The spot, too, in our plantation, where
I found it, served to make its singular appearance more impressive.
There existed at that time a small piece of waste ground about half an
acre in extent, where there were no trees and where nothing planted by
man would grow. It was at the far end of the plantation, adjoining the
thicket of fennel and the big red willow tree on the edge of the moat
described in another chapter. This ground had been ploughed and dug up
again and again, and planted with trees and shrubs of various kinds
which were supposed to grow on any soil, but they had always
languished and died, and no wonder, since the soil was a hard white
clay resembling china clay. But although trees refused to grow there
it was always clothed in a vegetation of its own; all the hardiest
weeds were there, and covered the entire barren area to the depth of a
man's knees. These weeds had thin wiry stalks and small sickly leaves
and flowers, and would die each summer long before their time. This
barren piece of ground had a great attraction for me as a small boy,
and I visited it daily and would roam about it among the miserable
half-dead weeds with the sun-baked clay showing between the brown
stalks, as if it delighted me as much as the alfalfa field, blue and
fragrant in its flowering-time and swarming with butterflies.
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