together. And then the green opens and a pale spike comes out, and a thin covering bursts off the spike, and the spike opens into the five-pointed star, leaving the brilliant golden trumpet in the middle. Gardeners, and that sort of person grow double daffodils that look like two flowers one inside the other, but the ordinary wild daffodil is far the prettier. At least the Imp and the Elf think so, and I think so, too.

We go to the wood and lie down on the dried leaves from last year, and watch the flowers and talk about them and the little mice who live in the undergrowth. Sometimes, if we are not too lazy, the Elf makes us pick primroses and daffodils and violets to send to children we know in town--pale-faced children who think we must be dull in the country, with nothing to do, and no pantomimes. Really, of course, there is such a lot to do in the country that we have always got the next thing planned before we have done what we are doing. And as for pantomimes this very wood is just like a theatre, with mice and rabbits and birds for actors, and the most beautiful transformation scenes. Why, just now in Spring it is yellow with primroses and daffodils, with pale larches wearing their new green dresses. But soon all the trees will be green, and the whole wood will be carpeted in blue, deep rich blue, the colour of the wild blue-bells, whose leaves we can see coming up all over the place. Spiky green leaves they are, and the children see them at once. "Blue-bells are coming," sing the Imp and the Elf, and so they are, and with the blue-bells comes Summer.

Besides the lark and cuckoo, who is going to be talked about in a minute, besides the flowers, there are other things we watch for signs of Summer, and those are the trees themselves.

We watch the trees for flowers and for buds. From the high windows of the house we can see over the fields to the woods, and see them change colour from the dead bareness of Winter very early in the Spring. And when we go to the woods in daffodil time we all three of us watch the buds coming out on every branch farthest out on the lowest boughs, which for Imps and Elves are also easiest to see.

Earlier than this we look for catkins on the hazel trees. The Elf calls the hazels "the little children of the wood" because they grow low, and the other trees, the oaks, and beeches, and elms, and chest-nuts, and birches, tower above them. In some parts of the country catkins are called lambstails, because they hang down just like the flabby little tails of the Spring lambs. What do you think they really are? The Elf would not believe me when I told her they were hazel flowers. "Trees don't have flowers," she said. I reminded her of hawthorns and wild roses, and she said, "Oh, yes, but these things are greeny-brown and not like flowers at all." But they are flowers. They are the flowers of the hazel tree, and they are almost the very first of the Spring things that we see. If you look about when you are in the woods you will find that lots of other trees have green flowers, too, and many of them just the same shape as the lambstails.

The Imp and the Elf are early on the look-out for another tree-flower that is one of the Spring signs, and that is the flower that people who know nothing about it call "palm." Hundreds of men and women from the towns come out into the country to gather it, and a horrible mess they make of our country lanes and fields. The Elf calls them the "Ginger-beer-bottle-and-paper-bag-people" and hates them with all her small heart.

Really, that flower that those people come to gather belongs to the sallow, which is a kind of willow. You know it quite well, with its beautiful straight, tall, bendable stems that look as if they were simply made for bows and arrows. In Spring-time the sallow flowers in pretty little silvery tufts, soft and silky to touch, clinging all along its twigs. The Elf always picks the first bit that she can find that is really out and carries it home in triumph, and puts it in a jampot full of water to remind her that Winter is really over and gone.