The view from this spot is very restful on a summer’s day: the hot south is behind; one faces the cooler, glareless northern sky above the hill that rises before one.
This orchard is but sparsely populated with fruit-trees, and most of these are very old. There are some huge pear-trees that rise tall and fairly straight, suggestive of rather well-fed poplars. There are some twisted, rugged apple-trees, every branch and twig presenting a wonderful study in silver and grey and green filigree, where the lichens have spread and revelled unmolested for many a year. The lichens are so marvellously beautiful, it always takes me quite a time to get down to the lower wall; there is so much to look at on the way. The delicate fronds, that seem closely related in their appearance to the hoarfrost designs on the winter windows, show such a variety of different cluster-schemes. They decorate the odd corners, and throw beauty over the hard knots and gnarls, till I sometimes think they are among the most exquisite things Nature has ever produced—only while I am thinking this, I come upon something else equally beautiful.
Even on a hot day, when most of the mosses and lichens have faded in the glare and drought, we still find the silvery-grey tracery flourishing on the shady side of the apple-trees, and on the pieces of branches that were snapped off and blown down into the long grass by the equinoctial gales. I usually gather up an armful of these branches, with their delicate pencil studies on a darker background, and carry them down to the bottom of the orchard with me—only to wonder why I didn’t leave them where they were till I returned, as I have to carry them back up the hill again presently!
It may seem weakly sentimental to those who do not understand, but I confess that, much as I love the smell of burning applewood, it always gives me a real pain to put on the fire twigs that are ornamented with moss or lichen. It seems heartless to destroy such beauty, even though there is “plenty more where that came from,” as people sometimes tell me.
In the summer I put the pieces of the grey-green branches, that I gather up about the orchard, in the empty hearths and grates.
Many of the old trees originally planted in the lower orchard have died or been blown down; the wind takes a heavy toll from these heights; we can’t have pergolas and rose arches up here, as they can lower down in the valley, unless we fasten them to very firm foundations.