WCP47

[1]

Parkstone, Dorset.

April 6th. 1902

My dear Will

I am very busy just now, having received a handsome present of about 50 plants from Italy, from Sir Thomas Hanbury¹— some are young tree 5 feet high, others small pot plants, but all wanting attention potting or planting.

All the week we have been getting up stuff from the bank between top garden & wood, which is partly very good loam, & we have make a border for climbers etc. inside the vinery at back & one for the vines outside in front with a [?] of bone dust. I have [2] also ordered 2 young vines as the old one at here has roots the whole length of the Greenhouse & cannot be moved.

The floor-joists over the cellars are now all in place and the walls are about 3 or 4 feet up all round. The scaffold-poles are all up and the simple and quiet beauty of the landscape is being marked ^by [one illegible word deleted] a huge red mass of bricks & mortar! How much more appropriate and pleasing would have been a true low bungalow, in Swiss-châlet style! But L[or]^d. Wimborne & the "authorities" would not permit it, and we must perforce put up with the minimum of red brick walls. No doubt when all ^is finished it will not look less big & ugly [3] than if it does now. We have now 4 bricklayers and 4 labourers at work, and shall get another labourer as soon as we can. We have now raised the labourers wages to 5^d. an hour, & shall probably have to go to 5½^d soon as there is a demand now all round, and Percy has heard that at the big job at Lytchett they are paying 6^d..

A lady from Haslemere, a Miss Buckton, is staying with us as a "paying guest"— She is a friend of the Evans’ & her father is a well-known entomologist, but a cripple. She is an invalid, but sketches very nicely & can walk fairly well, & is pleasant & intelligent. I hope she will stay over Violet’s²holidays.

You remember the large circular hollow on the west side [4] of the orchard near top. As there are so many other hollows about, though less well-formed, it strikes me that there must have been an ancient "pit-village" there. So when you come in the summer you can explore it a bit before it is used for rock-plants or a fernery.

I enclose a letter from the Cape— I suppose from some of the Burrell’s. I have paid over £60 in bills (for materials) this week and about £16 for wages & carting, & this will keep on now f perhaps till Midsummer. We have a carpenter coming tomorrow, who will have plenty of work now trimming floor joints, making door frames etc. The windows are to be made complete at joinery works at Bournemouth but owing to Mr. Donkin’s great delay the frames cannot be built in as I wanted.

Your affectionate Pa | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]