noon
The head gamekeeper of this estate tells me we shall have a hot summer , because the oak this year was in leaf before the ash , though only by a day . The ash was foliating on the 29th of April , the oak on the 28th . Up there the blue-bells lie in sheets of mauve , and the cuckoo is busy . I rarely see him ; but his three notes fill the hot noon and evening . When he spits -LRB- says the gamekeeper again -RRB- it is time to be sheep-shearing . My talk with the gamekeeper is usually held at six in the morning , when he comes down the lane and I am stepping across to test the water in Scarlet 's Well . This well bubbles up under a low vault scooped in the bank by the footpath and hung with hart 's - tongue ferns .