The walnut tree is the second largest tree in my garden and a most beautiful tree it is, especially on a clear winter's morning, when the strong musical design of the branches seems to sing against the cold blue sky. The pale grey bark, from a distance, has the quality of the skin of some gigantic serpent. According to the experts the tree is about 160 years old, and last year a wood merchant offered me 100 pounds for it. I informed him that since the cottage was Crown Property we were not allowed to cut down any trees without the permission of the Queen, that if we did so we should be promptly clapped in the Tower, and that one of us, at least, would deserve to go there.

However, the walnut tree is not only beautiful but fruitful. In the first year it produced so many walnuts — small but very sweet — that our wrists ached with cracking them. But that was the only year in which we had any walnuts to eat. The word got round, the jungle telephone began to ring, and by the following summer the squirrels had realized that they were on to a good thing. They came from far and wide, and they have been coming up ever since. They appear with uncanny regularity at the beginning of the second week in July, usually on a Sunday morning. One comes home from church, helps oneself to a glass of sherry, and steps into the garden, filled with amiable intentions, one's mind echoing to the magnificent phrases of the Benedicite. 'O ye Whales and all that move in the Waters, bless ye the Lord.' This is my favourite verse; it conjures up a vision of schools and whales with balloons spouting out of their noses. On each balloon is written a pious injunction. The larger whales have quite a lot written on their balloons, the smaller whales have something short and simple, like 'Hosanna'. Let us hope that God has time to read them.

And then, straight from the heavens, there flutters a small and sinister object ... a fragment of the green skin of a walnut. It lands on the path, telling its story all too clearly. The squirrels have arrived, precisely on time. It is really quite extraordinary, as though they kept diaries in which they wrote: 'Sunday, July 9. Call on B.N. and inspect walnut trees.' At the moment there are only two of them, a sort of advance guard, flicking their tails in the swaying branches; and since they have not yet realized their strength, and still have some of the innate timidity of wild creatures, they scamper away at a clap of a hand, streaking from the walnut into the deeper recesses of the copper-beech, and from there into the pear tree, whence they disappear into one of the neighbouring gardens. But they will be back tomorrow, and the day after, in ever increasing numbers, and for weeks the lawns and the paths will be littered with scraps of shells and broken nuts, and the whole garden will look like Hampstead Heath after an exceptionally rowdy bank holiday.

Why this sends me almost mad with irritation I do

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Garden Open Tomorrow

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