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Late in the afternoon our attendance at
the lecture was cancelled on account of the
weather and subsequently I had to telephone
and ask to be excused going out to dinner,
for though the Blackwood’s house, Cotswold, is only
about 200 yds. distant I could not have
reached it dry on account of the snow! The
unfortunate postman had been above his
knees in a drift bringing our afternoon letters.
This is said to be the worst blizzard in
Scotland in living memory and I well believe it.
The loss to farmers in sheep and lambs must
be exceedingly high.

21st. March 1947.
At last this long dreary winter is past, a
soft west wind blows this evening
after an unpleasantly wet day passed in Edinr. [Edinburgh]
and now the snow is rapidly disappearing.
Aconites bloom around the cherry bed: the
groups of snowdrops along the front are
just coming into flower; there is a crowd of
spear points, where the Iris reticulata are
emerging and in the troughs by the Alpine
house door, the Iris histrioides is in flower:
The saxifragas & primulas in the troughs look
well, the former covered with buds. In the
alpine house many primulas are in bud,

- Allionii, of three pink varieties and a white one;
- Berniniae Windrush, Marginata Cerrulea, Linda
Pope: Mrs G.F. Wilson; Faldonside: Barbara
Barker, almost as lovely as Linda Pope, and
sundry others. Oh! how one has yearned for
this day of release from a winter, which was
the dreariest and most depressing in living
memory.

21st. Sept. 1947
Early in May of this year I travelled to Falmouth
breaking my journey for a couple of nights in London
with my friends Monty Balfour and Madeline his wife.
It appeared to me a reaction from the horrors and
desolation of the wartime to see how beautiful the
dreary garden in front of their house in Gloucester Sq [Square]
had become. Borders of lovely Japannese ?cherries flowered
in borders round four sides of the square with other
flowering trees and flower beds and lawns
filled the middle. Both on my railway travels
and in the hotel I stayed in at Falmouth well bred
people are no longer to be seen. A new class, the
munition workers and war profiteers are now the
wealthy class. From Falmouth I passed on to
Bath to see my other sisters and repeat bath
treatment which I imagined did me good
two years ago. Alas! The result was the opposite
and I left Bath miserably crippled with severe
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