Your old-fashioned man with a care to his garden will look through the quarrel of his window to spy weather signs. This quarrel, the lozenge-pane of a window made criss-cross, shows in its narrow frame a deal of Nature’s business, day and night. For your gardener it takes the part of club window, weather glass and eye hole onto his world. Through it day and night he reviews the sky and the trees, the wind, the moon and the stars. When he rises betimes there’s the sky for him to read. When he returns for his tea there in the pane is the sunset framed. When he goes to bed the moon rides past and the friendly stars twinkle.

No man is asked his opinion of the weather so much as the gardener, except, may be, the shepherd; both men having, as it were, a Professorship in weather given to them by the Public. It is they who have given rise to, or even, perhaps, invented the rhymes by which they go.

There is a verse full of ripe experience. The evening sun glows red through the lozenge-panes and into the cottage, lights up with sparks of crimson fire the silver lustre ornaments, makes the furniture shine again, gives the brass candlesticks a finger lick of fire, shines ruddy on the tablecloth, and flashes back a friendly scarlet message from the square of looking-glass. On the deep window ledge stand a row of ruddled flower pots in which fine geraniums grow, behind them a tidy muslin curtain stretches across the window on a tape, on the sides of the window are hung a photograph or two, an almanac, and a picture cut from a seed catalogue, above hangs a canary in a small cage. Only the narrowest slip of window is clear, not more than one clear pane, and it is through this that the evening sun streams into the cottage room. In the morning when our friend rises, if he finds the room flooded with a clear grey light, a light matching the silver lustre jugs, then he quotes his verse, to be sure, and passing his neighbour says, “A fine day, to-day.”

That sign is for the shepherd and the traveller by night, since no ordinary being is expected to watch for rainbows by night to the detriment of his night’s rest and his morning temper. But the shepherd must keep a keen eye to such signs, and marks, day and night, all the little movements of Nature, to learn her whims. As for instance, the signs of bad weather to come:

That swallows will fly low and swiftly when the upper air is charged with moisture for then insects fly low also.

That the cricket will sing sharply.

This last, of course, in wet countries, for in dry places, as in meadows under southern mountains, there is a perfect orchestra of rasping crickets in the grass. But in the north, on the most silent and golden days, they say that the chirrup of a cricket foretells rain. Just as they say:

This they say, because the story runs that a hedgehog builds a nest with the opening made to face the mildest quarter thereabout, and the back to the most prevalent wind.

Again, and this a sign everybody knows:

That distant hills look near.

As indeed they do before rain, and many times one hears—“such a place is too clear to-day”—or, “One can see such a land much too well,” and this means near rain.

Like the swallows so do rooks change their flight before rain, and so, also, do plover, for it is noticed:

That rooks will glide low on the wind, and drop quickly. And plover fly in shape almost as a kite and will not rise high, one or two of the flock being posted sentinels at the tail of the kite formation.

Then, if the shepherd is near to a dew-pit, or any water meadow, or passing by a roadside ditch he will notice:

That toads will walk out across the road. And frogs will change colour before a storm, losing their bright green and turning to a dun brown.

To all of these signs with their significance of coming rain your shepherd will give a proper prominence in his mind, marking one, and then searching for another until he is certain. His first clue on any hilly ground is:

That sheep will not wander into the uplands but keep browsing in the plain.

Having taken note of this he turns to plants, particularly to his own weather glass, the Scarlet Pimpernel, as he sees:

That the Pimpernel closes her eye. That the down will fly from off the dandelion, the colts-foot, and from thistles though there be no wind.

Of night signs there are many, but chiefly:

That glowworms shine very bright.

That the new moon with the old moon in her lap comes before rain.

This of the bur, or halo, to be seen at times about the moon.

For a last thing they say:

Our friend, the weather-wise gardener,—and, by the way, there is the unkind saying:

has several things in his neighbourhood to tell him of coming rain, as:

That heliotrope and marigold flowers close their petals.

That ducks will make a loud and insistent quacking.

That—so they say—the cat will sit by the fire and clean her whiskers.

That the tables and chairs will creak.

That dogs will eat grass.

That moles will heave.

In the garden he too will observe the birds, more especially that pert friend to all gardeners, the robin. For they say:

I must confess that I have not found this come true of robins, any more than I have found waterwag-tails coming on the lawn to be a harbinger of rain, or that thrushes eat more snails than worms in the dry season. Of this last I get enjoyment enough, for there is a stone in my garden to which the fat thrushes come dragging snails. They give them a mighty heave, and down come the snails, “crack” on the stone, until the shell is burst asunder and the delicious morsel is down Master Thrush’s gullet in the twinkling of an eye. The thrush is certainly my favourite garden bird, both for his looks and his song, and the blackbird I like least, for they are bundles of nerves, screaming away at the slightest suggestion of danger. The robin is a fine impudent fellow and friendly in a truly greedy way, following the smallest suggestion of digging with an eye for a good dinner, so that if you are only pulling the earth up in weeding you will have the brisk little gentleman at your elbow, head cocked on one side, and an eye of the greatest intelligence sharply fixed on you. Pigeons I regard as an absolute nuisance, their voices sentimental to a degree, in this way quite at variance with their selfish, greedy and destructive characters. So they say:

Starlings are very handsome birds but as they live in congregations, or like regiments, one can have no personal feeling for them, though I love to watch them on winter evenings when they come in thousands from the fields and fly to their roosting place, making the air rustle with the quick beat of their wings.

The bullfinch is a gardener’s enemy, for he will strip the fruit buds from a tree out of pure wantonness, and yet he is a brave bird and nice to see about.

All the small birds give one joy though they be robbers or enemies to young plants, or bee eaters like the blue-tit, or strawberry robbers, or drainpipe chokers like the house-sparrows, or murderers of the summer peace like the woodpecker with his quick insistent “tap, tap.”

In royal and fine gardens, of course, one must have two birds; the peacock and the owl, for these two give all the air of romance needful, though I have never myself regarded the peacock as a King of birds, for he makes too much of a show of himself, and his wife is a humble creature. I feel, rather, that he is a courtier strutting up and down waiting the King’s pleasure; a place-seeker, one who will cheer the side that pays. As for the owl, that dusky guardian of secrets, he is a far more solid and trustworthy fellow than the gay peacock, and though he snores in the daytime, his great round yellow eyes are open at the least sound in his haunt.

This is far afield from the weather, so let us give the remaining saying of birds that the gardener may notice.

That I hold to be very true.

There are still one or two rhymes that should be well noted, three of the rain.

Then they say:

And again:

And,

And also:

These are all very well, and what with one thing and another will come true, at least as true as the rhyme that says:

Still it is really to the wind that the gardener looks most, and if he have a weathercock in his garden (which with a sundial, a rain gauge, and an outside thermometer he should always have) he will note each turn of the wind. If he has no weathercock then he will read the wind by the smoke of chimneys, or the turn of the leaves of trees.

And, after regarding the wind, he may remember this:

And this also:

This weather lore is naturally gleaned out of many years, some of the sayings being of real antiquity, others, perhaps, newly coined, though I fancy not. In spite of them you will find every gardener has a different manner of reading the sky and the wind, some having it that mares-tails in the sky come after great storms, others that they are the portent of a gale. Some, if asked will reply to a question on the weather:

“With these frostises o’ nights, and the wind veered roun’ apint west, and taking into consideration the time o’ year, and the bad harvest”—then follows a long look into the heavens—“I don’t say but what ’er won’t rain, but then again, I dunno, perhaps come the breeze keeps off, us mighten have quite a tidy drop.” This you are at liberty to translate which way you choose, since the advice is generally followed by a portentous wink, or, at least, some motion of an eyelid curiously like it.