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Updated: May 21, 2025
Whenever I do look forth at noonday, at which time the air is all aglow, with a certain glimmer and dazzle like that from an hot furnace, and see the poor fly-bitten cattle whisking their tails to keep off the venomous insects, or standing in the water of the low grounds for coolness, and the panting sheep lying together under the shade of trees, I must needs call to mind the summer season of old England, the cool sea air, the soft-dropping showers, the fields so thick with grasses, and skirted with hedge-rows like green walls, the trees and shrubs all clean and moist, and the vines and creepers hanging over walls and gateways, very plenteous and beautiful to behold.
The plain on either side of them was grey with melting snow. Here and there behind dismantled hedge-rows stood wagons, bearing white flags with red crosses. Sometimes the driver was a priest in rusty hat and gown, sometimes a crippled Mobile. Once they passed a wagon driven by a Sister of Charity. Silent empty houses with great rents in their walls, and every window blank, huddled along the road.
On all sides the green fields, cow-cropped, divided by hedge-rows, and spotted with trees, single and in clumps, came close to the castle walls, except in one or two places where the corner of a red ploughed field came wedging in.
Kinsey says "The ulmis adjungere vitem is well known in poetical description, but in Portugal, besides overshadowing their artificial supporters, the vines are seen attaching themselves to, or hanging down in luxuriant festoons from forest-trees, such as the oak, chestnut, and cork, in all the wildness of nature, and not unfrequently insinuating themselves among the branches of myrtle-trees, which attain a considerable size in the hedge-rows, and contrasting their large, purple bunches with the snow-white blossom.
No rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple, high, high up in the far-off blue sky.
The greensward is torn up and trampled down; man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and pleasant dwellings, blown away with gunpowder; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous Place of Skulls.
Then there were so many pretty wildflowers in the banks and hedge-rows; so many birds to learn the names of, for they were all strangers to Fred, who only knew sparrows and they were different to the sparrows down here at Hollowdell and canaries and parrots.
Time flew by on golden pinions, and I was as happy as the day was long. Winter made way for spring, spring gave place to summer. The halcyon hours sped brighter and brighter for me, from the time of violets when nature's sweetest nurslings modestly blossomed beneath the hedge-rows. Then came "the month of roses," as the Persians appropriately style that duodecimal portion of the year.
Then on the party went again towards the wood, capturing insect treasures as they passed through the pleasant green meadows and by hedge-rows, all now of a bright golden green with the rays of the sinking sun.
Rich it was, and apparently well cultivated; for, except here and there, where a huge meadow intervened, the whole surface was covered with the most luxuriant corn. Of trees, on the contrary, scarce a sprinkling appeared; there were no groves at all, and even hedge-rows were infrequent.
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