But it does not matter what nervous wrecks Virginia and Ursula may have landed at the door overnight, the first morning sees them up with the lark and out gardening; and one of the earliest sounds you hear is the clink of the brown pitcher on the stones, as Virginia sets it down after filling it at the little spring outside the garden gate. This is a thirsty garden; it is everywhere on the slope, remember, and is composed of the lightest soil imaginable with rock everywhere beneath. As fast as you put water on it, it runs away downhill; hence, a moment’s leisure, morning or evening, always means some pitchers of water for the garden.
All the cottages on the hillside seem to have been built in the same way. Someone evidently hunted about for a few feet of land where it was slightly less sloping than the rest, and within reach of a spring of water, and this plot he levelled a bit by excavating the big boulders and smaller stones which make up our substratum, and often the top-stratum too. Then if the piece of land wasn’t quite large enough, he cut away part of the hill behind, banking it up with some of the biggest of the boulders, to keep it from tumbling down on to the piece he had cleared.
Next he excavated more rocky pieces from the up-and-down land around his clearing; this gave him a bit of clean ground for a garden, and also provided him with enough stone to build his habitation. Any stone he might have over he made into a wall around his plot, by the simple process of piling one piece on top of another. That, apparently, is all man does to the place. Then Nature sets to work; and, oh, what festoons of loveliness she flings over all!
As several different owners have had a hand at my particular cottage, the garden has been extended in various directions, but always requiring stone walls to prop it up. Hence you get a moderately level patch, with a drop of four or six feet over the edge of the garden-bed.
A few rough stone steps take you down to the next level, where there is another bit of garden, the steps themselves sprouting in every chink, with wild strawberry, primroses, ferns, columbines, and a stray Canterbury bell. In this way the cottage is surrounded with steps going up or going down, with a flower-bed running along here, and some more a few feet lower down; another terrace of flowers and some more steps (nearly smothered with big periwinkle, these are) take you down to an absurd lawn, that some enterprising person levelled up so delightfully on the tilt that neither chair nor table will remain where you place it! If they roll far enough, they go over the edge of the lawn, a drop of about twenty feet, into the lower orchard! Nevertheless, this lawn is popular, because it is edged at one side with white and pink moss rose-trees.