the furthest point from the house, a wild solitary spot where I could
spend long hours by myself watching the birds. But I also loved the
fennel for itself, its beautiful green feathery foliage and the smell
of it, also the taste, so that whenever I visited that secluded spot I
would rub the crushed leaves in my palms and chew the small twigs for
their peculiar fennel flavour.

Winter made a great change in the plantation, since it not only
stripped the trees of their leaves but swept away all that rank
herbage, the fennel included, allowing the grass to grow again. The
large luxuriantly-growing annuals also disappeared from the garden and
all about the house, the big four-o'clock bushes with deep red stems
and wealth of crimson blossoms, and the morning-glory convolvulus with
its great blue trumpets, climbing over and covering every available
place with its hop-like mass of leaves and abundant blooms. My life in
the plantation in winter was a constant watching for spring. May,
June, and July were the leafless months, but not wholly songless. On
any genial and windless day of sunshine in winter a few swallows would
reappear, nobody could guess from where, to spend the bright hours
wheeling like house-martins about the house, revisiting their old
breeding-holes under the eaves, and uttering their lively little
rippling songs, as of water running in a pebbly stream. When the sun
declined they would vanish, to be seen no more until we had another
perfect spring-like day.

On such days in July and on any mild misty morning, standing on the
mound within the moat I would listen to the sounds from the wide open
plain, and they were sounds of spring--the constant drumming and
rhythmic cries of the spur-wing lapwings engaged in their social
meetings and "dances," and the song of the pipit soaring high up and